Sunday, August 30, 2015

Honourable mention: Dracbeth

The merging of vampires and Shakespeare is not an unknown concept though the results vary, ranging from the entertaining, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, to the not so entertaining, Hamlet the Vampire Slayer.

Tobias Beer as Macbeth
This short film, release date unknown, was directed by Kevin Jackson and reworked Macbeth into twenty minutes with Macbeth (Tobias Beer) and Lady Macbeth (Pamela Banks) both vampires. The dialogue is purely from the play, selected to work in to the scenes, and the costuming/props modern. If I mention first the positives and that is the use of soundtrack, which was inspired in places (especially Venus in Furs) and the photography is marvellous.

Pamela Banks as Lady Macbeth
The negatives are simply that the short nature of the film deters exposition and relies on knowledge of the play and, ultimately, the vampirism is unnecessary to the story (though the addition of fangs in anything could always said to be a bonus). I liked the way the witches became voodoo in nature, that worked nicely. As an experimental piece it works, as a story not so much in this form. At the time of writing this article there was no IMDb page.

1 comment:

Kuudere-Kun said...

I'd contemplated doing a version of Romeo and Juliet where the Capulets are Vampires and Romeo's family are Werewolves.