Well hello there movie lovers! It’s Slick Dungeon here and I am back to review yet another Oscar nominated film from 2023. I’m talking about the film that answers the age old question of what if a Chilean dictator was actually a vampire? And what if that film was shot beautifully? Then I must be talking about the seriously odd film, El Conde. This one is a bit of a weird ride so if you haven’t seen the film yet, fly on over to see the movie and come back here to read the review.

What’s it About?

The film starts out with a voice over telling us the story of a French soldier named Claude Pinochet. This dude is a vampire and he is found out. Mobs do what they do and try to kill him but he survives. He takes on a new identity and watches the French Revolution happen. From this point forward, Claude vows to suppress any destructive revolution he can in the world.

We then fast forward to 1935 where Claude joins the Chilean army and changes his name to Augusto Pinochet. If that name sounds familiar, that is because Augusto Pinochet was the real life dictator who overthrew the socialist government of Salvador Allende in 1973. Turns out he was a vampire. In this movie both metaphorically and literally. He demands his family refer to him as “Count” and he decides to fake his own death after years of ruling Chile with an iron fist.

He moves to a remote farm with the rest of his family and starts to lose interest in life. But his family also knows they are owed an inheritance out of Pinochet’s ill gotten gains. The only problems are that Pinochet is practically immortal and he has forgotten where he hid all his treasure.

One night someone starts killing people in the town of Santiago and consuming their hearts. Augusto’s family assumes this is him, deciding to extend his immortal life even further. But, in reality this is Fyodor, a white Russian who has worked for Pinochet for years and is the only person Augusto has turned into a vampire. The family is unaware of Fyodor’s part in the murders but they know their inheritance is at risk.

This is where a nun named Carmen comes in. She is hired to find out what happened to the money and to destroy Augusto Pinochet once and for all. She uses her charms to get information out of the family about all of their terrible secrets and tries to exorcise Pinochet. But Pinochet is too strong and seduces Carmen, allowing him to turn her into a vampire.

This prompts the narrator to reveal who she is and take action. It turns out the narrator is the mother of Augusto Pinochet and Margaret Thatcher. (checks notes) Yep, that Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher comes to reveal the truth to Pinochet who she is and demands that he kills Carmen. But it turns out becoming a vampire was all part of Carmen’s plan to expose the corruption of the Pinochet family.

Fyodor is having none of that and he captures Carmen and burns up the extensive documentation she has of the crimes of the Pinochet family. Then, Fyodor and Augusto’s wife, Lucia try to kill Augusto. But he’s been a vampire for longer and he is able to kill both Lucia and Fyodor.

Margaret and Augusto flee and the family is left to face a group of nuns looking for anything they can find. Augusto decides to remain in the country and wait to find more leftists to destroy.

All in all, the film has a bit of magic realism to it with a bit of an insane plot. But it’s well acted and comes together well enough.

The Cinematography

Whether you like the plot or not, the film is not up for best screenplay or picture, it is up for best cinematography. This is a category that can often be confused with directing. Basically, cinematography is the totality of how a film looks. Everything you see on screen, from the lighting, to the angle of the camera, to the focus and the camera movement falls into the category of cinematography. As an audience, it’s one of those things where you might be hard pressed to explain it but you know it when you see it.

El Conde is shot in a black and white style, reminiscent of the old Universal monster movies like Dracula or Frankenstein. I’m always a sucker for a film brave enough to choose black and white and look like a monster movie. But it also plays with this trope by letting the vampires in question look like pudgy old men who don’t seen so threatening when you take a close up look at their wrinkled faces. And the story also interplays with this style by having the characters be people who we know did real and terrible things in our own reality. Just because someone looks like a pudgy old man does not mean he is not capable of great cruelty if he has access to power.

The visuals from the film stay with you long after you have seen it, which is another good sign of great cinematography. There is no doubt this film looks great and is well made. A great example of the showcasing of the cinematography is when the family is at dinner and we are able to see all the schemings and machinations of the family members. Add in scenes where vampires are flying over the city in sweeping camera motions to frame the dictator as something dangerous and above us.

The soundtrack also works well here, using mostly classical sounds to reinforce the idea of this being something like, but not quite, a true monster movie.

As far as whether or not this will win, it is at this point hard for me to say. Out of all the films in this category I have so far only seen El Conde and Oppenheimer but I hear great things about the cinematography in Poor Things and Killers of the Flower Moon so I think this will be a category with some tough competition.

In Conclusion

The acting is good in the film, the directing is competent but the cinematography is actually outstanding whether or not El Conde wins in the category. As far as a film experience, this movie won’t be for everyone. You have to be comfortable with a bit of dark humor, a bit of magic realism, an amount of gore and a pretty over the top plot to enjoy it. But it will be one of the most unique films you see this year if you watch it.

Vampirically yours,

Slick Dungeon