OMG! More Kidnappings!

This post is written by Fancy, the Ruler of the Universe.

Good lord n' Butter! I thought my number was up! It's one thing when the boy is kidnapped, but those vicious bastards tried to kidnap ME! Me! Fancy! The Ruler of the Universe was not spared! I was shoved in a box, taken to a strange place, poked, prodded, x-rayed, and told I have arthritis!

However, through daring do and cunning plans, I escaped and am now back at home. Still no boy, no brushing, and those dead ninjas are still lying around, but I am home!

Movie Review: Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror

Just playing for time, quite good at playing for time.

Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922 Prana-Film GmbH Dir. F. W. Murnau)

Our intrepid hero, walks towards a door... a door to HORROR!

Ah, how beloved is this first version of Dracula ever filmed? Well, not beloved if you ask Mrs. Stoker who tried to have the film destroyed. See it was used without permission and the studio went bankrupt so there was no money to pay Stoker's widow with, so the courts ordered the whole thing be destroyed. If they had succeeded, Nosferatu would have been a lost film instead of one of the most famous films from the silent era. There are bits from this movie in many other Dracula movies that would come later as well as many other horror films. The design of Count Orlok particularly is a major difference as almost every other version of the story tends towards good looking seductive vampires while our monster here is a hideous beast all the way through.

Once again an example where glass would prevent people from getting in.

I don't know of my own knowledge how many people had an experience like mine, but I am fairly sure that Nosferatu is the first full-length silent movie I ever saw. Before that the only thing I'd seen were Chaplin shorts, so as you can imagine this was more than a change of pace. I won't say it was actually particularly frightening, because in many ways you need to be a little more grown up to be scared by something like this. This however the first long form silent movie I’d ever seen. I know a few other people who count this as their first and I know others who claim it as their own silent movie experience. The point remains that many people have seen this movie, even people who would normally shun old and silent films have seen this. I think it’s that this appeals to the Goth sensibilities. Here is something genuinely old, and genuinely scary that you can’t soften up for kids. Orlok would be scary as a stuffed toy, so you can imagine how he looks in the movie. The Universal Dracula was turned into a rather sad joke by the end, and campiness has followed the Dracula movies like a bad smell. But since this movie is like it is, you can’t really… defang the movie as it were. I didn’t want to make that pun, but it’s the only turn of phrase I can think of.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... pimpin' ain't never been easy.

There are many changes made between the original book and this version of the movie. There are superficial changes in names (Jonathan Harker becomes Thomas Hutter and Mina is Ellen) and instead of London we have Wisborg Germany, but the changes run a little deeper than that. The personalities are changed and story points are shifted, in many ways until they hardly resemble their novelic counterparts. Thomas is almost childlike in his exaggerated movements and gestures as opposed to Jonathan's seriousness. At one point in fact, so childlike does Thomas become that he throws a blanket over his head when Orlok comes calling. So as we see, even when you change the name a Harker is still the dumbest creature you can come across. The Hutter version is probably the dumbest version, or at least the most childish.

You want to me give a hickey? Oh GOD that joke sucks!
...
Yeah, I see what I did there. Sorry.

The story does still follow the same basic pattern as Dracula, but with many subtle differences. The movie starts by introducing Thomas and his wife in a small domestic scene. If you have an analytical mind you might try to suggest things about the marriage, but I don't intend to go there. In order to get the plot moving Thomas is sent by this movie's version of Renfield, here called Knock, to Transylvania to see Count Orlok. Instead of being in a mad house, Knock is Thomas's employer and a confederate of Orlok's. We get to see this in a few different ways, with letters and with Knock behaving in the regular Renfield manner of knowing when the master is near and what’s going on all around.

Just a little, tiny bit Freudian.

Upon arriving in Transylvania Thomas stops at an inn for a night and picks up a book of folk lore. This book will give us much of the information the audience gets about vampires within the movie. Thomas is then driven out to the middle of no-where to meet with Orlok's driver. As usual the driver is of course Orlok himself, but we don't know that yet. Well, we do now because I just told you. Um… SPOILER! There is an interesting trick which sort of works and sort of doesn't. When Thomas gets in the black carriage, the film is under cranked so everything moves much faster. Then there is a shot that is in negative, but because they used a white carriage in that shot, it still appears black, as does the driver and horses. When we come to the castle the film is once again the positive image with the black carriage. It's interesting, but it doesn't exactly work for me. One of the main problems with it is that I know exactly what I’m looking at. I’m looking at a negative image and as a result of knowing that it’s not scary. Poor old me, knowing too much to be scared. Story of my life.

