This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 6: Vampire Night
“Can you imagine enduring centuries, and each day experiencing
the same futilities?”
Nosferatu the Vampyre(or,
Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night) is German director Werner Herzog’s not quite remake of
F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent horror masterpiece. Murnau was not able to secure the
rights to Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula,
so he changed the character names and locations and some plot points to avoid legal troubles. Herzog does not consider his film a remake, but he follows the structure
of Murnau’s film more than Stoker’s novel. Werner Herzog is the kind of
filmmaker incapable of making a simple genre picture. His version of Nosferatu
is not straightforward horror, but it is haunting and transfixing.
The plot is familiar enough. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz), a
young real estate attorney, is sent to Transylvania to oversee the purchase of
an estate, close to his own home in Wismar, Germany, by the mysterious Count Dracula. The Count falls in love with a
picture of Jonathan’s wife, Lucy (Isabelle Adjani), imprisons Jonathan, and
sets off to claim the young bride as his own.
Klaus Kinski plays Count Dracula as a forlorn creature of menace and despair. His look is the same as Count Orlok, played by Max Schreck, in Murnau’s Nosferatu, one of the most iconic images in film history, instantly recognizable whether you've seen the film or not. His skin is bone white, with a head like an animated skull, fingers like slender claws, and two pronounced fangs are front and center in his mouth. The vampire in Murnau’s film was only a monster, but here he is presented as a pitiful, melancholy creature. This Dracula has no brides or servants. He tells Harker that there are worse things than death, like enduring centuries repeating the same futile nights. In Wismar, he tells Lucy that he wishes to partake of what she and Jonathan share.
Count Dracula is a supernatural creature but still seems to be tied into Herzog’s fascination with the unrelenting and overwhelming force that nature has over humankind (see Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Grizzly Man for more intense and unrelenting nature). Harker’s journey through ageless mountains and canyons to Dracula’s castle is an extended sequence set to Richard Wagner’s prelude to Das Rheingold, a choice that enhances the natural landscape’s sense of beauty and awe and foreboding. Hidden deep in that intimidating landscape is Dracula.
Bram Stoker’s novel has Harker’s wife, Mena, as a perfect
Victorian era woman that needs to be preserved and protected. Here, Harker’s
wife, Lucy, mostly absent from the first half of the film, becomes the main character in the second half and is the only person willing to
take action to stop Dracula and the plague spreading rats he has unleashed on the
city. This version of Lucy is an agent not only for her own destiny but the
whole city.
Herzog and cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein use a
handheld camera for many scenes, adding a degree of uncomfortable authenticity and realism to
the supernatural story. Unlike the Universal Studios and Hammer productions of
Dracula, these locations and sets look and feel real and lived in. Everything from the chairs and silverware
to Dracula’s macabre clock feel like real, functional things and imply that he
can exist outside of fantasy.
Watching this film in 2021, it is especially horrifying that
Dracula’s arrival in Wismar doesn’t just mean the arrival of a vampire. Dracula also brings a
huge swarm of bubonic plague spreading rats. A scene of Lucy wandering through plague-ridden
Wismar has her encountering a group of people in their finest clothes having
their last supper; one tells her that all of the guests are infected with the
plague so they are enjoying what they have while they can. The procession of
coffins through the town square is like an endless macabre parade.
Herzog was tasked with producing two versions of this film:
one in German and one in English, for international markets. After a scene was
done in German it would be shot again with the same actors speaking English.
Herzog has said that he views the German language version as more authentic
since it was his attempt to link classic and modern German filmmaking. There is
obviously some dubbing for the minor characters but, overall, I got the same
effect from both versions. I recommend this film in general, but I highly
recommend it for an atmospheric but not-so-scary night.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
The 1945 horror film Isle of the Dead, from director
Mark Robson and auteur producer Val Lewton, makes for a peculiar viewing
experience in era of the COVID-19 pandemic. The story concerns a group of
people quarantined on a small island after one of them dies suddenly of the plague.
Making their situation even more tense, is the growing suspicion that one of
them may be a vorvolaka, a mythic vampire-like creature that feeds on the
living.
The story takes place in Greece during the war of 1912.
Boris Karloff stars as General Pherides, a stern, cold, even tyrannical general
referred to as the “Watchdog” of his country. In the opening scene we see him
sentence a subordinate to death by suicide for letting his troops lag behind.
An American reporter, Davis (Marc Cramer), accompanies Pherides to an island
cemetery to visit the tomb of his long dead wife. Mysterious singing leads them to the house of an
archeologist, Dr. Aubrecht (Jason Robards, Sr.), and his guests, including the ailing Mrs. St. Aubyn (Katherine Emery) and her young travelling companion,
Thea (Ellen Drew). Kyra, the superstitious housekeeper, believes they
are the victims not of a plague but of a vorvolaka and that Thea is the
mythic, life draining creature. One of the guests dies suddenly that
night. Dr. Drossos diagnosis the cause as septicemic
plague (the most lethal form of the plague/Black Death) and General Pherides
orders a quarantine.
