THIS MONTH
NOSFERAT-ISH
LEGENDARY AUTHOR AND CRITIC US HIS UNIQUE TAKES ON CULT CINEMA KIM NEWMAN BRINGS
MATTHEW BRAZIER
Top to bottom:
Bloody Mary? A date from hell in
Nosferatu’s Crush; Nosferatu Horror Of The Night.
AGREAT MANY articles are going to describe Robert Eggers’ upcoming Nosferatu as the third version of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: ASymphony Of Horror (1922) —which Werner Herzog already remade as Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979). Alittle digging unearths the fact that Eggers’ ‘Nosfera3’ is about the 30th take on Murnau’s film —itself a disguised-to-avoid-copyright-lawyers version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Indeed, there are films called Nosfera2 and Nosferatwo —not to mention Son Of Nosferatu.
Pretty much all the Nosferatu derivatives listed here are findable online. (Check out my list (with links) of multimedia Dracula appearances at johnnyalucard.com/2020/11/10/your-dailydracula-archive.) Murnau’s film turns Count Dracula into Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck with bald dome, bat-ears and a beaky nose, reaching out for victims with extensible clawfingers. Elements invented by Murnau —like the vampire dissolving in sunlight —have become standard in vampire movies and almost every Dracula picture borrows something from the 1922 rough draft of the book …while Schreck’s remarkable make-up job is often imitated, with Klaus Kinski in Herzog’s film and Reggie Nalder in Salem’s Lot (1979) getting closest to the original for sheer creepiness.