Tag Archives: nosferatu

film, musings

Nosferatu in Venice: Atmospheric Trash

With Robert Eggers’ NOSFERATU (2024) coming to theaters this Christmas, many will discuss its merits measured against those adaptations that came before it, but few will be talking about the sequel to Werner Herzog’s brilliant revamp of the 1922 classic, NOSFERATU THE VAMPIRE (1979); and for good reason: 1988’s NOSFERATU IN VENICE [aka VAMPIRE IN VENICE] is not a good movie. Yes, it retains actor Klaus Kinski (who reputedly was then very much prone to emotional outbursts, even violence), but it is among his most bizarre (most would say terrible) performances. Some actors in the film, like Donald Pleasance, would distance themselves from it (while appearing proudly that same year in the Universal remake of DRACUOA). Still, others, like critic Kim Newman find merit in the movie. He argues that it is an “attractively photographed, impressively scored follow-up to Nosferatu.” But it is Rocco T. Thompson who perhaps gave the best review; in a 2021 review of the blu-ray release for Rue Morgue magazine, he writes that “the film is still a haunting vision of a floating underworld of rotten opulence that manages to walk the razor’s edge between art and schlock.”

Klaus Kinski and Anne Knecht
Klaus Kinski and Anne Knecht as vampire and virginal victim (in love?)

A sequel in name only, NOSFERATU IN VENICE carries nothing over from its source. Werner Herzog was not involved the production. The setting is moved from Wismar, Germany to Venice, Italy. And Kinski, as the only carry-over, looks like he belongs in a hair metal band — not a horror movie. Still, there is the conceit of a woman luring the monster and sacrificing herself. That is central to the story of Nosferatu as established in previous films. But in this “sequel,” it is not Isabelle Adjani as Lucy bravely keeping the monster in her bed until the dawn destroys him. Instead, it is Anne Knecht as Maria whose virginity — not just her blood — is taken from her… and she apparently likes it! She even takes a bullet (well, shotgun blast) for the monster (intentionally?), leaving the 200 year-old vampire to wander the streets of Venice at dawn, carrying her body along the banks of a canal. The end.

This ending is nothing compared to what the filmmakers also did to THIS Nosferatu’s strengths and weaknesses. Eschewing much of vampire lore, the Nosferatu of Venice takes note of his face in a mirror, can summon vast winds that knock people out of windows, and, unlike his 1922 counterpart, is partial to the sun. When Maria asks him “doesn’t the daylight frighten you?” Kinski’s vampire replies that “it’s the night that frightens me.”

A vampire frightened of the dark?

There’s so much more to criticize. But there’s much also to admire. Sumptuously filmed and set in truly Gothic environments, the atmosphere is exceptional. Antonio Nardi’s cinematography is brilliant — haunting at times. His artistry evokes a Venice that is equal parts real and dream, where it’s forever dusk or dawn, and birds scatter.

Birds scatter wherever the Nosferatu of Venice goes.
Birds seem to scatter whenever Nosferatu wanders the streets (and waterways)  of Venice.

One could also credit (or blame) the director, but NOSFERATU IN VENICE was handled by multiple directors (as many as five, depending on what you call “directing”). This may explain why a film so visually interesting is otherwise a mess.

Augusto Caminito is considered the primary director; as producer since the beginning of the project, Caminito took control after a number of false starts (including Maurizio Lucidi shooting some scenes before the script was even ready). After principal photography began, a number of other directors were considered or worked on the film; Klaus Kinski himself got behind the camera. His involvement is reputed to have come from his temper and inability to compromise. For example, filmmakers were prepared from the get-go to shoot Venice’s carnival with a bald-capped stand-in. Then Kinski refused to wear the now iconic makeup for his scenes. In the end, he looked more like an unkempt Lestat than the Nosferatu to which audiences are accustomed. Not the bald-headed and pointy-eared creature he was in 1979. Nor Max Schreck in the silent version of 1922, looking grotesque — more rodent than man.

A rodent-like Nosferatu. Klaus Kinski with French actress Isabelle Adjani in the 1979 version.
A rodent-like Nosferatu. Klaus Kinski with French actress Isabelle Adjani in the 1979 version.