Positive

Negative

As is usual, at dinner Thomas cuts his hand and Orlok decides to attack. This attack is strangely off screen, we only really see Orlok approach and then sit down across from Thomas. Thomas then wakes up in the chair, having clearly slept there all night. The implication is clear, but the actual consummation is left to the individual viewer as to what exactly happened. Just off screen is tube of lubricant and a pack of Trojans. Actually, this is really the one place where that joke just doesn’t work. Almost any other vampire movie, yes. Here, no. As I say, this movie just isn’t sexual. With Thomas at least partly in Orlok's thrall, he remains with Orlok for some time.

They told me this would be slimming. Is it?

One of the interesting features of this movie is that the tinting actually matters here. The blue tints for the night shots, orange for the day, yellow for day and so on. There were almost no real night shots in silent films, because the cameras needed a great deal of light in order to properly film action. For this reason, without the blue tints it looks like the whole movie is shot between eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon, which is foolish. Since Orlok ends in this movie not by a steak through the heart but rather by the light of the sun, the time of day is quite crucial. You couldn’t have the Count walking around during the day, it just wouldn’t work.

Orlok's shadow puppets were a favorite at sleepovers.

When the big revel of Orlok comes for Thomas to finish the job, Ellen steps in and sends a signal by psychic radio to save him. This moment is sadly laughable, but we do get to see some cross cutting which was something of an innovation at the time. It also manages to transfer the count's interest from the husband to the wife. That at least gives a reason for him to go to Germany. From there Orlok begins his trip by stacking up boxes of earth and strangely getting a boat. I've never understood the need for the boat. Surely Germany is closer by land than by sea, right? After Orlok leaves Thomas makes a break for home as well, but gets hurt and ends up in a hospital for a while before getting home to warn people. Yeah, Thomas really is a Harker, no one else could be quite so stupid.

Stupidest place for a cemetary I've ever heard of.

During a short period where the story lags, we see the Van Helsing for this story explain how the natural world has things that are like phantoms and vampires. A venus fly tray and a microscopic polyp are given as representatives of the darkness in the real world. During this time, Knock goes nutso and begins to describe himself as a spider, eating flies he snatches out of the air. While this goes on, Ellen waits by the seashore for Thomas, or possibly Orlok who is on the boat for no good reason. It’s hard to say, but I do know that gothy girls would start to dress like her constantly in the 90s.

That's a happy man.

The boat does give a good chance for some serious creeps though, which is probably a good enough reason. And of course on the boat you get that famous scene where the count rises up out of his coffin, seeming to be lifted on a board that has its juncture point somewhere around his ankles. He raises without movement beyond his right hand that extends out to scare the bejezzues out of someone. While on the boat, the count picks the crew off one by one, but through sickness instead of blood loss. The vampire here spreads death through plague, as I may have mentioned. I can’t remember if I did and I don’t want to re-read the whole review again (I R Professional) because I’m just adding bits here and there.

Really, this is jsut forced perspective. He's actually only 3 feet tall

Interestingly, when Orlok shows up he seems to bring plague instead of bloodshed. The plague takes many victims, and it's clear that this is sickness we're talking about. Several scenes go by where parades of coffins are seen, people discuss the sickness, and we're meant to understand this is all from the vampire being around. SO there you go, had I read a little further, the note in my last paragraph could have gone unwritten. Sad really, now I’m typing out useless notes here as well.

Dude, they're called nail clippers and they aren't expensive.

We never actually see Orlok try and stalk anyone after the boat until he finally makes an attempt to get to Ellen. All we get are a few ancillary scenes, sort of filling in a few blanks. After Orlok has been in town a while, Knock escapes from his captors and is mistaken by the mob as being the source of the plague. Knock is chased down but they loose him and decide to kill a scarecrow instead when they loose him. I wish I was joking! They really tear down a scarecrow and more or less say that’s that. Peasants! Am I right?

I wasn't going to show this one, but then I was told that there is a law that you have to have a screen cap of this scene every time you do a review of this movie.

When Orlok finally comes for Ellen, she sends Thomas away to get him out of the way. Then of course, Orlok comes for her, but she keeps him away from his lair until day break. In a completely new idea and one that would endure through out vampire lore, Orlok is destroyed by the sunlight. As far as I know, this is the first time that the sun proves deadly for a vampire, but it would be taken up and used by many writers and film makers later. With Orlok dead, Ellen slips away leaving Thomas alone and broken. Knock sulks about the master being dead. The last shot of the film is a broken castle keep on a hill, clearly meant to be the final remains of Orlok's castle which has crumbled without him being alive to keep it up.

