Drácula with Live Guitar Score with Gary Lucas

Unknown to most film-goers—even die-hard horror and fantasy cinema buffs—a second, alternate, and many would hold, superior version of “Dracula”(1931, d. George Melford and Enrique Tovar) was being filmed at night on the same sets and sound stages as the famous Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi “Dracula”, with virtually the same script—but with a Spanish-speaking cast, in a Spanish-language production aimed at the burgeoning Latin market.

The resulting film contains markedly more fluid camera-work and editing and more atmospheric use of lighting than the original “Dracula”—and boasts over-the-top, sexier—and dare we say, more full-blooded—performances from a cast including the great Mexican actress Lupita Tovar and Spanish born actor Carlos Villarias.

In the fall of 2009, legendary guitarist GARY LUCAS (Captain Beefheart, Jeff Buckley) turned his creative energies towards composing a new solo guitar score for the infamous Spanish-language “Dracula”. The film, like the original “Dracula”, contains virtually no music beyond the opening and closing titles—Gary’s original guitar music flows throughout continuously, underscoring the spoken Spanish dialogue sequences as well as the long expressive shots that contain only sound effects in the film. He debuted his new live score accompanying the film at the Havana Film Festival, and went on to accompany the film at the New York Film Festival, the Sevilla Film Festival, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Transylvania Film Festival, and many other venues and theaters around the world.

As a special Halloween treat, on Sat. Oct. 29th the Roxy Cinema is excited to present Gary Lucas performing his original solo guitar score live accompanying Spanish “Dracula” at 7:30pm.

With English subtitles.

For more info check out Gary Lucas’s Spanish “Dracula” page at http://garylucas.com/www/dracula/dracula.shtml