Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They don't have fangs. Interesting.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Wow. Is that what you're reading? Oh, hello there.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Oh, hey. Hey. I was just getting ready for Robert Eggers new Nosferatu movie, Monster fangs. So, yeah, I definitely wasn't reading Breaking dawn just there, you know.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Why would I read that? Nosferatu is coming out. You know, I mean, there's lots of other great vampire novels to read, so. Nosferatu, 1922 classic. Obviously, we love monsters. Do we love Count Orlok?
[00:00:43] Speaker B: We totally love Count Orlok. Although apparently there are issues that I didn't even read into it.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: I know.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: You know, it feels like such a basic bitch thing to talk about, like how, like, the vampire in Nosferatu, like, was designed to look like a Jewish archetype or stereotype, rather. But I guess a lot of people don't know that. I mean, that everyone knows that.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: I was going at it from a totally folklore perspective. So he is actually like a Romanian version of a vampire, sort of. I mean, strigois are kind of vampires, and then they're kind of like revenants, too, but.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Well, let's back up.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Because a lot of people might not even know that Robert Eggers Nosferatu is a remake. And it is actually, in some ways, the third attempt at this story.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Actually, fourth now, because Doug Jones did his before.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Well, obviously, Nosferatu is the earliest filmed version of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. It is indeed, you know, insane, gay director FW Murnau, who is totally very German.
Yeah, it was.
They did not get the rights from Bram Stoker's widow.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Well, it's just a miracle how we even have it because, like, they, like, had to burn a whole bunch of the films, like the negatives and stuff like that. Like, it's crazy that we still have it.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you know, they tried to get around copyright and, you know, Dracula became Count Orlok, Mina became Ellen, Jonathan Harker became Jonathan Hutter. But, yeah, no, they, you know, they. Using the oldest trick in the book, they just changed everyone's names and adapted Dracula for the most part. And obviously, Bram Stoker's widow cried foul and they tried to destroy them, but the movie had already reached distributors and people were hoarding it because it was a beloved movie.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: And that's how we still have it, is because people literally hoarded it.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: The thing about the movie is that, you know, in typical expressionist fashion, it utilizes incredible gothic imagery, shadows that to this day aren't even, like, used as effectively.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Well, and even like when you're reading the text, because it's a silent film, they, they have this whole like, thing about shadows from your dreams haunting you. And it's always like the shadows are the thing. Like, it's kind of like the theme of the film.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it's true. It's true because, you know, Hutter goes off on his magical quest to make money and sell spooky Count Orlok a house. And where does he go? He goes to the darkness of Eastern Europe, you know? Yes. And yeah, I mean, Nosferatu is inhuman in so many ways. I mean, there's this incredible scene that you probably saw on spongebob where he's standing in a doorway and he's as tall as the doorway.
They literally constructed a doorway around the dimensions of this creepy actor named Max Shrek, who played the vampire. And he's just looming with his creepy looking face. There's this wonderful part where he's coming to Hutter and he has his hands out like this and you just see the shadow. Yeah. A lot of the time he becomes a shadow. And that kind of thing was kind of unheard of at the time. I mean, there's some similar stuff in the cabin of Dr. Caligari and stuff like that. But I mean, Nosferatu, if that had been, let me point out, Murnau directed, I believe, 22 movies and eight of them are considered lost films.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: But, yeah, Nosferatu, 1922, groundbreaking movie. But I mean, you know, we were talking about briefly how Nosferatu, I mean, compared to any of the Draculas. Right. Your Christopher Lee's, your Belugosi, your. Gary.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Gary. Open. Gary.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Okay, name a few more Dracula's. Just, just go, go.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: I mean, I'm just gonna go with Gary. Gary. Because. No, the guy that played Dracula in Moffat's Dracula was phenomenal. Also, Jonathan Rhys Meyers played Dracula. I could give you a whole. Leslie Nielsen played Dracula. I mean, if you really want me to go, I can.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Well, my point, my point is that Dracula is usually sexy, he's usually mysterious and suave, but Nosferatu and it interesting because, like, there's this line that I, I like from the Sandman where Morpheus says the stories always return to their original form. Right?
