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Cinema/TV, Film Notes

Your Daily Dracula – Emmanuelle vs. Dracula (2003)

Your Daily Dracula – Marcus DeAnda, Emmanuelle vs. Dracula (Emmanuelle the Private Collection: Emmanuelle vs. Dracula) (2003)

Behind an eye-catching title lies a softcore snoozer which was originally an episode of a late-night cable time-waster series, Emmanuelle the Private Collection – itself a footnote to the long-lived franchise derived from Emmanuelle Arsan’s semi-autobiographical novel.  The wicker chair is about the only connection to any previous incarnation of the sensual adventuress.

Emmanuelle (Natasja Vermeer), ‘the world’s most independent woman’, attends a bachelorette party for Lucy (Mollie Green) with three friends whose character notes instantly give away the sexual routes they’ll take: repressed Mary (Beverly Lynne), happily-married Susan (hardcore star Kelsey Heart, billed as Kelsey) and incipient lesbian Jennifer (Valerie Baber).  Mystery man ‘Mr Robertson’ (Ernesto Perdomo) turns up at the isolated house, claiming to have had a car accident.  Emmanuelle, who has vampire-themed bad dreams, is suspicious, but the others are intrigued by his hypnotic power to give women spontaneous pleasure (cue cutaways to unrelated characters masturbating on sun-loungers).   Robertson, aka ‘The Dark One’, humps and bites Lucy in the shower and she spreads vampirism (signified by fangs, goth make-up and fetish underwear) through the party.  Emmanuelle fights back, presuming Lost Boys rules apply so that if she kills the sire her friends will revert to normal.  The goateed vampire turns out not to be Dracula but a mere minion.  The real Count (Marcus DeAnda) shows up for a one-on-one with the heroine, pitting superior sexual abilities against each other in a sadly vanilla shag on the carpet.

The thin story is padded with flashbacks but keeps defaulting to achingly familiar minimal-contact sex scenes.  Director ‘KLS’ (aka Keith Shaw) leaves in takes where the cast fumble lines and the script by Rafael Glenn (aka Rolfe Kanefsky) makes little of the clash of icons – though it drops hints that Emmanuelle (uncharacteristically a sexual killjoy here) has supernatural status of her own.

Extract from Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon.

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