Runtime:
100 minutes
Directed
by: Mohammed Shebl
Starring:
Ali El Haggar, Mona Gabr, Ahmed Adaweyah, Hassan Al Imam, Talat Zein
From:
Heck if I know
One thing I did not mention in my review of this bizarre curio: there are vampires who wear Ziggy Stardust-esque makeup! This phrase does not sound as strange in context:
Would you believe this is an Egyptian version of The Rocky Horror
Picture Show, except that the villains are vampires... and there is a
DISCO soundtrack? I swear, this is not a fib. I've known of this film
for awhile now and all that time it's been available for viewing on
archive.org; about time I finally sat down and watched this. Turns out,
it was not a painful sit or insufferable, but there is a bizarre
stretch...
The general idea is the same: the movie's version of Brad and Janet (known here as Ali and Mona) are a young couple who break down in the middle of nowhere and end up in a mansion which is full of vampires-and also a hunchback-and the head of the clan is... Dracula! No, he is not a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania, as at least in the early 80's Egypt had stringent censorship laws so that couldn't be done. Still, he fancies Mona and he gives her sex looks; I will presume that Drac is at least not overtly queer as he still has DISCO PARTIES nightly in his home and lives with his minions, so in my canon he swings both ways.
There is a rather odd turn where for twenty minutes (!) the Fangs version of The Criminologist explains to Dracula that there are bloodsuckers in Egypt, and they are those filthy capitalists that rip off the common folk. This is demonstrated in various sketches with the three leads where they play different characters and they show that there are a-hole doctors, plumbers, taxi cab drivers, and others that gouge poor people of their money and they are the true vampires; I am not making any of this up. I am not sure why all that time was spent flogging this point until it becomes a dead horse but at least it demonstrates that apparently Egypt was a crappy place to live in back then.
Plus, I was amused by the musical covers during that section. Most of the soundtrack is either some well-known classical music or a disco score that was catchy. The songs that are sung in this horror musical are not bad nor is the staging of them. Then there are the covers of such tunes as the James Bond Theme and the themes to the like of The Pink Panther, Jaws, For a Few Dollars More, A Clockwork Orange and for some reason, The Munsters! Again, I cannot explain why this was done.
Director Mohammed Shebl obviously must also have been a fan of Hammer horror as he tries to add atmosphere with plenty of fog that is in the mansion itself. I realized quickly that he loved RHPS with how he recreated it here with the limitations of budget and the country he lived in; hell, at one point a vampire puts on a RHPS t-shirt. There are visual flourishes throughout and some funny sight-gags; the 1960's Batman TV show was another obvious inspiration.
Director Shebl passed away in late '96 so he did not live to see this unexpectedly receive some notoriety in the West these past few years, to the point that it played last year at Fantastic Fest. I wonder what he would have thought of that twist. I am glad it is easy for something so odd to be tracked down and watched by anyone who is genuinely curious about such a thing as Egyptian Rocky Horror.
The general idea is the same: the movie's version of Brad and Janet (known here as Ali and Mona) are a young couple who break down in the middle of nowhere and end up in a mansion which is full of vampires-and also a hunchback-and the head of the clan is... Dracula! No, he is not a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania, as at least in the early 80's Egypt had stringent censorship laws so that couldn't be done. Still, he fancies Mona and he gives her sex looks; I will presume that Drac is at least not overtly queer as he still has DISCO PARTIES nightly in his home and lives with his minions, so in my canon he swings both ways.
There is a rather odd turn where for twenty minutes (!) the Fangs version of The Criminologist explains to Dracula that there are bloodsuckers in Egypt, and they are those filthy capitalists that rip off the common folk. This is demonstrated in various sketches with the three leads where they play different characters and they show that there are a-hole doctors, plumbers, taxi cab drivers, and others that gouge poor people of their money and they are the true vampires; I am not making any of this up. I am not sure why all that time was spent flogging this point until it becomes a dead horse but at least it demonstrates that apparently Egypt was a crappy place to live in back then.
Plus, I was amused by the musical covers during that section. Most of the soundtrack is either some well-known classical music or a disco score that was catchy. The songs that are sung in this horror musical are not bad nor is the staging of them. Then there are the covers of such tunes as the James Bond Theme and the themes to the like of The Pink Panther, Jaws, For a Few Dollars More, A Clockwork Orange and for some reason, The Munsters! Again, I cannot explain why this was done.
Director Mohammed Shebl obviously must also have been a fan of Hammer horror as he tries to add atmosphere with plenty of fog that is in the mansion itself. I realized quickly that he loved RHPS with how he recreated it here with the limitations of budget and the country he lived in; hell, at one point a vampire puts on a RHPS t-shirt. There are visual flourishes throughout and some funny sight-gags; the 1960's Batman TV show was another obvious inspiration.
Director Shebl passed away in late '96 so he did not live to see this unexpectedly receive some notoriety in the West these past few years, to the point that it played last year at Fantastic Fest. I wonder what he would have thought of that twist. I am glad it is easy for something so odd to be tracked down and watched by anyone who is genuinely curious about such a thing as Egyptian Rocky Horror.
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