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: And you go to the first filmed version of Dracula and what does he look like? He has no hair, he's got rat teeth. These teeth right here. It's not, it's not the, the sexy little pointed fangs. It's these hideous monster fangs, pointed ears. Right. He looks like A rat.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: He looks like a strigoi. He's a strigoi from.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: Tell us about that.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: He's a strigoi from Romanian mythology. They were common in Moldavia, Wallachia and Romania. The first documented case of a strigoi was in 1672. And I feel really smart for knowing that right now.
But they're close to a revenant and they are. Some of them are supposed to be handsome, but most of them are bald. And they have the very like, you know, terrifying teeth that are like needles almost have. They're very tall with an elongated spine, and they have these thin claws. They can take the shrine, they can take the shape of wolves and bats and mist.
And they come back from the dead for unfinished business and to feed off of the blood of humans.
Yes.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Sounds sexy. So totally sexy. So Nosferatu is a strigoi.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: He's a strigoi in the way that they made him look, which means he actually did do his research. But also, I do believe you that he was going for something else. And you should talk about that now.
[00:07:11] Speaker A: Sure, sure. But before we. We move on to talking about everyone's favorite, you know, fascists, you know, you know, the Nazis. I mean, would other vampires be a strigoi? Like, is Edward Cullen a strigoi?
[00:07:24] Speaker B: No, no, he doesn't have any of the characteristics. And it goes back to the old mythology where they thought like, you know, the seventh born child or someone with red hair. So if someone. Someone who looked like a strigoi, but instead of being bald had red hair, that would make sense because a red haired child could be a vampire. The only film I've ever or show I've ever seen them actually use some of this mythology was Hemlock Grove, the first season with Bill Skarsgard, and he's like the seventh child. And also if you commit suicide, that will also bring you back as a student. They actually made a movie called Strigoi and it was a completely Romanian film back in the early thousands. And it's like a comedy of terrors. It was hilarious, but also it was very interesting. But yes, the needle rat teeth and the crazy elongated bat ears and sparkling like. Okay, Edward Cullen is not a vampire. He's a fucking fairy. I'm sorry, He's a fairy.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Oh, I know. You're totally shocked. You're totally shocked. Go back to your Breaking Dawn. Look at it from like a Len and she perspective, except even the Len and she were way more terrifying than Edward Cullen.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: I didn't know we were homophobic on the show. Well.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Oh, well, is that what I'm saying? Oh, goodness.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: All right, well, all joking aside, my real question isn't Edward Cullen, because I don't think he's a vampire either. He doesn't have fangs, which he also doesn't sleep on the ground, so.
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Okay, well, you're going to get me started again because, like, there's other vampires that don't have fangs. Like take Near Dark, for example, they use. Or Martin, where they use razor blades and things like that because they don't have actual things. There is mythology based around that.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah, so noted. So my real question is, what disqualifies Gary Oldman's, you know, Dracula from being a strigoi? And if he's not a strigoi, what is he?
[00:09:29] Speaker B: He is definitely like the Lord. He's. What is it? Byronic vampire is what I would call him. Yes, I'm sounding smart right now. It's that whole romantic European, romantic, gothic romantic vampire.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Can we call that. Can we call them the Victorian strain?
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Let's totally call them the Victorian strain. And honestly, the strain that Guillermo del Toro did, he uses strigoi in his. And he even calls them strigoi.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Oh, oh, you mean in the strain.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Okay. Yes, yeah, he actually uses that mythology as well and calls them by their proper name, which is Trigoi. And they have the bald head with the crazy teeth and the long fingernails. It's. It's really interesting.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, let's cover the strain in the future. So that's very interesting. Obviously there are different strains of vampires.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Muahahaha. Pun intended.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: I do think that it behooves us to say something about the time period. Right. As mentioned, Nosferatu was completed in 1922. The Nazis fully took power after the Reichstag fire in 1933 in Germany. The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 35 which victimized Jews. I'm not sure when the Night of the Long Knives happened. That was when Hitler purged all the communists, homosexuals and so on from the Nazi Party. Right, yeah. But I do want to note that one of Hitler's right hand men, Rome, he was. He was a flagrant homosexual. He was very flamboyant. He was kind of a badass too. You know, obviously we're talking about Nazis, so I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to lionize the guy. But he, you know, he had scars from the war. He was known he was a known street fighter. And Hitler really depended on Rome to keep people in line because he was kind of a hero. He was ordered killed along with everyone else. So my point is that the Nazi propaganda was very prevalent. And Murnau probably didn't really think. He probably figured that he, you know, he'd be able to just be one of the pick me's, you know, Let me back up. Nazi propaganda would often depict Jews as rats with no culture of their own.
