May 10, 2010

A real vampire movie

My friend Gabe and I have a running Werner Herzog movie night. We love him. Gabe first introduced me to Mr. Herzog with Aguirre the God of Wrath and we followed up with Cobra Verde. We also saw Bad Lieutenant at the Mission a couple months ago. He's so great. The long shots, the pace, the dark, spiraling stories, the madness of Klaus Kinski (and Nick Cage for that matter), all the making-of drama that is inherent in a Herzog film. He stole a bunch of monkeys for the ending of Aguirre the God of Wrath in this cartoonish I'm pretending to be a vet and these little guys are under quarantine sort of way. Who does that? And then apparently brags about it?

Tonight we are watching Nosferatu the Vampyre. The original Nosferatu was released in 1922. It was based on Bram Stoker's Dracula but they couldn't obtain the rights to the novel, so names were changed and a few characters left out. The studio ended up being sued over the film and lost, but by that time the film had been distributed so widely that they weren't able to stop it. The first time I saw it was in a sophomore film class. Werner did a remake in 1979 and Klaus Kinski is Count Dracula. I can't wait to see his skulking, limping rendition. He won't glitter when the sun hits him and I bet there are shots of him eating rats.

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