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Cinema/TV, Dracula, Film Notes

Your Daily Dracula – Adolfo Assor, Captain Berlin vs. Hitler (2007)

Your Daily Dracula – Adolfo Assor, Captain Berlin vs. Hitler (2007)

In 2007, Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik) wrote, produced and directed a stage show – and Thilo Gosejohann filmed it, adding comic book optical effects, some snippets from an early Buttgereit short in which he played local superhero Captain Berlin, and a few other bells and whistles (like a thrumming ‘Captain Berlin’ theme soing).  But this is basically a filmed theatre piece, put on in what looks like a large circus tent, with audible audience reactions – it’s conceptually way out there, but also surprisingly suitable for children.  And it’s a Dracula movie.

In the divided Berlin of 1973, fanatic Nazi mad doctor Ilse von Blitzen (Claudia Steiger) keeps Hitler’s pulsating brain (voiced by Rafael Banasik) alive and plans to put it into something (Robohitker) that looks like a cross between the War Machines from Doctor Who and the Colossus of New York – and has a big Hitler face as well as a plastic dome suitable for the brain prop. 

She hopes to secure the aid of Graf Dracula (Assor) but after she’s pulled the stake out of his heart discovers that he’s a dedicated communist – and more interested in putting the bite on pretty girl Maria (Sandra Steffl) than politics anyway.  Maria’s boyfriend is reporter Fritz Neumann (Jürg Plüss), secret identity of anti-Nazi German superhero Captain Berlin, who has been waiting for a rematch with der führer since the War.  Ilse also whips up a bandaged skull-faced monster called Germanicus.  Characters rant at the audience, some quite impressive theatrical effects are trundled out, and Berlin poses a lot before we get something like a happy outcome.

Assor’s Dracula is a gurning Lugosi type with a cape. 

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