"Upír z Feratu" is not really directly translatable to English, since the upiór/upír/upyr creature did not exist in Anglo-Saxon folk tales and mythologies; the closest would be something akin to "phantom", albeit more physical. However, it is usually translated as "vampire", and that was the title under which this film was distributed outside Czechoslovakia - "The Vampire of Ferat", "The Ferat Vampire", etc.
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The titular vampire is a car - a black-and-red racing machine that seems to be able to beat any other car on the road; naturally, its secret is that instead of gasoline, it feeds on the driver's blood, with predictable effects on his (hers, for most of the film) life.
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It was filmed before "Christine", and, yes, the title is a deliberate reference to "Nosferatu".
Unlike the much-later British D-rate horror-comedy about a vampire motorcycle, this one is more serious, in parts even grim, with the occasional surreal, dreamy (or nightmarish) atmosphere... and, as one would probably expect, some cardboard special effects.
Interestingly, the vampiric car was an actual prototype of a racing Škoda, which was never manufactured - Škoda 110 Super Sport. Amusingly, it was originally white and looked rather like a typical English Lotus of the 70s:
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And then, for the purpose of the film, it was redone as a rather devilish, sharper, black-and-red version.
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And that's the way it remained, although the black prototype was the last of its kind - it never saw the inside of a car factory again.
The film is now on YouTube, translated to English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdIvO5nMkdI
I remember seeing it at age 5 or 6; I found it scary and mysterious then, because I thought that, like my beloved Lovecraft, it was undersaid and deliberately underexplained, leaving most of the details to my imagination.
Watching it after decades, as an adult, I see that it was just chaotically written![:D]()
- but it is still charming in its own slightly silly way.
![]()
The titular vampire is a car - a black-and-red racing machine that seems to be able to beat any other car on the road; naturally, its secret is that instead of gasoline, it feeds on the driver's blood, with predictable effects on his (hers, for most of the film) life.
It was filmed before "Christine", and, yes, the title is a deliberate reference to "Nosferatu".
Unlike the much-later British D-rate horror-comedy about a vampire motorcycle, this one is more serious, in parts even grim, with the occasional surreal, dreamy (or nightmarish) atmosphere... and, as one would probably expect, some cardboard special effects.
Interestingly, the vampiric car was an actual prototype of a racing Škoda, which was never manufactured - Škoda 110 Super Sport. Amusingly, it was originally white and looked rather like a typical English Lotus of the 70s:
And then, for the purpose of the film, it was redone as a rather devilish, sharper, black-and-red version.
And that's the way it remained, although the black prototype was the last of its kind - it never saw the inside of a car factory again.
The film is now on YouTube, translated to English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdIvO5nMkdI
I remember seeing it at age 5 or 6; I found it scary and mysterious then, because I thought that, like my beloved Lovecraft, it was undersaid and deliberately underexplained, leaving most of the details to my imagination.
Watching it after decades, as an adult, I see that it was just chaotically written
- but it is still charming in its own slightly silly way.statistics: Posted by JerryKing — 4:29 PM - Today — Replies 1 — Views 98