‘The Bloody Lady’ interprets the Dracula tale through animation

Adapting the Čachtická castle and Báthory folk tale, often cited as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Slovak animator Viktor Kubal’s 1981 classic “The Bloody Lady” benefits from the Slovak Film Institute’s 2K restoration, along with four of Kubal’s animated shorts: “Cinema,” “The Ladder,” “The Idol,” and “The Microscope.” Each communicates Kubal’s sly, humorous take on the human condition.

In his feature “The Bloody Lady,” Kubal shifts from what at first unfolds as a lovely, Disneyesque children’s story to gothic horror. Presented through two-dimensional, hand drawn animation with complementary old-fashioned music, charming events segue to vampiric victimization. This occurs after Lady Elisabeth Báthory visits the nearby forest, her playful animal coterie along and fawning. After an illness seizes Elisabeth, a kind woodsman nurses her back to health. In appreciation, she literally gives him her heart, a gift that entails disastrous consequences, as related here and in other chilling versions. Kubal eccentrically presents his unique, layered interpretation in cheerful, cartoonish manner suffused with gruesome moments.

Also on the program, his short “Cinema” (1977) watches audiences embrace or leave a gamut of films, comedies and westerns, horror and erotica, celebrated as emancipation for a nude male body. True to his farcical approach, Kubal sends his male audience out the side door with a kick in the rear. As ingenious and satirical, “The Ladder” (1978) watches one ambitious man crawl over and jettison everyone above him, indifferent to their tragedies in his egotistical scramble to the top. 

A bit lighter, in “The Microscope” (1981) sperm and egg unite under the leering gaze of a scientist. Back on serious turf in “The Idol” (1989), a submissive, conformist citizen bows repeatedly to a representative symbol of a despotic regime, until he doesn’t. With a new 2K restoration, all in Slovak with English subtitles, “The Bloody Lady” and four shorts (“Cinema,” “The Ladder,” “The Microscope,” and “The Idol”) screen at Webster University’s Winifred Moore auditorium Friday, October 11, through Sunday, October 13, at 7:00 each of those evenings. For more information, you may visit the film series website.