Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

 Year:  1922

Director:  F. W. Murnau

Screenplay:  Henrik Galeen, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach, Ruth Landschoff, Wolfgang Heinz

Running Time:  84 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Wisborg, 1838:  Young clerk Hutter (von Wangenheim) is sent by his sinister boss, Knock (Granach), to a remote castle high in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to negotiate the purchase of a house by the mysterious nobleman Count Orlok (Schreck).  Hutter soon discovers the horrific truth that Count Orlok is a blood-thirsty vampire or nosferatu.

This classic silent horror film is technically the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula.  However the adaptation was unauthorised and unofficial.  The filmmakers approached Stoker's widow, Florence Stoker, for the rights to adapt the film, but they decided that they couldn't afford the price she was asking, and so they just decided to go ahead anyway.  When Florence Stoker found out, she was furious, and sued the filmmakers, bankrupting the studio, with the court ordering all copies of the film to be destroyed.  However it had already been exported internationally and some prints resurfaced in France and the United States.  The film is one of the most influential horror films ever made.  While not as heavily stylised as the surreal dreamscape of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), it is part of the German Expressionist movement, in which the character's inner worlds are reflected in the outer world.  Viewed today, it does suffer from overly melodramatic acting, as well as director F. W. Murnau's decision to use sped-up motion in scenes such as the carriage driving through the forest, and Orlok loading his coffins into a cart.  Murnau, apparently thought that sped-up motion was scary, but today it looks more comical than anything else, although at this point cinema was still very new and was still trying to find it's own language and style.   In fact some of Murnau's innovations work very well, for example the novel Dracula is told through diaries, journals, newspaper cuttings, and so on, and Murnau carefully designed the intertitles of the film himself to replicate the pages of old books and documents.  Despite being 100 years old, the film is still hugely effective, and is still one of the greatest vampire films ever made.  The vampire in Nosferatu is based on the traditional European folkloric vampire, as a hideous reanimated corpse rather than a suave lounge lizard in evening dress.  Max Schreck makes an indelible impression as Count Orlok, a cadaverous figure incased in black, his hands as grotesque talons, bat-like ears, bald, with a pinched face and sharp, rodent-like fangs.  The vampire is explicitly connected with disease, arriving in the town of Wisborg, accompanied by hordes of rats, and bringing the plague.  Schreck's portrayal was so convincing that there were rumours at the time that he really was a vampire.  The rumour inspired its own film Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a fictionalised version of the filming of Nosferatu starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe.  The film contains some unforgettable images, such as Orlok on the death ship; the shadow of the vampire creeping up the stairs towards his victim; and also the climax where the vampire is dissolved by the rays of the sun.  Possibly the film's biggest contribution to vampire lore is the idea of the vampire being destroyed by sunlight.  In Dracula, the vampire is weakened by sunlight, but it is not lethal.    Nosferatu was remade in 1979 as Nosferatu the Vampyr, written and directed by Werner Herzog, with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, and another remake is set for release in 2024.  Although originating as an unauthorised adaptation of a popular novel, Nosferatu has grown beyond its origins, casting an indelible shadow that lingers to this day.

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
     

Dracula

 Year:  1974

Director:  Dan Curtis

Screenplay:  Richard Matheson, from the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Jack Palance, Simon Ward, Nigel Davenport, Pamela Brown, Fiona Lewis, Penelope Horner

Running Time:  100 minutes

Genre:  Horror

1897:  Solicitor Jonathan Harker (Murray Brown) is in Transylvania to visit mysterious nobleman Count Dracula (Palance), who plans to buy property in England.  However, Harker finds out too late, what his host's true motivations are.  In England, Arthur Holmwood (Ward) discovers that his fiancé Lucy (Lewis) is Dracula's latest victim, and it is up to him and Professor Van Helsing (Davenport) to stop the vampire for good.