They were like plague rats. They would infest countries with, you know, they would infest countries with an air of tolerance that they could thrive in and tolerate alternative lifestyles. And they could fester as they destroy Germany in that kind of air, you know? Mm. Modern day Nazis like Tucker Carlson and, you know, this guy, this Trump guy, I've never heard of him. Tucker Carlson called the Jewish president of Ukraine Zelensky. He called him a, quote, rat, a cowardly rat, like man. And Trump, of course, talks about the enemy within. So, I mean, these people know what they're doing and it's. It's all about scapegoating a minority, othering them and so on. Now when you look at something like Nosferatu, right? Like, we can talk about strigoi or.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Whatever, but there's definitely some undertones there that were very like Renfield. The Renfield character, his name is not Renfield in it. But the way that they show him, like with the money and the. He.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: He's a heavyset. He's got. He's got the bushy eyebrows, rubbing his hands. He can't wait for Dracula to come because money, they're gonna. They're gonna destabilize Germany together. It's gonna be great. He's gonna get rich. Orlok is bringing his rats to destroy whatever the town's name is, Vismark or whatever.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I probably have it wrong. That's okay. It's not that important. I just think of it as Berlin. I would like to point out that Dracula, 1897, of course, was following on from a novel called Trilby, which came out in 1894, which features a Jewish villain who seduces and abuses European girls, which the plot of Dracula is also about. Also, Dracula is described as having an upturned aquiline nose and bushy brows, which are part of the Jewish caricature. This novel is much older. Not. The Nazis did not create anti Semitism. And I would like to point out that the Nazis didn't just come swinging for Jews. They're not just evil because they did the Holocaust, you know, Holocaust. Not great. As I say, as a Jewish person, not a fan, you know, would not recommend 0 stars. 0 stars. Not cool, guys.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: Even if they hadn't done the Holocaust, you know, in 1937, there was the Degenerate Art Expo, where artists practicing any form of modern art. Kandinsky, do you want to name a few obvious.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: No, you just go right on ahead. This is like one of those things that infuriates my heart because as an artist, it just. It's sickening.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Anything that was not like, German or like a Titian painting, depicting things in stark, realistic terms. Statuesque, blonde, you know, realistic paintings of people. Anything like a Cezanne painting where it's impressionistic. Anything like that.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: Degenerate garbage. They were burning these paintings. They took them off the walls and they burned them. After the Expo, they also targeted jazz, expressionism, surreal French surrealism. All these things they said were not just degenerate, they were Bolshevik, which means communist and Jewish in nature. And it's ironic because fucking Nosferatu, with its anti Semitic depiction of a vampire would have been called, you know, degenerate.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: They totally would have burned that thing.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And the ironic thing is that the law did try to kill it because it was an unlicensed adaptation of Dracula.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: I would like to also just point out, just for funsies, that Berlin had the first gender clinic in the world. It was called the Institute for Sexual Research. It was opened in 19. And can you guess when it closed?
[00:15:07] Speaker B: I can't imagine.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Was it in 1933 when the Nazis burned all the books? No.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Really? I'm totally surprised.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: They stormed the building and they burned the book. So that was pretty great. That's pretty great. I love that. I love when things like that happen.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Because we're not like banning books here or anything either. It's fine.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: So here's my question for you, right? Obviously we love monsters. That's why we made this show. That's why I'm reading Breaking. I'm not actually reading Breaking Dawn.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: It was a. Thank God. Please don't. I've read it. It's. Yeah.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Werewolf Wants to Fuck a Baby in It. That's pretty fun.
