31 Days of Dracula- Day 31: Nosferatu Th Vampyre

The first movie I watched this month was Murnau's Nosferatu, and that's a good way to end the month, with the remake.

I've seen a lot of movies this month, but Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre practically left me speechless, even after previous viewings..

Herzog remade the Muranu movie in the late seventies and it still holds up wonderfully.

First, it's a beautiful film. Composition, lighting, sets, costumes, it's just a joy to look at. It's like the Merchant/Ivory horror film- seriously, even a die hard horror hater that lives to re-watch Room With a View could watch this movie and love it.

Secondly, the acting is superb. Klaus Kinski brings enough melancholy to the role that even with the make up you almost feel sorry for him. It is a little distracting... that sometimes... he sounds... like Peter Lorrie.

Bruno Ganz plays Harker. Watching this made me realize, I don't think I've ever really enjoyed a portrayal of Harker in the movies. He's just... there. He gets the plot moving then it's on to the back burner with him.

Isabelle Adjani, however, I think is probably one of the best Mina's I've seen- even if she's called Lucy in this production. Despite being fragile in the first part of the movie- to the degree that she faints when her husband returns home and doesn't recognize her- she finds her strength in defending her husband and city against Dracula.

And they do call him Dracula, officially, in this version, filmed long enough after Dracula had become public domain that Herzog avoided the problems of the earlier version.

Despite it being released in 1979, I didn't get around to watching it until a few years ago and I don't understand why I took so long to watch this. It's always been on my radar- my favorite reference is from John Skipp and Craig Spector's novel The Light at the End, where a vampire is preying upon New York City and a couple of movie fans realize what's happening during a showing of Nosferatu at a Times Square movie house.

Normally, I try not to include clips in my posts- it just seems like padding to me, but I want to share with you the movie gold that this thing is, so here's a clip- the ship bringing Dracula to Wismar, silently coming into port, piloted by a dead man:

 

 

31 Days of Dracula- Day 30: Waxwork

Some movies are distinctly products of their era.

Waxwork is a quintessentially eighties movie, almost a horror version of a John Hughes film.

Six college classmates are invited to a private showing at a waxworks and are transported into the tableaus. Among the scenarios are zombies, a werewolf, and Dracula's castle

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It's a light hearted horror movie and the Dracula portion is ghoulishly hilarious.

 

The girl, Chyna, experiencing the Dracula scene isn't particularly nice, so she gets what's coming to her. She get's dinner with Dracula and family, where she's served raw meat.

 

"I haven't had steak tartar in a long time," she tells him.

 

It turns out the meat is the fiancee of the girl she's supposed to be within the waxwork. He's restrained in the basement, as food for the vampires, parceled out a bit at a time, his left leg sliced off under the knee.

 

She dispatches several vampires but eventually falls victim to Dracula, played by Miles O'Keefe, previously seen in Tarzan with Bo Derek and Ator, the Blade Master.

It's a silly little movie that's a delightful tribute to classic horror- to the degree that the Mummy sequence has Swan Lake as the soundtrack, the same piece of music that that introduced the opening credits of Boris Karloff's The Mummy.

I hadn't seen this movie in over a decade, and it's just as much dumb fun now as it was back in '88, which isn't that big a surprise since the director, Anthony Hickox, was the son of Douglas Hickox, director of Vincent Price's Theatre of Blood.

31 Days of Dracula- Day 29: The Horror or Dracula

I had so many more movies I wanted to hit but all of a sudden, we've got three days to go before October is over.  It's always been a short month for me and this is been an especially short one.

But I knew I had to do a couple of Hammer movies before it was over, because hey, Christopher Lee.

In the UK, it was simply called Dracula.  In the United States, it was called The Horror of Dracula.

Either way, it was brilliant.

Unlike the Universal film, which was based on a stage play based on Bram Stoker's novel, Hammer went straight to the novel... and started cutting.

It's still the same basic story, Van Helsing, Mina, Harker, Dracula- this time it's in Technicolor.

Vivid, red, Technicolor.

And there's liberties- the entire story is set on the European continent; there's no voyage to England here. Relationships are different. Harker is engaged to Lucy, Lucy is Holmwood's sister, Mina is Holmwood's wife. Van Helsing is still Van Helsing and Dracula is still Dracula.

But what a Dracula this is. While Lugosi was Eurosuave, Christopher Lee's Dracula was upperclass-cruel-sexy- playing the Count ten times in his career.

31 Days of Dracula- Day 28: To Die For

Tonights movie was To Die For aka Bram Stoker's To Die For aka Dracula: The Love Story to Die For aka Dracula: The Love Story aka Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Love Story To Die For.

Yeah. You know a movie with this many titles has to be good.

Well, good-ish. Apparently it was on cable a lot in the early nineties- since I didn't have cable back them I missed didn't see it.

