Rating: B-
Dir: Mohammed Shebl
Star: Ali El-Haggar, Mona Gabr, Ahmed Adawiyya, Hasan El-Emam
Of all the 31 vampire movies we’ve seen this month, this might end up being the one we remember most. Not that it’s the best, certainly. However, it’s one hell of an experience, and proved to be very easy to write about – not least for the brutally sharp changes in direction. It starts as one thing, suddenly becomes something different in the middle, and then becomes entirely another movie for its final act. If it weren’t for the fact that the same characters appear across all of them, you could have told me this was a trio of different films edited together. I’d probably have nodded wisely and said, “That makes a lot of sense.” All three have some merit, though overall narrative coherence is not one of them.
It begins as a thoroughly shameless Egyptian knock-off of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There’s an opening song largely performed by a pair of lips, a spot of narration by a scholar (El-Emam, a well-known director locally), and we then meet our loving couple, Ali Mostafa Mohamed (El-Haggar), and his fiancée, Mona Magdi Kami (Gabr). After they sing about how much they are in love, they head off to a New Year’s party with friends. On the way their car suffers a flat tyre, and they take shelter in a nearby castle, with a hunchbacked butler, Shalaf, and an aristocratic weirdo, Count Dracula (Adawiyya). He also happens to be having a masquerade party for some of his weirdo friends, who are delighted to have “fresh meat” show up.
I have to say, the musical numbers in this section are proper bangers. It’s clear that disco did not die out in Egypt, and composers Hussien El Imam and Modi El Imam must be big fans. of the genre. If the tunes are genuine toe-tappers – indeed, I’d say better than most of the songs in Rocky Horror #FightMe – I will say the choreography leaves quite a lot to be deserved. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled with our exposure to Bollywood, where the dance numbers are almost always tight as a drum? This is closer to a performance on an off-day by our daughter’s dance recital class, and our reaction to it was along similar, “Good effort! Let’s go get pizza!” lines.
Even Shebl seems to have run out of interest, as this is where we get the first radical shift. Dracula and the narrator get into it, over whether vampires actually exist, leading to a lengthy section which shows Ali and Mona going about their everyday life in Cairo. However, at every step they are preyed upon by price gougers, extortionists and other greedy souls. Plumbers, shop-keepers, doctors and taxi drivers are among those who all, inevitably, end up showing their fangs, because they are real “vampires”. In the late seventies, Egypt split from its long-time ally, the Soviet Union, and adopted a more capitalistic approach to its economy. Some got rich. But there was also a lot of exploitation, and this whole section is a pointed (if likely overlong, frankly to dead horse levels) satire of the resulting problems.
The most striking thing is how the film becomes the Rocky Horror Soundtrack Copyright Violation Show. It abandons any pretense at original songs, in favour of a wholesale rip-off of a slew of Hollywood movies. You’ll recognize themes from The Pink Panther, James Bond, Jaws (I did laugh at that one being used to accompany a prowling and predatory taxi driver) and even Ennio Morricone, as they show up to accompany the travails of our hero and heroine. Later on, the film even recycles some of James Bernard’s classic score for Hammer. Indeed, among the portraits of Dracula’s “ancestors” he has hanging up, are Vlad Tepes, Nosferatu and Christopher Lee, though Drac disparagingly describes him as, “A drop out from school – he became an actor.”
Once Shebl gets tired of the social commentary, at about the hour mark we return to the castle, where Ali and Mona are still potentially on the menu. However, there is dissension in the ranks, both from Shalaf and Dracula’s apparent disciple, played by Tal’tt Zean, who wants to take over from his master: “He must understand that I’ve grown up, and I can rule this house better than he.” At one point, in case the audience had forgotten where we started (and it does seem so long ago now…), he dons a Rocky Horror Picture Show T-shirt. The production does return to original songs, including Dracula’s immortal lyric, “What a pink night, I will sleep with you and put my heart in a jar. With you, my gazelle, I will turn the universe into a carnival.” Maybe it lost something in translation?
While Dracula is battling with his rival, Ali and Mona seize the chance to escape, with the help of Shalaf, who stays behind to destroy the vampires. They then have second thoughts, and return to help him fill the castle with the cleansing power of daylight, which causes the vampires to burst into flames, or perhaps turn into snakes. It’s vague on the details. With everyone on the human side now free, Shalaf chips off his literal ball-and-chain, while Ali and Mona demonstrate impressive stamina, with an extended run, hand in hand, across the desert towards the Great Pyramids. [I imagine these iconic structures occupy much the same position in Egyptian cinema that the Eiffel Tower does in French movies.]
Much like Bruce Lee Versus Gay Power, this is not a film intended for viewers outside its native territory. Indeed, the copyright situation likely ensures any such release will never happen. But from a critical viewpoint, this does mute a lot of potential criticism, in particular for the middle section which, presumably, resonated much more with an eighties audience in Egypt. That said, this remains an odd endeavour. Why remake Rocky Horror, if you’re going to remove Rocky entirely, and end up with it being almost a traditional vampire story? To be honest though, in some ways I may have enjoyed this more. Anybody interested in starting up a shadow cast, to dress up and perform in front of this movie?
This review is part of our October 2023 feature, 31 Days of Vampires.