It's Mormon art. We need more Mormon monsters to balance out the horror of Twilight. But I would, you know, before we move on to the 1979 Werner Herzog movie, just briefly, just to touch on it, I would like to ask, I mean, is there anything about Nosferatu that is sympathetic.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: The way that they characterize him and Stuff I don't believe, then the monster itself is sympathetic. He is literally just the idea of a monster.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, he's pretty. He's pretty Bare bones.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah. He's like. There's not like. Yeah, he just is what he is.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, like, obviously, like, we gravitate, like, when we think of vampires. Like, we enjoy the Anne Rice vampires, who are, you know, melancholy and sad.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: And lovely and I hate them. And fuck you, Lestat. Also, you're my friend. It's fine.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So obviously, that's a different strain of vampire. Regardless. If you're looking for humanism in your Nosferatu, you really want Werner Herzog's Nosferatu. Engel der Nacht from 1979 with Klaus.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Kinski and Isabella Gianni. And it's one of the most beautiful, surreal, magical films ever made. Yes, that one. That's the one.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: This movie is glorious. Yeah, it is. Essentially, it's a remake of Nosferatu, and it takes Nosferatu as its own form of the Dracula story, you know, maintaining the names of Count Orlok, Ellen, who is the Mina character. There's no Lucy in this movie.
There are so many exquisite shots. There's this one part where Nosferatu is just in shadow and he's just. There's a light on him and he's shining like the moon because he's so pale.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: You want to talk about the bat. I know you want to talk about the bat.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah, let's talk about the bat. Yeah. Dracula movies have this, like, tradition of using bad, like, rubber bats, even when they. They don't need to, like. Okay. Bel Lugosi in the 30s. Insert clip of bad bat from lots of movies. Anyway, I have to do this.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Dracula versus Frankenstein.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you know, is it a house of. House of Frankenstein where Dracula becomes a rubber bat and then the wolfman grabs him and jumps out the window? Yeah, yeah, they use lots of bad bats. Even the fucking Hammer movies where, I don't know, just. Just stock footage of a bat. So, yeah, in. In Engelter Nacht from 79, they have an actual fruit bat. It's great. He's adorable. He looks like my character Splinter.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: He's so cute. He has Splinter's ears and he's just, like, flying, and I love him.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty great. This movie is sexual. It's beautiful. It's exquisite. And the thing about the movie is that in Herzog's own words, he wrote Count Orlok as kind of an ambivalent agent of change. He can't help being this horrible, blood sucking, immortal vampire. The sequence where he comes to Vizborg is like. It's like a dark bacchanalia. You know, there's. There's people dancing at first and then there's less people and then the animals are just roaming free.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Oh, my God. The whole scene where they have the table and everyone's eating and it's like this giant feast and then everyone's like, decaying and it's all the rats. Oh, my God. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: I don't know, it evokes plague imagery or something. Well, it does.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: It actually does invoke plague imagery, which is exactly what he was going for at the time.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Now, interestingly enough, that town didn't have a rat problem before that movie was shot there.
[00:19:18] Speaker B: But he sure brought him in, didn't he?
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Yeah, all those cute, adorable little brown rats you see throughout the movie. And you should watch it.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: They're still there to this very day. So.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Talk about bringing a non like, indigenous animal into a new. And like, totally ruining everything. Because they do that.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Just like the Jew, you know, the filthy Jew. I could say that anyway.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: You can say that. I. It just. It makes me feel gross. It's.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Well, because it's awful. But Werner Herzog obviously wasn't coming at it from an anti Semitic point of view.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: No, he made it romantic.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: He made it romantic. That's the thing with remakes even not all.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Some remakes are terrible, but not that one.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: I'm not saying remakes are good or bad. I'm saying that when remakes are made, they're metatextual.
They're being made because the original was valuable in some way and someone decided to make a remake for a reason. You know, Herzog remaking Nosferatu with dialogue and color and a full runtime.
It adds something to it. Undeniably.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: He added, like, sympathy for a vampire.
Like you actually feel bad for Klaus Kinski. And I will tell you, Isabelle Adjiani in that film is one of the most hauntingly beautiful things about the whole thing. Like, it would not have worked without her.
And the whole death scene is completely like. It has a different feel than the original. Right.
Like it's.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Yeah. I will say. I will say that she is hauntingly beautiful. She's not. I think that, you know, the Ellen in the original movie, Greta Schroeder, better. You know, there's more going on in her performance. But that's a silent movie. And it's a silent movie, so you have to act a bit more. So there's more going on. Her. Her performance is more passionate, but by necessity, you know, the actress in the 79 movie, on the other hand, Isabella Gianni, she has the frailty that I think the, you know, the material demands. Because in a movie like that, you want your woman to be helpless and something to be snatched by the monster.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: Well, I feel like the original Nosferatu, they made her just like a child.
