Category: Vampires

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Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

This is a review of Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979), directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani. I rewatched this movie to see how it compared to the newest version of Nosferatu, now in theaters, but that’s another post. The plot: Jonathan Harker leaves his wife Lucy, traveling from Wismar, Germany to Transylvania to consummate a real estate deal with an eccentric count. Beforehand, he stops at the local inn, where in time-honored fashion the locals beseech him not to go.                

Spoiler: Harker goes. He walks to Borgo Pass, where a buggy with black horses takes him to the castle, which is a ruin. He’s met by Count Dracula himself, played by noted thespian and homicidal maniac Klaus Kinksi. Mr. Kinski is grotesque. He can pass for human – barely. His features are rodentlike, including a pair of jutting incisors. It’s a wonderful makeup job. The good Count only appears at night, speaks in a low voice, and seems depressed. Who wouldn’t be depressed, living in a shitty old castle for hundreds of years?                

After signing the contract, Dracula leaves Harker behind and travels to Wismar by ship, bringing rats, stormy weather, and the plague. Harker manages to escape, but part of him dies on the journey home. When he exits Dracula’s castle he is still human, but he loses his humanity on the journey back. The man is gone, replaced by something else.                

Dracula arrives in Wismar. The plague hits. The action shifts from Harker to his wife, Lucy. Dracula wants Lucy, but gives her agency. By agency, I mean he doesn’t just take her when she rejects him. The choice is hers. This is one of the more interesting parts of the movie. Does Dracula leave her be because of an obscure vampire rule? He has taken hundreds of men, women, and children against their will. What makes Lucy different? I will be honest with you, reader. I have no idea.

The plague worsens. The Count’s coming brings death and mayhem, and he can’t even bring himself to care. He’s dead, after all. The living do care. There is a scene towards the end, when Lucy walks amongst the revelers celebrating their last supper after the plague has ravaged the city. You can tell what she’s thinking: this can’t go on. Will goodness triumph, or will darkness cover all? Since this is a Werner Herzog movie, who knows?

Nosferatu might not move quickly enough for people, especially horror fans. It’s slow and brooding. The scenery is wonderful, lots of forests, canals, mountains, and old, decrepit castles. This is a monster movie that seems real. It has focus, and part of that is because of the level of detail. People have argued that the scenes inside Dracula’s castle are dreamlike, but I disagree. When Harker awakens after his night with the count, he finds the breakfast table crowded with food, including an unplucked chicken.

The problem is that reality is awful. Nobody knows this more than the Count, who I would argue is looking for an excuse to die. By not taking Lucy, he gives her the means to end his existence – if she has the belly for it. Spoiler: she does.

Recommended!

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Dracula

Dracula!

This is a review of Dracula, by Bram Stoker. First things first: by today’s standards, this is not a scary book. Dracula is an epistolary novel, which means it’s written in the form of letters, newspaper articles, and diary entries. Do you find reading letters frightening? I don’t know if the Victorians found this book to be scary. I think it more likely they found it shocking or even titillating. 

Nowadays Dracula is an indelible part of pop culture, bad movies and breakfast cereals and all. The original novel is valuable both as a historical and cultural document, giving us insight into the Victorian thought process. A friend of mine insists that Dracula illustrates how xenophobic the English were, terrified of foreigners stealing their women.  It’s an interesting argument, but Bram Stoker was Irish and not English, so I’m not sure I buy it.

Who cares about all that shit, how’s the book? Is it worth reading? Well…I don’t think Dracula is very good. I recently reread the novel, and it wasn’t as bad as I remembered, which a) doesn’t mean much, and b) doesn’t mean I didn’t like the book. I don’t finish most of the books I start, yet I’ve read Dracula four or five times. Take that for what it’s worth.

The plot: Jonathan Harker, realtor wannabe, travels to Transylvania to meet his boss’ newest client. Harker writes about train times and spicy paprika chicken in his diary. Thrilling stuff. The book perks up during Harker’s carriage ride to Castle Dracula, which involves sinister blue lights, wolves, and a mysterious coachmen. Upon reaching his destination, Harker is greeted by Dracula himself, who is getting ready to invade – er, I mean relocate to England. 

