VAMPIRES EN HABANA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: The watchable Cuban feature-cartoon was made for the international market. It is pure fluff with no more political comment than MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT, which it occasionally resembles.
After a short history of vampirism and the discovery of a drug to protect vampires from the sunlight that irritates their skin and reduces them to a pile of ashes, the scene is Havana in 1933. Professor Von Dracula and his nephew Joseph Amadeus have become the focus of a war between a Chicago-based gang of vampires and another gang from Dusseldorf. One gang wants to control the "Vampisol" drug; the other wants to open beaches protected from the sun and will be put out of business if Vampisol protects vampires from sunlight.
VAMPIRES EN HABANA (VAMPIRES IN HAVANA) is a 80-minute cartoon from Cuba that lampoons vampire movies, gangster movies, Cuban entertainment, James Bond films, Cuban history, and anything else within reach. In many ways it resembles Japan's "Lupin III" cartoons with a little more humor and a little less logic to the action. In it we discover that vampirism is a wide-spread sub-culture with its own radio stations, its own version of the Mafia--the Capa Nostra--its own mad scientists, and its own set of problems. There are many kinds of vampire--one always appears in a bubble, like Glinda the Good Witch--but Joseph Amadeus is a new kind. Thanks to a monthly quaff of Vampisol, he has so few symptoms of vampirism that he has grown up never knowing that he is a vampire.
The pace of VAMPIRES EN HABANA is breakneck, but the animation is rather poor. The artwork is unexceptional and includes racial stereotypes that we reactionary capitalist lackeys would never dare to put into a film. It is enjoyable but not very deep. Writer-director Juan Padron makes his film almost devoid of political comment or any other kind of comment. Rate it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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