Vlad Tepes has come to LA in 1988 and needs a real estate agent to find him a home; Kate's a real estate agent in a crappy relationship. Of course she falls for the mysterious foreigner, and finds him a big ol' castle looking thing.

He gets a Renfield in Kate's roommate Cici, who's hired as Vlad's secretary. Cici falls for Vlad, Vlad falls for Kate. Cici and Kate's boyfriends play the calvary.

It's SO totally eighties. Big hair and shoulder pads- for everybody. And it's not just 80's - it's SoCal eighties, like something out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel.

Almost a post script- I didn't mention any of the actors by name, because, honestly, it was SoCal girl 1,2, and 3, broody guy, and SoCal Boyfriend 1 & 2. But looking at the IMDB listing I saw a name the stood out: Duane Jones. Ben from Night of the Living Dead. He plays a policeman in this, and he's pretty good. Not as amazing as his turn in Night, but still pretty good.

31 Days of Dracula- Day 27: Dracula (Spanish 1931)

Universal was very, very clever back in the day. They would save money by filming foreign language versions of their movies using the same sets and scripts. Probably the most famous of these is Dracula, starring Carlos Villarias as the Count.

I wasn't sure what to think the first time I saw this movie.

I'd seen the Lugosi version several times, so I was familiar with the sets and script, but this movie stands pretty well on its own merits.

Pablo Alvarez Rubio doesn't bring the same degree of pathos to Renfield as much as Dwight Frye does, but he's certainly crazier.

Lupita Tovar is Eva, the "Mina" for this production, is much sexier than Helen Chandler.

 

And Carlos Villarias. He reminds me slightly of Steve Carrell. Which makes him all the more menacing. He's kind of dashing as well. At least for me, he lacks the sense of otherness Lugosi as Dracula, speaking accented English, surrounded by native speakers, has, since Villarias is speaking Spanish to Spanish speakers.

Director George Melford was lucky enough to watch the daily footage of Tod Browning's Dracula and was able to use what suited him while changing things as well. He's got a much more dynamic use of camera than Browning.

Of course, my favorite thing about the movie is how the film faded into obscurity until David Skal's 1990 book Hollywood Gothic brought it back on to the cultural radar, Skal travelling to Cuba in 1989 to see the best print available. 1992 saw the movie show in revival in Hollywood.

In fact, when Skal revised Hollywood Gothic for a later edition, the chapter on the Spanish Dracula is considerably longer.

31 Days of Dracula- Day 26: Van Helsing

When I saw Van Helsing at the movie theater, I hated it.

It's good to know it's just as good on dvd.

It's a sort of tribute to the classic Universal Horror movies, directed by Stephen Sommers, the fellow who did The Mummy movies. It has Dracula, Frankenstein's Creature, The Wolfman, and the Hunchbacked assistant, like the classics House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula.

Of course, the House movies didn't have superninja Van Helsing with ubercool steampunk weapons played by Hugh Jackman.

Nor did they have Kate Beckinsdale, playing Transylvanian battle vixen Anna. (Van Helsing and Underworld seem to have made her action-chick, which is disconcerting for me since I learned to love her during multiple cinema viewings of The Last Days of Disco.)

But Richard Roxburgh has a heckuva time playing Count Dracula- playing it over the top, since he is an undead prince of darkness.

Frankenstein's Creature is probably the most sympathetic here than in many productions in recent memory- in fact the opening sequence of the birth of the Creature and the angry villagers at a burning windmill is the best part of the whole movie, filmed in black and white, the sets reminiscent of the James Whale Frankenstein movies for Universal.

There's a nice tip of the hat to serious horror fans with the town undertaker, with his top hat, scraggly and feral teeth, he's reminiscent of Lon Chaney Sr in London After Midnight.

I think my main problem with Van Helsing is that it's a summer blockbuster- lots of fight scenes and explosions and plot holes you can drive a tank through (how many nights of the full moon does this story have?). I think I'd have liked it if it were a little tighter a story that wasn't so caught up on the special effects.

31 Days of Dracula- Day 25: Dracula (1979)

Well, if I hadn't seen the Louis Jourdan version of Dracula, I'd declare Dracula (1979) what I'd imagine a BBC version of Dracula would be like.

It's pretty good. Since it's an actual theatrical release it had a budget for costumes, sets and most importantly, actors. Dracula in this instance is played by Frank Langella. He's a sexyDracula though his blown-dry hair, all stylish and seventies is a little distracting.

Of course you can't have a Dracula without a Van Helsing, played here by Sir Laurence Olivier. Olivier isn't quite the classic actor he used to be but it was a good paycheck for him.

This version was an adaptation of the stage play- the same stage play that influenced the Lugosi version- that was famous for the set design by Edward Gorey. Now in the era of CGI, I'd love to see someone do a video production of Dracula using those designs.

 They've been turned into a puppet theatre- this seems to be the best visuals I could find on youtube: