NOSFERATU Needs More Vampire While SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE Needs Less Cary Elwes

"It will cost you sweat and tears and perhaps...a little blood."

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet because I'm fucking exhausted.  This is the time of year when sports has the ability to slowly take over my life.  Right now there's college football, NFL games, the start of the NHL and oh yeah, THE RED SOX IN THE WORLD FUCKING SERIES.  On top of all that, I've still got to watch a movie a day.  And write them up.

Yikes.

This past weekend was a busy one, with USC playing Notre Dame on Saturday night at the same time that the Red Sox clinched the ALCS, followed on Sunday by the Head Of The Charles Regatta and a Patriots loss to the Jets in a controversial play that still has analysts scratching their heads.  Somehow amidst all that testosteroniness I managed to squeeze in viewings of the silent vampire classic Nosferatu as well as Shadow Of The Vampire, a fictional account of Nosferatu's production based on rumors that the title character was played by an actual vampire.

There is shockingly little vampire stuff in Nosferatu.  Max Schreck's Count Orlok is utterly fantastic with a creature design that is singularly creepy, from his giant rabbit fangs to his spindly fingers and long nails.  Tragically, he's AWOL for too much of the movie, spending a big chunk of the story locked away in the hold of a ship bound for Germany.  In the meantime we get a lot of Hutter the estate agent falling down while trying to beat Orlok back to his wife Ellen, who's largely stuck at home with neighbors while getting psychic premonitions about her husband's doom.  When Orlok does arrive he brings a herd of plague rats with him, while also putting Hutter's boss Knock under some kind of spell that turns him into a raving lunatic despite never actually sharing a scene with the vampire.  The townsfolk decide to sacrifice Knock in order to bring an end to the plague (?) while Hutter returns home and warns Ellen that Orlok is out to get her, leading Ellen to eventually sacrifice herself in order to distract the Count the rising sun.  Day breaks and and the monster is disintegrated, which also magically lifts the plague from the land.

Considering that the whole script hinges on the lethal effects of sunlight, it's astounding just how much of this movie was shot during the day while pretending to be night.  In fact, when Hutter first meets Orlock, the Count immediately complains about the late hour and claims that it's after midnight, a statement that's immediately followed by the two men walking across an open courtyard while casting shadows on the ground.  It's pretty distracting, although the restoration I watched on Netflix Instant did an admirable job at recreating the original color tinting; the film was obviously shot in black and white, but most day scenes are colored yellow while night scenes are colored blue to help compensate for the wonky lighting.  Also, I have to wonder if most audiences were functionally illiterate in 1922, as most of the title cards remained on screen long enough for me to read each one about four times.  Has average reading speed increasing over the last 90 years?  Were they catering to people who couldn't read very well?  I'm curious only because it really grinds down the pace of the film - trim the title cards down to reasonable lengths and the movie would probably be about 15 minutes shorter.  The effects are truly impressive for the time, including one scene where Orlok appears as a transparent spectre and another where he climbs into a coffin and then levitates the lid into place.  And all the use of Orlok's freaky shadow is awesome.  But mostly I just wish that Nosferatu had a little bit more actual Nosferatu.

In that regard, Shadow Of The Vampire does not disappoint.  The always great Willem Dafoe stars as Max Schreck and it's a supremely creepy performance.  Apparently it was his work here that helped land him the role of the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and it's little wonder as Schreck and the Goblin bare a striking resemblance to each other.  In fact, I wish that Raimi had used some of the Schreck prosthetics instead of that silly metallic mask, as Dafoe might then have had even a nominal ability to display human emotion.  Dafoe plays Schreck as a tragic character, an evil beast grown somewhat weary with age who finds motivation in his obsession with Greta Schroder, the film's leading lady.  She's dangled in front of his face like a carrot by the obsessive F.W. Murnau, played with a kind of manic focus by John Malkovich.  There's an admirable effort to recreate many of the shots in the original film, right down to grain of the film stock.  Unfortunately, the Shadow Of The Vampire vacillates between true horror and pure camp.  It's almost as if Dafoe and Malkovich are in one movie while Cary Elwes and Udo Kier are in another, and poor Eddie Izzard is stuck somewhere in the middle.  It's odd to say the least.  Then again, it was produced by Nicholas Cage.

Still, I feel like I haven't done enough justice to some of the horror classics this month.  We're about a week away from Halloween and it's becoming clear that I'm just not going to get around to any of the Universal Classic Monsters, which is a real shame.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to dive into a few before my year is up.

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Title: Nosferatu, A Symphony Of Horror
Director: F.W. Murnau
Starring: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schroder, Alexander Granach
Year Of Release: 1922
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant (TV)

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Title: Shadow Of The Vampire
Director: E. Elias Merhige
Starring: Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich, Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack
Year Of Release: 2000
Viewing Method: Netflix DVD

IRON SKY, Because Moon Nazis!