Like I'm gonna say the Jonathan character, but it's not the Jonathan character. You know what I mean? He brings her those flowers and she's like, why did you kill them? And then he pats her head like a child and like all of this stuff. And she's like, there's something very more grown up and sexual in nature about Isabella Gianni. Even though she still has kind of like the innocence, she is not a child. Like, there is no mistaking her or her actions as childish or childlike.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Yeah, she. She does.
She does allow Nosferatu into her bedroom, which we can talk about. I mean, I. I do take the tact that she's a bored housewife and Nosferatu is just that exciting.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: Well, she sacrifices him to destroy the monsters. She's like.
She's like the one, right?
[00:22:51] Speaker A: That's the intention.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Yes. Like, that's. That's what she does. Like, she's like, game over. I'm ending this. This is like a thing. But then it's also like, there are definitely those undertones.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: I just feel like. I just feel like Jonathan Hutter. Not too exciting, you know, I don't know. He's all excited to go make money.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: You know, I thought in the 79 version, the non happy ending where Hut actually does become the next Nosferatu at the end was very interesting. Like, she did all of this work and killed herself to like, destroy this thing so that she could save her husband. But really, like, her husband is bad.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: The plague never ends. Evil never ends.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: And that's the thing, you know, we.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Were just talking about the Nazis a minute ago. Yeah, they were popular in 33 and.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Apparently they're popular now.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Look what happened this year. Right? So pretty great, right? Yeah. So obviously, you know, part of the reason why people love Nosferatu is just because of how timeless it is. I mean, personally, I choose not to watch it with the Count Chocula music that plays over it. It's in the public domain. So any version you have or you're watching on YouTube or whatever. It's gonna have.
And it's this.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: If you watch Bram Stoker's Dracula, you can see exactly how influenced they were by the Nosferatu music. Like the whole underlying when things are going bad music.
That's what they used to inspire it. And I hadn't realized that until recently because I've been a huge fan of Bram Stoker's Dracula. I had the soundtrack since I was in seventh grade. It's fine.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: And of course, when you say Brom sticker Dracula, you mean the Coppola movie from the 90s.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: Well, yes, they literally. I need to.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: I need to highlight Dracula.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: You give me Scary Gary. It's Scary Gary for life. But we're not having that conversation here.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: I don't know. I just. For me, like, I'm trying to watch this, like, moody, dark, frightening, surreal movie and this tokata and fugue derivation is just playing and I'm like, this is Narskite, you know.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Well, they have actually recently done this amazing version of Nosferatu, and instead of accompanying it with the original music, they are putting it entirely to radio heads like Kid A. Yeah. And they're showing it all over right now. Like, I think it's showing in Austin next week.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: That's a great idea.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Sounds. I'm just saying.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I usually make my own playlist for every.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: You know, and it usually has to do with Marilyn Manson, doesn't it?
[00:26:08] Speaker A: No, I didn't say anything.
No, I was listening to Sleep Token. I was playing Sundowning while I was re. Watching it for, you know, this particular episode, this particular video. Although if I was your vampire, it does go very well with, you know, the sequence where Nosferatu shadow goes like this and crushes Ellen's heart.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: I will say, in Francis Ford Coppola's version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, since we're being that picky, they don't think you're.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: Talking about the book.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: They do a whole lot of play with the shadows in that one too, which I think was entirely inspired by Nosferatu.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: It's like the whole thing with the shadow. It's beautiful. I will say, a lot of the written, since they don't have dialogue, like the things that you read on Nosferatu for, like, the context and whatnot. It is beautiful. It is beautifully written. The ideas of shadows and, like, dreams coming to haunt you. Like, I thought. I thought that was just magic.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: It absolutely is. And speaking of shadows, there's one more movie to talk about, which is 2000 Shadow of the Vampire.
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Academy Award number nominees.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: John Malkovich. I will finish my picture.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: And Willem Dafoe. This is hardly your picture any longer. Shadow of the Vampire.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: How dare you destroy my photographer? Why not the script girl?