Technically, Dracula is a Voivode rather than a Count, but whatever. Harker soon has other things to worry about, like survival. Staying alive isn’t easy in Castle Dracula. Dracula enters and leaves by scaling the walls like a lizard. He has three ravenous wives, who want to drink his blood. Even worse, they’re voluptuous. And there’s always the hungry wolves, lurking outside.

One of the more interesting things about this book is the fact that Dracula doesn’t kill Harker. He leaves him alive in his castle while he travels to London. True, Dracula’s wives will finish Harker off, but there’s always the risk that he will get away and spill the beans. Which is what happens. Why not make sure? While never overtly stated, I believe it’s because Harker is Dracula’s guest, and killing him would violate the rules of hospitality. Dracula is a supernatural entity, and thus must abide by a number of rules. Leaving Harker alive means Dracula is following the letter of the law.

Dracula charters a boat to transport him and his fifty earth-filled coffins filled to England. He kills everyone on the ship, which sails into Whitby with the dead captain tied to the wheel. It is never revealed why the Count chose Whitby. Why not London or Liverpool? Anyway, Dracula wastes no time seducing Lucy Westenra. Lucy’s best friend, Mina, is Jonathan Harker’s fiancée. Coincidence? Part of the Count’s evil plan? Bad plotting?

Whatever the reason, soon poor Lucy is in her grave. This despite the efforts of her three suitors, Dr. Jack Seward, Lord Arthur Godalming, and Quincey Morris, who hails from the great country of Texas. Further reinforcements arrive when Dr. Seward consults his old tutor, Abraham Van Helsing, about Lucy’s bizarre anemia. Van Helsing doesn’t have a great command of the English language, and his solutions involve crosses and garlic flowers. Instead of confining Van Helsing in his sanitorium, Dr. Seward and company agree to a number of blood transfusions. Since people didn’t know about different blood types back then, it’s possible those transfusions helped kill Lucy.

Lucy rises from the grave, begins preying on children, and is dubbed the Bloofer Lady by the press. The sequences with her are the creepiest parts of the book. Somehow Van Helsing convinces the others to pound a stake through Lucy’s heart and then chop off her head. Meanwhile, a weakened Harker makes it back to England, only to lose it when he sees the Count strolling through London. One thing leads to the other, and the Harkers are united with Van Helsing & his crew.

Blah blah blah that’s a lot of plot, and I haven’t even mentioned Renfield the Fly Eating Lunatic. Is the book any good? Yes, and no. The plot is the weakest part of this novel. Dracula’s plan to conquer England is so bad that Stoker dedicates a half-chapter to Van Helsing talking about Dracula’s child-brain. Exhibit A: Dracula has spent several months in England and only made one vampire. Van Helsing and company find forty nine of his fifty earth-filled coffins in a single day. These are not the actions of a master tactician.

The book’s characters fare better. The standout humans are Van Helsing and Renfield the Fly Eating Lunatic, both of whom are crazy. And then we have Dracula. We never get to understand what makes him tick, which is part of what makes him interesting. His entrance to England, floating into harbor in a corpse ship, are the actions of a Voivode. His exit, wherein he scrambles for pocket change and spends weeks hiding in a boat, are the actions of a scared man. The apparent contradiction is never explained. Perhaps he’s acting according to an unstated set of rules that are never explained to us?

Parts of this book reek of a bizarre sickly sweet sentimentality, but much of Dracula was quite shocking to the Victorians. The novel brushes against sexual mores and taboos (A WOMAN’S BOUDOIR, INVADED!), and I think that’s what shocked people. In the end, Dracula dies and we have a happy ending, but sometimes it seems like we’ve brushed up against something we don’t quite understand, and I don’t know what it is, and maybe that’s why I keep coming back to this book.