Though hyped as a "horror" item, Ivan Zulueta's feature (one of only two full-length projects completed by the late Spanish graphic artist and cinematic experimenter) is very much an underground/art-house surreal psychodrama, appreciated by a small specialty audience. Wonder what Stan Brakhage or Hollis Frampton would have done if they wandered into The Twilight Zone with LGBTQ aspects? Here it is.
Madrid movie director José (Eusebio Poncela) weathers post-production blues doing retro-gothic horror stuff (Wolf Men is the latest) via drugs and sex marathons, typically with problematic on-off actress-girlfriend Ana (Cecilia Roth, later to become known to international audiences via Pedro Almodovar films; Almodovar did an uncredited voiceover here).
José receives a package of Super 8mm film and audio tapes from someone he barely knew (but slept with anyhow), experimental filmmaker Pedro (Will More), an intense, bisexual avant-garde character fascinated with the time-lapse imagery he captures by attaching an interval timer to a high-end Canon Super 8 camera, Pedro describes trying to live a life of pure cinema, often using himself as a subject in non-narrative reels. But he notices a strange spread of red frames beginning to take over the spools of developed celluloid.
As José watches more of the uncanny films, he himself starts to be drawn into Pedro's obsession. Commentators have interpreted the result as either a modern spin on vampirism (Count Canon-ula, anyone?) or a metaphor of passionate artistic creation - filmmaking especially - as a literally all-consuming addiction (though the heroin binges help). A final shot that seems to reference the fallen Francisco Franco fascist dictatorship in Spain no doubt pleased the politically minded on the international festival circuit in its era but fails to gel with the rest of the material.
There is graphic nudity (male and female) and up-close drug use, but the overall effect is more puzzling than sensationalized. The matter-of-fact homosexuality is quite ahead of its time. Pan-Hispanic international film completists and queer-cinema library shelves are the ideal destinations for this 4K restoration. Despite the elusive themes, The Rapture does nostalgically recall peak years of Super 8mm filmmaking, with its odd gadgets and boutique shops filled with Kodak cartridges, far better than J.J. Abrams' megabucks sci-fi juvenilia Super 8 (2011) ever did. Optional choice for public libraries.