Michael Almereyda’s 1994 horror romance is an indie gem – with a cameo from executive producer David Lynch as a morgue attendant
Here is an amazing midnight-movie adventure, in the shape of the 1994 Dracula’s daughter horror romance from indie film-maker Michael Almereyda. It’s a lo-fi indie gem shot partly in indistinct monochrome, featuring dreamlike transitions and looming closeups, like something from early cinema. It was bankrolled and executive-produced by David Lynch, who appears in a cameo role as the morgue attendant where the deceased count’s remains are temporarily residing.
The story is that Dracula has recently died (“He was like Elvis at the end, going through the motions …”), and his unquiet spirit lives on in the form of his impossibly glamorous and aristocratic daughter, played with much hauteur and predatory sexuality by Romanian actor Elina Löwensohn. According to her, incidentally, the full family name is “Ceausescu-Dracula” (the script elsewhere alludes to the revolution of 1989) and I repeat here my plea that Romanian director Radu Jude makes a biopic of the late Romanian dictator. However, her ailing brother Edgar (Jared Harris) thinks it is “Ionescu-Dracula”. Did we mishear?