[00:27:44] Speaker B: I'll eat her later.
I have a story to tell about this particular movie because it matters. When I was a senior in high school, that movie was coming out. And as a senior in high school, I didn't have a lot of money. I saved up, like all sorts of kinds of quarters and things and this and that so that I could see it. When it came to Midland, Texas, they even published this whole really amazing article, which we will get to later here in a second, about the mythology behind Shadow of the Vampire. And I saved it. I cut it out. It was awesome. And I was gonna see it in the theater and then it never showed because it's Midland, Texas. So that was tragical.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Real America.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you, Texas. You're awesome.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: It's pretty great. Shadow of the Vampire is a classic in its own right. I mean, we talk about Nosferatu, but Shadow of the Vampire for something metatextual like that. It's a movie about the making of Nosferatu. And the big twist is that Max Schreck, the creepy actor that's playing Count Orlok, is a real vampire during the production.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Well, and that's based on mythology that Adu Cairo, I cannot pronounce his name. It's terrible. I'm gonna butcher it. He wrote this surrealism of Cinema book in 1953.
And he talked about how Count Orlok, like, he created this mythology of Count Orlok actually being a vampire and how he wasn't actually seen for most of the movie until, like, these certain things. And he wasn't in a movie afterwards. And like, he created this entire folklore around it, which was so cool. And the movie even adapts itself to the creation of the movie. Like, with the create with, like, vampire mythology. And it's just freaking mind blowing. It is amazing.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Well, let's get into that.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Okay. Sorry, I get a little excited.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: No, you're cool. So we have John Malkovich playing FW Murnau as this mad. Basically a mad scientist directing this crazy movie. It's his. It's his symphony of horror and everything has to be fucking perfect. He screams at his production crew. He's meticulous about all of his details. And most of all, his star. None other than.
Roll camera.
First up, you move forward very slowly, heading always for the tunnel.
This is perfect.
Just a dark hole that has been unexplored untouched for a long, long time.
And then one night, something crawls out.
Patterson, meet Count Orlok.
Max Shrek, who is only to be called Count Orlok on set. And Max Shrek is played by the one and only character actor, Willem Dafoe, the Green Goblin himself.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Willem Dafoe, who, incidentally, is playing Van Helsing in Edgar's new Nosferatu, which is super cool. And I love him so much. Okay, that's it.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty wild, isn't it?
[00:31:37] Speaker B: I love it so much.
Who is this woman? This is Ellen, my wife.
She has a beautiful bosom.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: I would say that his Nosferatu, in some ways, is more personable and tragic than The Nosferatu in 1980, 1979's Engelder Nacht, just because of how just lost he seems. There's a part where he's sitting with the. I think, the writer and the lighting guy. And he's like, hey, Max, what's up? Take off the ears. And he just looks at him like, are you talking about. And they're like, when did you become. They're like, all right. He's doing his method acting thing, whatever. He thinks he's a real vampire. They're like, when did you become a vampire? And he goes, I don't know. They're like, how did it happen? He goes, I don't remember. And, like, he's not lying. He doesn't know. And it isn't until, you know he's drinking whiskey with them. It is until a bird flies by.
[00:32:38] Speaker B: It's not a bird. It's bat. And it's not a real bat this time, which I'm super grateful for.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Well, we don't need to be killing animals for our. Our vampire movies. Only people kill. People kill all the people. Yeah, people suck.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I mean, that's the whole plot of the film. It's fine.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: But he takes. He takes his little rat teed. And he bites down right in front of them and just starts drinking its blood.
So there's this great scene where he's. Basically. He's just killed, I think, the lighting guy or the cameraman.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: The cameraman.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: He's killed. Yeah, he's killed. He's killed Murnau's cameraman. And he's like, telling him, like, you, we have an agreement. You are not to kill my crew, my actors. And he's like, the makeup girl, maybe I will eat her neck. And he's like, you will stay away from her. And he's like, don't think I can't harm you. And Willem Dafoe says, how would you harm me? And like, you know, Murnau, the director is like.
And like Nosferatu is like, even I don't know how I would harm me anymore.