Indeed, rodents may be one of the reasons why NOSFERATU IN VENICE fails. For rats are an infestation. And so are vampires. In Murnau’s version, the presence of rats is not pronounced, but the aforementioned makeup certainly reflects that dread of infestation. In the 1979 version, Herzog used an abundant amount of rodents, suggesting not only infestation, but making clear to the audience that THIS Nosferatu (explicitly named Dracula in Herzog’s version) brings plague.  Herzog  transported nearly 10,000 white rats from Hungary and dyed them gray for the film (residents of the town where the film was shot found the rodents for many years thereafter). When the town fathers examine the body of the captain of the ship that brings the vampire to their shores, they conclude plague. They run to hide behind closed doors. Where still no one is safe. Plague is everywhere. And the vampire brought the disease (that IS vampirism) with him.

Robert Eggers is reputed to continue that association of the vampire with rats and plague. His NOSFERATU (2024) has 5,000 rodents in it. And while NOSFERATU IN VENICE does end on an island where plague victims were long ago taken (and more recent cholera victims were banished), these factors seem to be there to only advance the plot. A way to explain an abandoned house in which vampires dwell (re-enforcing that Gothic atmosphere that is inarguably there in the sets and locations). Plague and infestation is not a theme, however; it is just a plot device to advance the story.

Even the presence of Christopher Plummer as Professor Paris Catalano (the Van-Helsing-type character) can’t save NOSFERATU IN VENICE. For a vampire expert / hunter, he is ineffectual at every turn. Plummer is wasted in the role. After having his hands burned by a cross made molten by Kinski’s vampire, Catalano gives up and skips town, leaving the fight to others. But not before he informs all that Nosferatu can only be stopped by legitmate love.

But what is legitimate? The love shown in the source material or the sex that here is on display? There’s gratuitous full-frontal nudity — which some might argue is necessary to convey the “love” between Maria and the vampire  — but it’s forced, feeling much like mid-eighties soft-core porn where bare breasts and a few thrusts are meant to titillate. And more like the many vampire films of the eighties and nineties to follow, where sex with a vampire becomes de rigueur (think EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE [1995]), NOSFERATU IN VENICE presses the age-old vampire “sex = death” theme to silly extremes.  And the love story? Nothing like what would be done a few years later  in Francis Ford Coppolla’s DRACULA (1992) — where “love never dies” (and the primary female character (Mina in Coppolla’s film) genuinely falls in love, torn between her husband the Count). Here, love [it it ever was that] does die — with a shotgun blast. EVEN in Herzog’s version, where love is mentioned as freeedom from the curse (and loneliness) of immortality, a woman’s strength is at the heart of story.

This strength of a woman’s love in vanquishing a vampire is what is missing from NOSFERATU IN VENICE. In Herzog’s adaptation, NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979), when the bloodsucking Count first meets Lucy in person (violating the sanctity of the marital bedroom), Adjani’s Lucy solidly proclaims her love for her husband, but then shows empathy for the vampire, almost a tenderness in her pity. The woman’s strength IS her love — for husband, home, and community — and it vanquishes the vampire (well, [spoiler] that particular vampire; another rides off into the sunset [?]). Look at this photo and see how Herzog carefully positions Lucy as succumbing, yet somehow resisting, as if saying prayers to herself while slowly being drain. See the photo of Kinksi and Knecht, however; it’s a still from a scene thay is highly sexualized, with Kinski making thrusts from behind Maria. I know. Ew.

And for Caminito (like Coppolla after him) the vampire seems to be a creature women truly desire, and while it works for Coppolla (depending on how much of a Stoker purist you are), it falls flat here. Don’t put the word “Nosferatu” in your title then set your titular lead up like a sex symbol. With “Nosferatu” in the movie’s very name, the audience expects a rat-like alien of a vampire, spreading plague. Leave the sexy vampires to Anne Rice or The Twilight series. They have their place there, where the dynamic works. But it doesn’t work in NOSFERATU IN VENICE. And that is its ultimate failure.

Praise will undoubtedly be heaped upon Eggers, just as Herzog and Murnau before him. And it will be justifiable praise, as the previews look phenomental.*

But NOSFERATU IN VENICE will be forgotten (if it hasn’t already, with only bloggers debating its pros and cons). As long as blu-ray special editions are released and services like Tubi stream it for free. the film will however forever find a niche audience. If this curious few go in expecting a true sequel, faithful to NOSFERATU (whichever version you choose), they will be sorely disappointed.

 

 * Saw Eggers’ film on December 30 and was blown away by the art direction and cinematography. The movie drags a little, and the acting? a little over the top, but it is certainly beautiful to watch. Lily-Rose Depp‘s Helen (the Mina character, named Helen in the 1922 version, and called Lucy in the 1979) is a more complex character here than other adaptations. A psychic connection to the vampire is established from the very beginning of the film. Their “relationshiop” is at the heart of the movie, making her sacrifice all the more powerful. Add in Bill Skarsgård playing the Graf Orlok / Dracula like no other actor has played him, and you’ve got one hell of a vampire film.

film

The Living Sun: Dispatching The Undead

Final title card of Nosferatu (1922)
Final title card of Nosferatu (1922)

The final scene of F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece NOSFERATU (1922), showing Count Orlok being destroyed by the rising sun, may very well be the first time in the history of the vampire — folkloric, literary, or cinematic — that any of the undead (at least in Western culture *) was dispatched by sunlight. His fading away and disappearance into a puff of smoke leads to the film’s final title card, where it is made it clear that “…the shadow of death was gone… as if obliterated by the triumphant rays of the living sun.”

No vampire before Count Orlok expired from exposure to the sun. Lord Ruthven. Varney the Vampire. Carmilla. Even Dracula himself could move about by day. So how did sunlight as a means of dispensing with vampires come to be? Why would NOSFERATU be the first?

The vampire of folklore — particularly during the wave of suspected vampires in Europe in the eighteenth century — always attacked at night. It, and its literary offspring, had to return to their coffins during the day. But death by ultraviolet light? Not part of the mythology. It was most certainly not started by Stoker. His Dracula may be exposed to the rising sun by novel’s end, but his demise is not due to sunlight. He is instead stabbed, and has his throat slit. So the most plausible answer as to why the makers of NOSFERATU introduced death by daylight may be as simple as this: they were looking for a way to clearly finish their film with a scene as far from the ending of the novel as as possible.

Count Orlok hovers over Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu (1922)
Count Orlok hovers over Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu (1922)

In order to avoid copyright infringement, scriptwriter Henrik Galeen (who later wrote THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE), and director Murnau, veiled their adaptation of Stoker. In their retelling, Count Orlok’s fate would be the direct result of a sacrifice made by the female lead. Ellen Hutter (their Mina Harker) reads from a book that her husband, Thomas (Jonathan Harker), had explicitly told her not to. She learns from it that in order to get rid of the Count, she has to keep him, um, occupied until the cock crows. In the end, it is beauty that kills the beast. Not a cadre of suitors with knives, as in Stoker’s novel.

Stoker’s widow, Florence, still sued, and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed (with the final ruling on the case happening in 1925). The filmmakers didn’t have a leg to stand on. Producer Albin Grau had previously applied for a license to film the novel, but had been refused by Florence. So he went ahead and made the film anyway. This was on record, and it lost them the case (i.e., they couldn’t feign ignorance). Fortunately, for film enthusiasts, it is believed that one copy survived, and duplicates were secretly made in the years that followed.

It is in those years that followed that we don’t know much of anything about how widely the film was seen, by whom, and what impression it had upon future filmmakers.

What we do know is that in the almost 20 years following NOSFERATU, no vampire films found their fiends reduced to ash in the morning sun. Not Lugosi’s Dracula (impaled off screen).** Not Dreyer’s vampyr (run through with an iron rod). Not even Dracula’s daughter (felled by an arrow).

HERE COMES THE SON
Son of Dracula (1943)
Son of Dracula (1943)

Then comes SON OF DRACULA, Universal’s third movie to feature Dracula, released on November 5, 1943. Starring Lon Chaney, Jr. as the titular Count, SON OF DRACULA has the distinction of being not only the first vampire film to show the bat-to-man transformation of a vampire on-screen, AND the first to show a vampire turning to mist and back again***, it is also the first motion picture with sound to have a vampire die by exposure to the rays of the sun. At least the first that was released.

Though the screenplay is credited to Eric Taylor, SON OF DRACULA is from a story first conceived by Curt Siodmak — he of WOLF MAN fame (1941). In it, Dracula’s portly “son” (spoiler: it’s actually Dracula) goes by the name Alucard (which, with its simple reversal of letters, surprisingly seems to confuse the cast of characters until well into the film). He seduces a southern belle, and takes possesion of a Lousiana plantation before being exposed — figuratively as a vampire — and literally to the rising sun.

Just how much of the story is Curt Siodmak’s is unknown. His brother, Robert, who directed, hated the script, and reputedly fired his brother. Eric Taylor was ultimately credited with the screenplay, and Siodmak with the story. So who actually came up with the idea to have the Alucard killed by the sun?

Evidence would suggest it was Siodmak’s. After all, Siodmak was adept at dreaming up supernatural lore where none eisted before; it was he who introduced much of the werewolf lore we accept as canon today. More importantly, Siodmak grew up in Germany, and was active in the arts. He could very well have seen NOSFERATU when it premiered in March of 1922.