That tuft of hair behind his ear? Drives the ladies WILD!

You could start analyzing this movie in the morning and not be done by bed time, which is why I'm not really going to try to do it here. I leave it to the viewer of the film to perform that task in their own good time. Here, watch a free copy. My copy of the DVD is pretty good. There are scratches and grain, but it's got a serviceable commentary and two separate musical tracks. I've been told there are better versions of the movie out there, but I've never gone looking for it because this one dose well enough. I suppose that says all that needs to be said about it.

Everyone sing "Fade into You" By Mazzy Star! Yeah, I got nothing.

Movie Review: Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994 Geffen Pictures Dir. Neil Jordan)

Wow, what a great story. I hope I get remembered for this instead of Heathers.
(this is called foreshadowing)

Yah! The gay vampire movie! Actually, that’s not really fair as I don’t get nearly as much of a gay vibe off watching the movie as I do trying to read the book. I say trying, because I never actually finished the book. I listened to a seriously cut to the bone abridgement back when audio books were almost all abridged, but I only got as far as Louis and Lestat wandering the world after Lou burned down the house. As you’d expect, a lot was cut from the book, but not much was changed as I understand it. I only put this explanation here so you’ll understand I’m only going to review the movie, without much comparison to the book. What I will say is that I only started hearing that Tom Cruise was gay after he played Lestat. I don’t know if it was going on before, but I only heard about it after. I keep wondering if there is some massive form of projection going on, or if Cruise identified with the character in the book or if none of that’s true and it’s just a rumor.

If you don’t talk to your kids about ridiculously foppish outfits, someone else will!
(Fop is a word for a young man more concerned with his appearance than for other matters. Fops are often seen as effeminate, because of their fancy dress, stupid for their lack of understanding of even the most basic principals of particle and overly foolish because they bloody well are. Other words for Fop include dandy, popinjay, and Justin Timberlake.)

So, the movie opens in modern day San Francisco, or at least the modern day San Fran of fifteen years ago. You can tell it’s fifteen years ago because there are no SUVs in the opening credit sequence and the people aren’t cowering with the fear that Muslims might attack or gays might try to get married at any moment. An interviewer for a radio station has met up with a man who claims to be a vampire and they discuss the interview that’s about to happen between them. A few quick cut moments, just to prove that Brad Pitt is actually supposed to be a vampire and not just some emo-goth talking a lot of shit and we’re into the movie. There is a lot of work done here to produce the feeling they were going for. Everyone did their jobs very well, my complaints are small and mostly based on the source material, which was itself never supposed to be taken for anything more than a horror/fantasy of the oyster tickling variety.

You know, those taste even better after the Colonel has fried them with his eleven herbs and spices.
(Colonel Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1929)

The opening of the actual story is pretty simple… guy named Louis is really, really depressed and then he meets a homoerotic vampire who turns him. You could say he turns him gay if you wanted, but really he just turns him into a vampire because that’s all he does. The gayness, as I said, was really toned down for the movie, but when you know it’s supposed to be there, you can see it. It’s not exactly hidden so much as made way less explicit than in the book. When I first watched the movie for the first time though, it wasn’t really in my mind. It was just sort of sexy and cool with them sharing babes and stuff. The movie emphasizes the overall erotic rather than the specifically homoerotic.

I am just going to hold this candle and mope until Terry Gilliam gets here and saves me from this image.
(Brad Pitt was thought of as merely a pretty boy before his performance in 12 Monkeys and later Seven. Since then, he’s proved what a serious actor he is by being in Ocean’s Twelve)

Lestat makes Louis a vampire and begins the process of instructing him and the audience about what it means to be a vampire. He will be informing Louis that he’s a vampire, every thirty-three seconds until he leaves the film. This is a movie about a mopey looser and a mean screwball, standing around talking about being vampires. As far as a movie goes, Lestat is the villain here, even if he’s the sort of villain you want to root for. Depending on your mood, you are either sympathetic for Louis while admiring Lestat’s sagacity about their vampirism, or you are completely disgusted with Louis and his constant whining. Louis is a whiner after all, let’s be clear about that. It’s hard, unless one is mired in one’s own depressive swamps, to have sympathetic feelings for a hunter who refuses to hunt. What, one may ask, is the point of being such a creature if one is too timid to actually attack anyone? Why did he agree to become a vampire if he didn’t want to be one?

