Two Draculas were shot on the same sets in 1930, one during the day and one at night, and somebody finally made a horror movie about it. That is Los Vampires, and it played Fantasia 2026 as a world premiere.
We are deep into festival season over here (exhausted, happy, running on very little sleep), and this is another double feature episode where Meaghan saw the films, and Arthur did not.
Are we exhausted? Yes. Are we having fun? Also, yes.
Arthur put it best: “It’s one of those dualities that you’re like, let’s go again.“
The Real Hollywood History Behind Los Vampires
Here is the piece of film history the movie is built on, and you might already know it. In 1930, Universal Studios was shooting Tod Browning’s Dracula with Bela Lugosi, the first Universal monster movie and the one everybody can picture whether or not they have watched it. Dubbing did not exist yet. So if a studio wanted a film to reach audiences in another language, it had to shoot the whole thing again with a different cast and crew who actually spoke that language.
The money-saving approach was to reuse the sets. Browning’s people worked during the day. At night, a Spanish-speaking cast and crew came in and shot essentially the same movie on the same soundstage, directed by George Melford, an American who did not speak Spanish (Universal did not care; it was their IP and the cast spoke it). That film became Drácula, starring Carlos Villarías, and here is where it gets good: the night crew watched the day’s dailies and fixed what wasn’t working. A lot of people now argue the Spanish version is the technically superior film.
We had a moment on mic about this.
That’s actually crazy. I want to watch it now because I haven’t seen it.
Yeah. That is the reaction. A movie being that much better made us want to watch it immediately.
What Craig Mitchell Does With the Story
Los Vampires is written and directed by Craig Mitchell, and it is a fictionalized account of that night shoot. The names have been respectfully altered, so the film within the film has a different title, the characters have different names, and the director figure is not called George Melford. Henry Ian Cusick plays Luis de Ossario, the celebrated Spanish actor hired to play the Count (called Count Vlad here). Thomas Kretschmann plays Kürt Orlov, the Lugosi stand-in who owns the daytime version of the role.
The two of them are not supposed to overlap, since one works days and one works nights, but they cross paths in the dailies room during those transitional hours. Orlov watches the footage. Ossario watches Orlov. The dialogue between them is tense in the best way, and it builds into a full-blown rivalry, because Ossario has decades of stage and screen instinct and is being told to copy another man’s choices, shot for shot.
Then Mitchell adds the other layer. There is a supernatural mystery unfolding on the soundstage at the same time as the shoot, and bodies start turning up. We are keeping this spoiler-free, which was a whole negotiation in the recording.
Well, is it a creature? Is it like a haunting?
Nope. “I’m not doing this.” You are welcome, everyone, and do not listen to him with his spoilers.
What we can tell you is that the film goes somewhere we did not see coming. We walked in expecting a straightforward fictionalized making-of, and it takes a genuinely funky turn.
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Henry Ian Cusick Leads a Cast That Sells Every Minute
The cast is phenomenal, top to bottom, and Cusick is the anchor. If the name does not land for you right away, he has been working in television for a very long time. He played Desmond Hume on Lost, which earned him a Primetime Emmy nomination, and then Marcus Kane on The 100. Show most people a picture, and the recognition kicks in fast.
He is a Peruvian-Scottish actor, born in Trujillo, Peru, to a Peruvian mother and a Scottish father, and he is fluent in English and Spanish, which matters a lot in a movie that lives in both. He also suits the period cold. Handsome, well spoken, and debonair in a way that fits 1930 Hollywood perfectly.
Daniela Couso is wonderful as Vianca Segura, the young actress cast in the film’s Mina role, which puts her in the position Lupita Tovar occupied in real life. Quick fact we could not leave out: Tovar had a long list of credits and only passed away in 2016, at the age of 106. That is a life. Oscar Nuñez, who most of you know as Oscar from The Office, plays Gaspar Lazano, the actor playing the Renfield figure, and he becomes Ossario’s helper as the two of them start pulling at the mystery. He brings real charm to it without ever turning into a gag. Jefferson Mays and Jorge Diaz round out the company.
The 1930s Sets, Costumes, and the English-Spanish Dialogue
The visuals are so much fun. Everything is period, so the costumes and the recreated Dracula sets carry a huge amount of the atmosphere, and Fantasia was not exaggerating about the detail. The entire film takes place on and around that soundstage: the set itself, the backstage areas, the dressing rooms. There are some pretty great effects in it too.
The use of language is one of our favourite things here. The dialogue moves back and forth between English and Spanish across the whole 105 minutes, and it never feels like a gimmick. It feels organic, the way a bilingual workplace actually sounds, and it does quiet work in showing you exactly where the power sits in that studio.
Where Los Vampires Drags a Little
Because it is one location, the film almost plays as a stage play, and you could adapt it into one without much effort. That works for us. It might not work for everybody, and it comes with a cost. The movie is long enough that it starts to repeat some of its ideas in the back half, and some stretches get long-winded and could have been shaved down. The staginess that makes the first hour feel so contained is the same quality that makes the later stretches feel like they are circling.
Complaint registered. It did not sink the film for us, not even close.
The Score, and When You Can Actually Watch It
Meaghan is sitting at an 8/10 digs. The pacing issues are real, but the cast is so good, the effects deliver, the period detail is immersive, and the whole thing is just fun. That is a high mark for us, and it is earned.
The catch is availability. Los Vampires had its world premiere at Fantasia, and there is no confirmed wider release date yet. A release is expected, but nothing is locked. We would love to see this one get out to a real audience, because it deserves more eyes than a festival run can give it.
If you are building a watch order, we would go Drácula (1931) first, then Browning’s Dracula, then Los Vampires last, since Mitchell’s film is inspired by that shoot rather than documenting it. There was, sadly, no supernatural mystery on either soundstage in real life.