Nosferatu

Christmas is as much a time for ghost stories as Halloween with Gremlins and Krampus creating chaos in the shadow of Santa Claus. Not to be outdone. Nosferatu wants in on the festive fun, too.

Nick Smith, our US-based veteran vampire hunter, seeks out a ravishing remake of Nosferatu originally inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Guest post by Nick Smith

For those of us who feel an affinity to darkness…

For those of us who lose our senses when the world becomes too much…

For those of us who feel ignored or misunderstood…

For those of us who give too much to someone else with evil in return…

This is our story.

Director Robert Eggers’ greatest gift is to place his audience in a different, believable world. He did it in 2015’s The VVitch, where we were transported to New England in the 1630s, a land of isolation, superstition, creepy goats and short lifespans. In The Lighthouse, two 19th century men went bonkers in black and white. And in The Northman, the adventures of Amleth the Viking are dark, nasty, brutish and weird, set against an authentic 10th century backdrop. Eggers knows the devil is in the details.

In Nosferatu, those details include asylum accessories; authentic Christmas tree ornaments, as used to decorate the homes of Germans in the 1830s; and symbols on the documents of Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), who sends his employee Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult – young Beast in the X-Men movies) to Transylvania.

Unfortunately for Thomas, Knock is a Renfield-like agent of Count Orlok, a vampire who covets Thomas’ wife, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Johnny and Vanessa Paradis). Orlok’s spirit has been driving Ellen around the bend, and only Thomas’ love can save her sanity… or is she stronger than she thinks?

Nosferatu oozes with atmosphere.

Eggers has spent ten years preparing this film, feeding on a fascination that he’s harboured longer still. At times he doubted his ability to do justice to the original, F. W. Murnau’s 1922 knock-off of Dracula. He need not have worried. His attention to the trappings of pre-industrial Germany, his affinity for Hammer films, and his $50 million budget all help to make this movie a memorable experience.

At times, so much colour is sucked from the film that it seems almost monochrome, like its inspiration; at others, the screams and sloughing skin are nightmarishly real.

Fortunately, Willem Dafoe is present as the Van Helsing-like Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz. Dafoe reminds us that he is a top-tier actor, responding to his grand guignol surroundings with just the right amount of passion and panache. He helps to keep the movie flowing; when he is not around, particularly in the first act, Nosferatu drags like a bloated corpse, expanding its 80-minute source movie to over two hours. There’s an awful lot of talk, too, considering it’s based on a silent movie!

If you are willing to ignore the critics who pick at these faults like toothless rats, there’s plenty to savour in Nosferatu: Romance, tragedy, obsession, the corruption of disease, the decay of death, and the fear of the unknown that helped to make Dracula so popular in the first place.

Have you seen Nosferatu? Let me know in the comments below.

Nick Smith's new audiobook, Undead on Arrival, is available from Amazon (affiliate link).

Bram Stoker’s Dracula at 30

30 years ago, I was fixated on Bram Stoker's Dracula during the holiday season of 1992.

Wojciech Kilar's soundtrack CD played on repeat as I wrote and illustrated in earnest, trying to numb the knowledge of finishing college and succumbing to imposter syndrome as the prospect of university weighed heavily on my mind.

Winona Ryder (Stranger Things) was my latest silver screen crush and I couldn't wait to immerse myself in director Francis Ford Coppola's (The Godfather) tragic tale of doomed love.

Those gothic sensibilities would form the foundation of my friendship with Nick Smith when we first met the following year at Bournemouth University. So, it only seems appropriate that Nick, our US-based stellar scribe, examines the vampiric heart of darkness in Bram Stoker's Dracula...

Guest post by Nick Smith

Never underestimate the influence of Tim Burton.

After his dark magical realism filled Warner Bros’ coffers with Batman in 1989, tenebrous fairy tales and film noir were in: Darkman, The Addams Family and Dick Tracy all sought the same audience as Burton’s stylized comic book hit. The formula worked; in a new decade, moviegoers were ready for Gothic frills and thrills after the brash 1980s.

Literal – if not literate – as ever, Hollywood was willing to bankroll a Gothic classic, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 30 years after its release, the movie holds up both as a frightfully big adventure and an elegiac romance.

Fresh off another girl-meets-monster smash, Edward Scissorhands, Winona Ryder brought the Dracula script to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola. He adapted it with grand Guignol glee, glorying in multiple homages to iconic film sequences. Like a vampire who did like wine (his own house label), he syphoned imagery from other films and hypnotized us with the spell of cinema.

Look closely and you’ll see bits from Todd Browning’s Dracula (‘the children of the night’ speech, for example); FW Murnau’s expressionistic Nosferatu (especially the outré use of shadows cast by Dracula); The Exorcist (Van Helsing standing in front of a fog-bound house; a vampire projectile-vomiting onto the hunter); Coppola’s own Godfather (religious ritual intercut with murder); and Hammer films (cue dramatic music!).

Imitations notwithstanding, the lush visuals are delightfully sanguine, the costumes are lavish and the sets positively operatic. The impressive cast includes Gary Oldman as Dracula, Ryder as the love of his unlife, Mina, and Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, supported by Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, Monica Bellucci and, er, Keanu Reeves.

Befitting the owner of American Zoetrope, Coppola riffs on motion picture technology and techniques circa 1897, when the bulk of this story is set: light shows, shadow play, phonograph recordings, iris transitions, peep shows and a nod to the Lumiere Brothers’ Train Pulling into a Station.

Legend has it that when the Lumieres’ early silent film was shown, the audience fled the theatre thinking a real train was heading toward them. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a wolf escapes from the zoo and sends people packing. Coppola compares a filmic rumour with a literary myth; by taming the wolf, Dracula indicates that he commands the mystery of film – just like the director.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula cost $40 million to make - a whopping sum back in 1992 - and grossed almost $216 million at the box office. It helped drag the Count out of his Sesame Street doldrums into the late 20th Century, setting the stage for more classic monster revivals, including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Wolfman.

Playing like a dark dream, the film works best today as a celebration of the epistolary source novel, classic Hollywood and practical makeup effects. The romance between Dracula and his reincarnated partner is splendidly intense; Mina must choose between the exotic bad boy Count and the waiflike Jonathan Harker. The choice is not easy for her, especially after Dracula points out that he has ‘crossed oceans of time’ for her.

No pressure.

This was the last big movie for Francis Ford Coppola, the godfather of modern populist cinema. Pulling out all the stops, he ends with a bloody bang. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a landmark love song for a vampire and a long, extravagant love note to the intense emotions movies can evoke.

Have you seen Bram Stoker's Dracula? What did you think? How does it compare with other adaptations? Let me know in the comments below.