And he looks almost sad. Like, man, it just goes on and on. I live in this creepy hole here. It fucking sucks. It's all dark and stuff. And all he wants is this nice lady that the director has promised him if he just plays along and makes his stupid little movie with him.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Which is Greta.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Which is Greta, the actress portraying Ellen Hutter.
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Yes, that film. Okay. There's so many levels to that film because, you know, Udo Kier is his like right hand man. And he was one of the first gay Draculas on film, like ever. And so you have Udo Kieran this movie. And then you have Carrie Elways who was actually Arthur Holmwood in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Like they got in people, I guess, who had been. Who knew vampires basically, who had done like the things. And it was like super interesting. And then you have like Eddie Izzard playing the guy who's playing Hutter. And it's. I don't know, it's super. It's super interesting.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Speaking of metatextual and people associated with being vampires or being involved with vampires, the movie was produced by Nicolas Cage, who was in my favorite movie of.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: All time, Renfield or the Vampire's Kiss.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Renfield. Are you talking about hell? You say, I have to give you. I have to give you Vampire's Kiss. Watch. Watch it.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: See, that's one of those ones where you don't know. Was he really bitten by a vampire or was he crazy? It's like, Martin, I don't know.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: I don't know about that one. During the. The incredible award winning bathroom scene where he can't see himself in the mirror. We see him just fine. So I don't know, it's.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: It's one of those things.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Oh, Christ. Oh, Christ, where am I?
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Where am I?
Where am I? Oh, Christ, where am I?
[00:35:53] Speaker A: I've become a vampire. Oh, God.
Oh God, where am I?
[00:36:03] Speaker B: You have a goddamn crapper. Lol. And I'm trying to take a dump. So either shut up and leave the.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Goddamn acting lessons for home or go.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Back to the ladies room. It's like, you don't, you don't know. It's interesting.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: He doesn't have fangs. He has to buy.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: Well, neither did Martin. It's literally borrowing stuff from Martin. No, it really was though, like if you look it up, it's like, literally, like, whatever, nerd. Okay? I'm the biggest nerd you've ever met. I'm sorry. This is like my thing I did.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: I'm tired of your sophism.
Yeah. So that. That's what Willem Dafoe screams at. I. I have, like. I have dementia. No. What's the actor's name?
[00:36:42] Speaker B: John Malkovich.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Yeah. He screams at a Todd Malkovich. You know, he's literally trying to control a monster, which is just delightful because he can't.
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Except in the end, he is the monster. He's. Because humans are always worse than the monsters. You know what I mean? It's.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Well, yeah. So is there something going on with the death scene? It's like, you can have the girl after your death scene. And I feel like with actors, they're obsessed with getting death. Death scenes. I mean, look at Sean Bean. I mean, you know, he's obsessed with death scenes, you know.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Okay, you're just saying that because I'm making you watch the Frankenstein Chronicles, and Sean Bean is phenomenal. So I'm just saying. And also to die well is a beautiful thing. No, he wanted the guy to. He wanted the vampire, Max Shrek, to pretend to die, but he had planned on killing him. He was going to kill the vampire at the end. Either way. It was like.
I don't know, it was crazy. And then he's still talking to Alvin, who is Udo here, even though Alvin's dead because he tried to save Greta and so did Carrie Elways. And he's still talking to him, even after, like, he's dead and on the film, and he's still talking to him, like, can you switch the lighting? Can you do this? Because he's, like, so in it. He has no perception of reality anymore.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: He's a madman. And, like, I think that, like, we're not getting this across, right?