"Remember me?  The moon spook you turned into a snow flake?"

I was getting ready for work this morning when I got an automated call from my office warning me that MBTA service had been suspended.  Moreover, Boston residents were advised to remain in their homes and only open the door for uniformed, identified law enforcement officers.  I immediately checked Twitter and turned on the local news to discover that, after photographs of the two Marathon bombing suspects were released by the FBI yesterday, the two young men shot and killed MIT police officer Sean Collier before stealing a car and fleeing to nearby Watertown.  There they engaged in a shootout with local authorities, firing assault weapons and tossing explosive devices (including another pressure cooker bomb) out into the streets.  Officers shot and killed one suspect, 26 year old Tamerlan Tsarnaev of Chechnya, and there's currently a massive manhunt underway to find the second suspect, Tamerlan's 19 year old brother Dzhokhar.  (Both have been living in Cambridge for a number of years and Dzhokhar became an American citizen last year on Septemeber 11th.)  The entire Boston area is on lockdown at the moment, so Jamie and I have been home watching TV nonstop since 8:30am.  It was going to be a pretty slow day at work, so I had planned to play some pretty serious catch up today.

So much for that idea.

It's been a few hours now and there haven't been many developments.  As the hours pass, it's starting to feel more and more like this thing might drag on through the weekend, which is a fairly daunting prospect.  Watching TV has never been so exhausting.  I've seen some friends start sharing funny videos and livestreams of kittens, looking for some kind of entertaining alternative to the insanity taking place on outside.  So if you're like me and you're starting to suffer from news footage fatigue, allow me to make a suggestion: Switch over to Netflix Instant and throw on Iron Sky.  If you're looking for something fun and maybe a bit silly, this fits the bill pretty perfectly.  Don't believe me?  I have four words for you:

Nazis...FROM THE MOON!

Let me be clear: this is by no means a "good movie."  However, credit where credit is due: they really fucking go for it.  Remember when Snakes On A Plane was a thing?  The premise sounded so good that the internet went rightfully bonkers for it.  Unfortunately the movie itself was pretty disappointing.  In many ways it was reminiscent of a Syfy Original movie starring the likes of Debbie Gibson and Lou Diamond Phillips, something based entirely on a funny title with no actual filmmaking taking place.  But Iron Sky doesn't rest on the laurels of its hilarious premise, that of a group of Nazis who took refuge on the dark side of the moon and are planning an invasion of Earth despite knowing next to nothing about the last seventy years of humanity.  Yes, there's some very self aware humor, particularly everything having to do with black American astronaut James Washington, but it's also got something to say about political propaganda and American foreign policy.  But at the end of the day this thing knows on which side its bread is buttered; the Nazi death ship is powered by cell phones and the story culminates in a completely absurd international space battle.

The movie's tongue is planted firmly in its cheek, but director Timo Vourensola clearly isn't setting out to make a shitty movie.  All things considered, the effects work is actually pretty decent and while the dialogue often leaves something to be desired, the story moves along at a pretty good pace and escalates in a way that really does not disappoint.  Plus you have to be impressed at any movie that somehow manages to turn the Nazis into sympathetic heroes.  Unfortunately, the weakest link here is the cast.  The great Udo Kier, playing Hitler's lunar successor, is surrounded by a group of moderately talented unknowns, and while it's not enough to fully derail the movie, it's pretty hard to ignore.  Julia Dietze and Gotz Otto are serviceable as our lead Nazis and Stephanie Paul does a caricature of Sarah Palin that's on point but feels incredibly dated and ultimately goes nowhere.  The weakest links are definitely Christopher Kirby as astronaut Washington and Peta Sergeant as campaign spinmaster turned military general Vivian Wagner.  They get by far the broadest, most over the top material but tragically they lack the chops to really sell this stuff.  For example, Sergeant gets an incredible costume change in the last half hour, but the whole thing ends up falling pretty flat because she clearly has no idea what to do with herself.  It's a real shame.  With a proper cast and minimal tweaking, Iron Sky could have been something truly special.

In the end, all that really matters is that it's FUN.  It might not be a top notch film, but it's certainly not for lack of trying.  Plenty of movies fall short of their potential, but there are too many mainstream studio releases that just feel straight up lazy.  You have to give these guys points for putting in the effort to make the best Moon Nazi movie possible.  Everyone is working so damn hard that despite the film's obvious flaws, Iron Sky ends up being downright endearing and more than a little bit adorable.  So grab some friends, pour some drinks, and fire up the Netflix.

After a week like this, we could all use a few laughs.


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Title: Iron Sky
Director: Timo Vourensola
Starring: Julia Dietze, Udo Kier, Christopher Kirby, Gotz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Stephanie Paul
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant (TV)