Almost everyone in the group thinks that the General’s
quarantine order (which includes forbidding gatherings of more than two people)
is an overreaction. They challenge him, claiming they do not have to
follow his orders since they are civilians. Dr. Drossos says when the warm south winds come, the fleas carrying the plague will die
and they will be safe to leave the island. The archeologist is
overly skeptical, saying that the doctor’s claims sound as ridiculous as old
superstitions. He even lights a fire to the old gods he says will be as
effective as the quarantine. General Pherides believes in the law, science, and
medicine but as the plague spreads and people die, including Dr. Drossos, he
begins to believe science has failed. The persistent claims from Kyra about a
vorvolaka consume his mind until he too targets Thea as the cause of the
plague.
From 1945 until the COVID-19 pandemic, Isle of the Dead
surely played differently. The film’s sympathy is on the side of the characters
who think the General’s quarantine and ban on gatherings are an overreaction
and unnecessary. When the General stops Thea from escaping the island, it is meant
to show his cruelty. Watching this film now, the most tense and anxious moments came from characters ignoring the
General’s orders, which he made according to medical advice. In 1945, Isle
of the Dead was a film about how the right situation can lead to a single
person seizing control and becoming mad with power. It is still about that, to be sure, but
in 2021 it is also about how an event like an epidemic spurs different
reactions, including dangerous ones. In both views of the film, General
Pherides is an unsympathetic man who loses his mind and goes from trying to
protect people to trying to kill the same people. He is also a man that becomes
dangerous as he loses confidence in science and medicine and gives into
superstition.
Isle of the Dead falls into the second tier of the
series of low budget horror films Val Lewton produced for RKO in the 1940’s.
The horror classics Cat People(1942) and I Walked With a Zombie
(1943) are firmly in the top tier. Those films partnered Lewton with director
Jacques Tourneur, who made use of eerie imagery to emphasize the
fear felt by the characters. Director Mark Robson does a fine job at the helm
of Isle of the Dead but lacks the stylistic touches and eye for eerie
imagery that made the previous Tourneur/Lewton films great. For a film set on
an island cemetery there is a disappointing lack of creepy or
eerie imagery depriving the film of a richer atmosphere. Despite these flaws
Isle of the Dead is still an intriguing, low key horror movie and an
interesting one to watch during a pandemic.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 3: Pandemic Horror Night “Kill is blue. Kill is wonderful. Kill is loving… Kill is everything you ever wanted… Kill is kiss.” Pontypool
If A Quiet Place is the horror movie based around not speaking, and Bird Box is the horror movie based around not seeing, then Pontypool is the horror movie based around not hearing. Its conceit is fresh and interesting and, while not without flaws, remains haunting and unsettling. Pontypool has never fully left my mind since I first saw it two years ago. It has been on my mind a lot since March 2020. There are films with more violent and disturbing imagery that I’m recommending this Shocktober, but this is the only one that I hesitated in recommending at all. It didn’t occur to me in 2018 but it is clear now that Pontypool, like 28 Days Later, is not a zombie movie. It is a pandemic horror movie.
Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) is a cowboy hat wearing, washed up radio shock jock reduced to doing morning news for a rural town in Ontario: Pontypool. Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) is the morning show producer, who tries to keep Grant on track, reminding him that people just want their news and weather and don’t want to be antagonized. Sydney’s assistant Laurel-Ann (Georgina Reilly), is a young veteran that served in Afghanistan. These are the main characters, and, aside from a few callers and visitors to the station, the only characters. Once Grant arrives at the radio station, he and Sydney and Laurel-Ann slowly realize that the strange violent events overwhelming the town have trapped them in the station.
The film unfolds over a matter of hours on a frigid and snowy Valentine’s Day in one location, more or less. Before the sun is even up, the radio station begins receiving reports of strange and violent behavior in Pontypool. There is a hostage situation and a riot at a doctor’s office and military vehicles in the streets. We see none of this and no other news source is reporting the events. Sydney thinks that they are being pranked but the influx of reports and a call from the “sunshine chopper” reporter (who actually just reports from a hill overlooking the town) make it clear that something sinister is wreaking havoc and spreading. Those people acting strange and attacking others are also chanting and babbling incoherently, repeating the same word or phrase again and again. Mazzy and Sydney translate a message in French warning people to avoid contact with loved ones and the English language.
The sinister force at work is a strange virus that turns people into mindless zombies repeating phrases like: “A simple kind of sample” or “I’m not missing Mr. Mazzy.” The explanation for the virus comes in one of the film’s biggest contrivances, Dr. Mendez (Hrant Alianak), who breaks into the radio station and explains his theory on the virus. The idea he presents, that the virus spreads through understanding certain infected words, is what sets Pontypool apart from other virus/zombie movies. It's an intriguing concept. As Mazzy puts it, “How do you not understand a word. How do you make it strange?”
Pontypool would work equally well as a stage or radio play. There are scenes of blood and zombie attacks (for lack of a better term) but almost no pop-up scares. This film relies on the sheer talent of its leads reacting to the news they hear and the little they see while stuck inside to create suspense and tension. Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle don’t just carry the movie, they make it as good as it is; the premise does not work without their top-notch performances.
I wouldn’t say that Pontypool falls apart in the third act exactly, but its intentions become muddled. Even as the characters are executing their plan it is unclear just exactly what they are trying to accomplish. Still, the tension is high and I was too caught up in their climactic performances to be concerned with the details. I am even more puzzled by the epilogue but equally intrigued for the same reason. Even with its flaws, Pontypool is a surprising and at times mesmerizing small scale horror movie that is unsettling and frightening not because of any intense visuals or effects but because of the overwhelming situation and ideas thrust upon the characters.