Check out this bitching power cord I can do on Guitar Hero!
(Guitar Hero is a video game for people to pretend they're playing guitar. Some people become convinced they can play after being good at the game.)

While sulking, Louis has a predictably manic moment where he decides to eat one of his slaves, free the slaves he didn’t eat, strike a blow for women’s suffrage by writing a strongly worded letter to The Times, destroy the house by burning everything including himself, sell his car for ten dollars on e-bay, and sing Abba’s greatest hits in a tutu. However, he is saved from his own stupidity by Lestat who swoops in and yells at Louis for burning down the place. The greatest single moment for Lestat is when Louis makes some typically dour comment only to have Lestat snap “Oh, shut up Louis!” before rescuing him. After this they begin a series of scenes where Lestat and Louis argue about killing and not killing. Lestat comes off like a monster, but in a way he’s just trying to teach Louis to hunt. They’re predators after all and Louis is just a whelp who refuses to hunt. As I said, it’s easy to feel contempt for Louis.

And when they hit the on switch, Lestat discovered why they call it “The Gooser”
(It’s an anal sex joke about a vibrator. It's funny because people still have hang ups about homosexuality and back door action. A rather lazy writer, like me, will use these hang-ups in order to get a cheap laugh.)

Now of course, we come to the really dark part of the movie. Louis finds a young girl in a plague-ridden part of town and decides to feed on her. Lestat surprises him, and Louis runs away with the shame of being discovered. There is another discussion about being a vampire… which gets a tad tedious I have to say. Lestat is constantly reminding Louis that he’s a vampire over and over again as if Louis was going to forget that part if he weren’t told every fifteen seconds. Lestat then makes the little girl Louis attacked into a vampire, and thus Claudia enters the story. Claudia, of course, is a killer right from the word go and never suffers the sort of wimpy streak that causes one to despise our narrator so. The role between Claudia and Louis in the movie is very father/daughter while in the book I’m told it goes to much creepier places. Another point of the book being toned down for the movie. A great deal of comedy is derived from the relationship between Claudia and Lestat as she keeps eating the servants despite Lestat’s admonishments.

Hey, just FYI. Because I played this part, it’s gonna be a little creepy when you see me in Maxim in a few years.
(Because it was creepy! One day she’s playing a seven year old the next, BAM in a magazine in her panties.)

The problem becomes that Claudia remains a child and for thirty years and this causes some predictable problems. The three of them become annoyed at each other, then begin to hate each other, then Claudia comes up with a solution to all their problems. Granted, her solution involves whacking Lestat mafia style and sinking him in the swamps, but it does solve the problem of Lestat being a pain in their asses. Now obviously that’s not the end of Lestat because there are another 37 books with him in them, but it looks good. Actually, all the makeup effects are really good and mostly subtle in this film. The death of Lestat looks great and his return looks pretty awesome too. Lestat comes back for another fight, but Louis sets him on fire… because that’s what he does. When Louis is faced with an issue, he sets the house on fire, sets Lestat on fire, sets all of New Orleans on fire, set a theater on fire, sets London on fire, sets Rome on fire, lets Nero fiddle for a while before setting him on fire and then runs away. My problem with a movie like this, where people stand around and talk at each other endlessly, is that they tend to bunch all the action up in one place so everything happens at once. Lestat now, more or less, vanishes from the movie. We’re supposed to believe he’s dead, but since the next book is named after him, and a parade of Goths will try to dress like him forever, we know he isn’t going anywhere.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty.
(This is an example of sarcasm, it does not count as irony because that isn't what irony means.)

Now we begin what I suppose is the second half of the movie, the Paris adventure and the Theater of the Vampires. Now, I’m going to take a slight diversion for a moment. The theater wasn’t as odd as it might at first seem. There was a theater in Paris called the Grand Guignol which is a place where interesting little plays were carried out. Often bloody, filled with up to the minute effects, and morality plays that often didn't have much morality. Read the wiki article for more information, but really watching the play in the movie is almost as good. Rice has said she was unaware of the theater when she wrote the book, but that doesn’t mean the filmmakers were also ignorant. I suspect that someone knew a bit about it, or had seen Behind the Green Door. I mention that because the murder of the girl in the performance greatly echoes the opening sex scene in that movie what with her being surrounded by robed figures and all. Oh, don’t give me that look! You know how I am about historical works. Of course, I’m going to be familiar with classic pornography.

