
Batman Dracula (unseen footage of unfinished film). 1964. USA. Directed by Andy Warhol. DCP. Silent. 80 min.
“For Warhol, the Silver Factory on East 47th Street had become his own private Hollywood when he made his most ambitious film project, Batman Dracula, with his potentially greatest superstar, Jack Smith, in the titular double role. It was rumored that Warhol had devoted seven hours of film stock to it, all of it silent, all shot with a 16mm Bolex that exposed less than three minutes of film at a time. The rumors around Batman Dracula were so hyper-aggrandizing that Warhol may have felt they were more interesting than the film itself. Or it might have been that when he transitioned to sync sound cameras, he fell in love with the talkies, as Hollywood did some 45 years before. But for anyone who has been thrilled by Warhol’s silent cinema, the possibility of viewing at least a part of Batman Dracula inspires the kind of dread and desire altogether appropriate to the supernatural horror implicit in the title” (Amy Taubin).