“Vampir Cuadecuc” is a ghostly film as well as the ghost of a film and perhaps the ghost of cinema itself.

Made in 1970 by the Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella, “Vampir Cuadecuc” is among the most highly regarded avant-garde films of the past half century and has also been among the hardest to find. It is now available on disc from the British company Second Run Features in a zone-free format compatible with most DVD players and computers.

“Vampir Cuadecuc” was filmed on the set during the production of the Spanish director Jess Franco’s “El Conde Dracula” (“Count Dracula”), a relatively modest vehicle for the redoubtable onscreen bloodsucker Christopher Lee. It could be variously characterized as a wildly impressionistic production documentary, a deranged remake of F. W. Murnau’s silent classic “Nosferatu,” or an eccentric assemblage of outtakes. (According to the DVD notes by Stanley Schtinter, the word “cua de cuc” is Catalan for “worm’s tail” and also refers to the bit of unexposed film stock at the end of a roll.)

Using a hand-held 16-millimeter camera and high-contrast black-and-white film stock, Mr. Portabella filmed central scenes from the Franco movie as though he were spying on its making. Amid the mysterious comings and goings, which include much kinetic rushing through the woods, the Portabella film emphasizes details like the crude bat puppets fluttering outside the window of a woman soon to receive Count Dracula’s attentions. Ambient sound is almost entirely suppressed in favor of a musique concrète score by the Catalan multimedia artist Carles Santos in which rolling thunder and tolling bells are interspersed with passages of incongruously languorous lounge music.