In the hands of a loveless vampire’s, our young doomed heroine Angelique is spellbound as she hears the story of a cold and cruel world. Angelique’s ears guard her vision and she can not distinguish a single sound that dares to pierce the overwhelming gothic atmosphere. In the depths off her reality, she is trapped tiptoeing in her head where strange rituals are performed against a horde of Satanism worshippers who go through the extremes to survive beyond the grave. While the world knows Brazilian filmmaker Larissa Anzoategui, we know her fierce talents are deeply rooted in authors such as Lord Byron and the Brazilian Álvareds De Azevedo.
Anzoategui’s pledge towards expressionist aesthetics gave birth to Anzoategui’s sophomore film, Astaroth. Larissa’s passion paired with the sole sponsorship of women gave birth to a film that reanimated places that once held the classic Euro-Horror works of Jean Rollin and Jess Franco. It is a passionate tribute, a shining example of what women can achieve together. To us, this is haunting.
Let us disintegrate this statement. It began with Angelique, played by Larissa Anzoategui, walking through the city and then, having seen (and tried to follow) a(n animated) crow, checks into a hotel.
The desk clerk is missing all we get is a cursor of a hand and a cloaked woman is seen working at a switchboard. Now, she seems to be part of the story, and she can feel that someone is trailing behind her, so she quickly gets into her room. Inside her room she has a set of visions that consist the bulk of the film and has a certain vampire theme to it (I will get to that. I promise).
Going back to explain how a tribute to Rollin and Franco can help in citation contextualizing influence is often problematic. It would be remiss to say Franco didn’t have influence because, when looking at the photography he presented, it is the best I have ever seen it is like nothing Franco made, at least nothing claimed as supremely Franco. In some way, this may have served as a tribute to Rollin, but if so, it failed at doing the essence of his work justice. Let’s be honest a line of inspiration can easily be drawn from Two Orphan Vampires, seeing visions in this like the orphans meeting the Outcast, devoid, of Rolin’s actual creativity and nuanced elevated sense of a story. Still, there is another film that comes to my mind.
This is where I start to get keener on the comparison which I know is risky because it is not homage paint, but the cinematically created Eurohorror is unlike the Edward D Wood Jr’s Orgy of the Dead, which made me raise an eyebrow stronger than usual. In many aspects, this comparison is unfair. Orgy was an exploitation film, with Criswell hamming it beyond the pale, this was an art film where mini stories were expressed with seriousness using expressions and sometimes dance.
Now, regarding the vampire segment, we have in the past observed a herbalist brewing a lethal potion which which she consumes after gazing at a heart locket that has her face alongside another woman’s. The scene then shifts to a vampire woman elegantly perched on a throne with another woman sitting on the floor beside her which turns out to be the woman from the locket. The vampire drinks her blood after she offered her neck. Slowly, their gaze transforms into a different realm. The herbalist enters, proffering her wrist, which the vampire bites and, with the herbalist’s aid, succumbs to her demise. As she falls, the herbalist also appears to die. The woman from the locket appears to bite off the head of the woman and claim the crown. Adding a surprise twist to it, she is shown to possess the throne and fangs.
It is an intricately designed story that omits the usage of dialogue. Other parts exhibit greater bloodshed and nudity at times (the vampire part is frugal in that). Primarily, they take themselves quite seriously save for a scenario with a witch who puts a cat into a cauldron and transforms herself into a cat woman with fur balls.
The purpose of not interpreting this as a review comes from the fact that this is rather a performance piece than a feature length narrative film and while not all art films are narratively constructed, this one seems so performance over narrative that it would be unjust to score it.
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