Born Kurt Siodmak in Dresden, in 1902, Curt worked an engineer early in his career, having had a doctorate in mathematics. But his interests, it seemed, were in the arts. He wrote novels, and used his connections in artistic circles to become involved in German cinema of the nineteen twenties. First, he and his wife-to-be Henrietta de Perrot signed on as extras in Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS (1926). He wrote a number of screenplays in 1929, and even invested royalties from his early novels in the 1930 movie MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG, directed by his brother. His 1931 novel F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht was adapted to film in 1932 (starring Peter Lorre). The list goes on.

Would it be too much of a stretch, then, to believe Siodmak — whose social circles would have included filmmakers — was quite familiar with Murnau’s NOSFERATU? Seeing the vampire killed by sunlight, Siodmak could have taken that idea and banked it for a future where it just might come in handy.

In 1937, Siodmak emigrated to the U.S. for fear of the growing tide of anti-semitism in his homeland. In 1941, he was given his big break in Hollywood, penning the screenplay for THE WOLF MAN. He would go on after SON OF DRACULA to write the screenplay for HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944), where Dracula (this time played by John Carradine) also dies in sunlight.

THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE

Of course, like most Hollywood stories, this one has a twist. Seven years after its German release and subsequent destruction courtesy of Florence Stoker’s lawsuit, a surviving / duplicated print of NOSFERATU was shown to American audiences on June 3, 1929.

Return of the Vampire (1943)
Return of the Vampire (1943)

It is quite possible that a veteran screenwriter named Randall Faye or the younger Griffin Jay (who would go on to write a handful of horror movies, including THE MUMMY’S HAND (1940) and THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1942)) were in the audience for that showing of NOSFERATU. Both are credited with writing THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE. In that film, released November 11, 1943, Bela Lugosi’s Armand Tesla is destroyed when a bomb strikes a cemetery, and the rays of the rising sun reduce the vampire to bones.

Armand Tesla Melts in the sun (from Return of the Vampire)
Armand Tesla Melts in the sun (from Return of the Vampire)

** That SON OF DRACULA and RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE were released only six days apart casts some doubt as to whether Siodmak was the first to ressurect the idea of dispatching the undead with the light of the morning sun. Perhaps Faye or Jaye can be given the credit.

Not knowing whose idea came first, it’s difficult to determine whether it was Alucard or Tesla who was the first of Hollywood vampires to get crispy by light of day. We might never know.

Christopher Lee's Dracula done in by sunlight at the end of HOROR OF DRACULA (1958)
Christopher Lee’s Dracula done in by sunlight at the end of HOROR OF DRACULA (1958)

But what we’re left with in the seventy-five plus years since is a legacy of vampires who die by rays of the sun. From the dramatic death of the Count in Hammer‘s HORROR OF DRACULA, to Anne Rice’s literary dandies, to the ravenous monsters of FROM DUSK TIL DAWN (who actually explode), death by daylight is now permanently part of vampire lore.

You can watch NOSFERATU in full HD quality below.

* There are stories of the Jiangshi from the Qing dynasty in China where this pseudo-vampire / zombie withdraws when the cock crows, but it’s not clear whether sunlight kills them. I suppose one could argue that sunlight didn’t kill Count Orlok either, and that the cock crow at dawn just made him turn to a mist and go away. To live to drink another day.

** The producer of 1931’s Dracula, Carl Laemmle Jr., definitely saw and drew inspiration from Nosferatu, as it was reputedly one of his reasons for wanting to secure the rights from Stoker’s Widow for a Hollywood adaptation (initially to star Lon Chaney). The screenplay, by Garret Fort — based upon the Balderston / Deane stageplay — adds to the broadway production the novel’s (and Nosferatu’s) opening in Translyvania, and  includes the famous scene where Harker cuts his thumb, illiciting a reaction of bloodlust from the Count (a scene taken DIRECTLY from Nosferatu when Hutter similarly cuts his thumb).

Of course, 1931’s Dracula ends as does the stageplay, with Dracula being staked at the end — and not by exposure to sunlight (which I suppose would have been less dramatic and much harder to pull off on stage!) BUT… the Spanish version of Dracula — filmed at the same time — does curiously find the count fearing the morning sun begin to shine into the catacombs of Carfax Abbey. He doesn’t burn up in the sunlight, but does make haste to return to his coffin where (as in the English version) Van Helsing dispatches him with a wooden stake. Would he have been turned to dust in the sun? We’ll never know.

*** Carlos Villarios’ Count arises from a thick smoke in the Spanish version, but there’s no implication he was corporealizing. Just rising!