The good count himself may not have proved to be immortal, but Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel has proved to be well nigh un-killable, with numerous adaptations in almost all forms of media.  Every Dracula fan has their favourite, and while this made-for-TV movie may not be one of the best, it is still a solid adaptation.  Producer and director Dan Curtis was familiar with horror having created the frankly bizarre supernatural daily soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-1971), as well as the TV movie The Night Stalker (1972) which was also scripted by Richard Matheson, and other adaptations of horror classics such as The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde (1968) which also starred Jack Palance.  As scripted by horror writer Richard Matheson, this adaptation of Dracula remains faithful to Stoker's novel, albeit streamlining it a lot and cutting many supporting characters, including Dracula's bug-eating servant  Renfield.  Jack Palance, who was best known for playing heavies in gangster films and Westerns, may seem a strange choice for Dracula, but he does well, giving Dracula a Byronic menace, as well as a physicality often absent in other versions of the character.  The other performances are solid, and the film benefits from being filmed largely in England and Yugoslavia, despite being made for American TV.  While the film has its slow points, and there are times when the fairly low budget is obvious, it is a pretty impressive piece of work, and well worth checking out for horror fans.  The film's on-screen title is Bram Stoker's Dracula but, when Francis Ford Coppola was preparing his own film, also titled Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), he bought the rights to the title in order to avoid comparisons, and the 1974 film is listed as either Dracula or Dan Curtis' Dracula.  There are a couple of other points of similarity between this and the 1992 film, in both Dracula is explicitly referred to as the historical Vlad Dracula (aka Vlad the Impaler) and in both versions Dracula hunts down the reincarnation of his lost love (Lucy in this film and Mina in the 1992 film).     

Jack Palance is Dracula

Dracula

Year of Release:  1958

Director:  Terence Fisher

Screenplay:  Jimmy Sangster, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Christopher Lee

Running Time:  82 minutes

Genre:  Horror

In 1885, Doctor Van Helsing (Cushing) investigates the disappearance of his friend Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen), vampire hunter, at the Castle Dracula.   Van Helsing soon realises that Harker has fallen victim to the evil vampire Dracula (Lee) who has now set his sights on Harker's friends and family.  

Produced by the now legendary Hammer Films, this is probably the highpoint of what is known as "Hammer Horror".  It features the Hammer hallmarks of lavish production values (despite a low budget), classically trained actors, stories based on legendary horror tales, and most importantly all the blood and heaving bosoms that the 1950s censors would allow, photographed in vivid colour.  Christopher Lee turned in a star making performance as Dracula.  Lee made Dracula sexy and physical, moving from suave sophistication to demoniac monster.  Peter Cushing complements him as the rational but compassionate Van Helsing.  The film suffers from a low budget and some obvious day-for-night shooting, as well as an indeterminate sense of place where, despite being set in Eastern Europe, everyone seems to be English, but the qualities far outweigh the negatives.  Lee and Cushing became horror icons with this film.  Right from the opening images of Dracula's tomb spattered with blood this is empty of any inessentials.  This is a full blooded horror, which brought blood, fangs and sex to the vampire film.   

Christopher Lee is Dracula

Dracula

Year of Release:  1931
Director:  Tod Browning and Karl Freund (uncredited)
Screenplay:  Garrett Fort, based on the stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker
Starring:  Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan
Running Time:  75 minutes
Genre:  Horror

This is one of the most influential horror films ever made.  an English solicitor, Renfield (Frye) arrives in Transylvania to finalise the purchase of an old abbey by mysterious nobleman Count Dracula (Lugosi).  Renfield soon learns that Dracula is, in reality, a vampire.  Driven insane by his experiences and enslaved to Dracula, Renfield helps the Count travel to England.  Once in Britain, Dracula sets his sights on Mina (Chandler), the daughter of Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston) who runs the lunatic asylum next to his abbey.

There have been many screen adaptations of Dracula, and this is neither the first or the best of them, but it is still the most influential.  The film bears little resemblance to Bram Stoker's original novel of 1897, being largely based on a hugely successful 1924 stage adaptation which turned the novel into effectively a drawing room mystery.  The film has some extremely atmospheric scenes, particularly early on, capturing a real sense of decay and mystery.  As it comes along the film becomes increasingly flat, it's stage-bound origins very much in evidence.  A lot of the important sequences take place off-screen, including the film's climax, which is hugely disappointing.  There are also plot elements and characters that appear and are dropped without explanation, and it doesn't really flow.  However, Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula, even though he bears little resemblance to the character as described by Stoker he is still what comes to mind when you think of "Dracula", and to this day his portrayal is parodied, copied and referenced.  With his slow, fractured, heavily accented speech (Lugosi couldn't speak English at the time and learned his lines phonetically), along with his icy hypnotic stare, he has an otherworldly sense about him that dominates the screen.

This is not a good film, and it really hasn't aged well, but there are some great things in here and it is a key film in the canon of American film and the evolution of the horror film, which make it worth watching, and it is a must-see if only for Bela Lugosi's performance.

Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) and Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) in Dracula