In this scene, there are 47 vampires. None of them can be seen.
(See the Monty Python Sketch “How Not To Be Seen” to get this joke)

There are several, huge, logical holes in the story of the theater, what with vampires not popularly being thought of as even remotely human until after Dracula, the hip and groovy Paris audience isn’t going to be that interested. The fact that at some point, someone is going to notice it’s a different girl every performance. There is also the fact that no one ever sees the performers outside of the theater and so on. As far as I know, this is the beginning of the vampire coven thing. Groups of vampires have never, ever worked for me. I don’t think it could really work, the whole vampire idea strikes me as a solitary hunter, working alone with perhaps only a mate. Otherwise, the deaths pile up quite a bit and people aren’t quite as dumb as vampire lovers seem to think. Someone would start to notice.

No clever joke for this caption, I just totally want that vest.
(Seriously, wouldn’t anyone want that vest? You can't just order one online though. I'd have to buy a vest and get someone to do the embroidery.)

Anyway, back to the story. Louis hangs with Armand, Claudia finds a woman to replace Louis, but they’re both killed within about three minutes. I must complain about this, the making of Madeleine is treated as such a huge deal before it happens and then *poof* she’s dead Claudia’s dead, Gertrude dies when she drinks of the cup, Hamlet gets poked by the poisoned sword, and Louis decides to go all John Rambo, killing everyone until his country loves him as much as he loves it. Killing of Claudia doesn’t even make a hell of a lot of sense since they just sort of burst in and announce they’re going to kill all of them. It’s sort of insinuated that it’s being done because of Lestat, but it’s not really clear. I know from the audio book that Lestat was supposed to be there to accuse them, but here it’s not really stated.

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance! Cha, cha, cha!
(It’s a reference to a SNL skit)

Now for a controversial statement. Once Louis destroys the theater, the movie is over. The twenty minutes that follow the destruction of the theater are just a long, slow, meandering decline into nothingness. No matter what the book says, the movie ends at that point and should have been capped there. They should have just come to the last five or ten minutes and gotten it over with on the high note. Instead, we just wander around with Louis becoming a movie freak, visiting Lestat one last pathetic time, and then we come to where the movie should have arrived fifteen minutes ago. The interviewer asks to be made a vampire, Louis shouts at him, and Lestat finds him, gives him a bite, Scrooge learns the meaning of Christmas and of course, the lovers are reunited. Lestat seems to be all better at the end, wearing a leather jacket and ready for some Rock ‘n Roll.

I’d make a “Baby Cart in Paris” joke, but I doubt most people would get it.
(See Lone Wolf & Cub for details)

Strangely, there was never a real direct sequel to this movie. Yes, yes, they made Queen of the Damned, but it’s not really a sequel to this movie so much as the movie version of that book which happens to be one of the sequels to the book this movie was based on. They never got Tom back, never got any of the other actors back, and Queen didn’t have one-tenth the cool that Interview did. I’ve never quite understood why they didn’t make a direct sequel, unless they felt that people would see it as re-telling the story we’ve already seen. I don’t know exactly, probably if they made it today they’d have signed everyone into cast iron contracts, but they didn’t do that when they made this, clearly.

Wait a second! YOU’RE THE GUY FROM HEATHERS!
(Did you spot the foreshadowed joke? Heathers is a movie Christian Slater was in. When it was announced he would be in this movie, everyone I knew said "The guy from Heathers?")

Anyway, the movie in a nutshell...

Act One
Louis: I'm depressed!
Lestat: I'll make you a vampire!
Louis: I'm still depressed!
Lestat: Nothin' I can do about that.
Louis: Then I'm going to set the house on fire!

Act Two
Louis: I'm depressed!
Lestat: I'll make this little girl a vampire.
Louis: I'm still depressed!
Lestat: Nothin' I can do about that.
Louis: Then I'm going to set you on fire!

Act Three
Louis: I'm depressed!
Armand: I've got a theater full of vampires!
Louis: I'm still depressed!
Armand: Nothin' I can do about that.
Louis: Then I'm going to set the theater on fire!

Addendum
Louis: I'm depressed!
Interviewer: Make me a vampire!
Louis: NO! And I'm still depressed!
Lestat: Oh shut up Louis!
Louis: You wouldn't talk to me like that if I had some matches...