The. The final scene of Nosferatu, you know, Nosferatu is. Is with Ellen Hutter. You know, he's drunk on her blood. They're laying together. He keeps drinking from her. And then he gets up, not having realized how long he's been there, and gets incinerated. But what happens in the movie is he has his stupid death scene. And then he goes, okay, I will drink her blood now. And they get in the way and try to stop him, and he kills every one of the crew. And the whole time, the director keeps. Just keeps cranking the camera.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: The other important thing that happened was that in order to keep Greta calm, because she was, like, not okay with this, is that they injected her with laudanum so that she would just be, like a complete helpless, docile thing. And I think that actually was part of the plan to begin with, because I think because Max Schreck drank her blood, he was also intoxicated on the laudanum as well as the blood.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Sure. Anything for art, too.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: And that's the thing.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Well, what's amazing about the movie is he goes on a rampage. He kills every one of the crew as they try to stop him. And he is drugged. He is kind of woozy.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: That's the only reason. And he doesn't realize when the director stops cranking the camera long enough to go lift the door and let the sun in, and then goes back to cranking Nosferatu, drinks the girl dead, fucking murders every one of the crew, and then gets incinerated by the sunlight.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: And Murnau actually films the real death scene.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: And his final line before credits roll, I think we got it. It's incredible. He's a monster. He's like Dr. Frankenstein.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: That's exactly it.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: The other thing I will say is what they did in the film, the whole ship scene. So vampires in folklore, some folklore, cannot cross moving water. Like, big bodies of water. They can't do it. So he's like, I'm not doing the ship scene. Like, Max Shrek's like, I'm not doing this. When they're having their whole, like, fight.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: This is in Shadow of the Vampire.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Yes. And then Murnau, you know, John Malkovich is like, oh, no, you're gonna cross this. This is what we agreed on. You're gonna do this. And he's like, there's no other way to get you across. And he's like, I can fly because there's actual.
So with the film, during the ship scene, there's, like, a whole controversy about the actor playing the vampire during the ship scene not actually being Max Shrek. Like, it's a totally different actor.
So they use the mythology from the actual film with actual vampire mythology and, like, meshed it together in such a, like, creatively brilliant way. I was really happy with it.
[00:41:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's as. As I said before, it's metatextual. It's very clever. I don't think we're likely to. So I like to do double features. I paired this movie with Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Shadow of the Vampire pairs really well with it because they're both fictional movies about the making of classic films.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: In this case, Being nosferatu and Plan.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: 9 from outer space.
[00:41:28] Speaker A: Glenn or Glenda and the bride of the Monster, you know, award winning movies. All of which have monsters in them, by the way. Way. You know. Well, no, what's it called? All three movies actually have Belugosi in them.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: So, you know, who was actually Romanian. So he was an actual Romanian playing a Romanian count slash vampire, which, you know, did you know, he was a sculptor. He did amazing sculptural work. Like, Bela Lugosi was like crazy talented.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Well, do you think he'll. He'll sculpt Stephenie Meyers? Do you think he'll sculpt her?
[00:42:05] Speaker B: I mean, maybe from the dead. It'll look. Maybe more like the Crypt Keeper, but it's okay.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: You know, he was buried in his Dracula cape.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Yes, I did know that.
[00:42:15] Speaker A: Yeah. It's pretty cool. So, speaking of which, so what do we think about. I mean, are we excited for the Eggers movie? Right?
[00:42:21] Speaker B: I mean, okay, Robert Eggers and the amount of full core knowledge that that man has and like, I don't know, his previous films, the Witch, the Lighthouse, he actually makes mythology terrifying. I don't think I've ever been so excited. I think this might. And I'm hoping that it might eclipse the 79 for me. And that's gonna be really hard because that one's like super pretty. And I'm a sucker. I'm an artist, so I am a sucker for pretty imagery. Like, just, just, just give it to me.
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I, I have no expectations because I, you know, the Northman, the witch, the Lighthouse. What is there to say? The man's a genius.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I feel like Robert Eggers takes the idea of the other and these like, things that we create to haunt ourselves and then uses them. Then he just uses them. I don't know, he's. I, I might be mildly in love with him. It's fine.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Well, that's the thing about the other. Right? I mean, and that's, that's why we love monsters. You know, societies.
Societies create monsters based around the things that they're afraid of. Right. You were talking about the strigoi, you know, Jews, the Roma, who you might know as Gypsies. That's a Slurpee.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: It's terrible.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: The Roma do not like that. So the Romani don't like that. But the fact remains is that these two, these two groups of people were othered because they were. They would often not integrate or weren't allowed to integrate. You know, Jews were forced to live in ghettos. They weren't allowed to own property. Romani were. They would travel and make money any way they could by reading fortunes or, I don't know, selling art, whatever, whatever it might be. And as such, because they were not part of the common populace, look differently and dress differently, they were feared. They were feared as thieves, as hucksters, and as werewolves and vampires. I mean, if you Google blood libel, the first thing that comes up is, you know, middle age conspiracies about Jews stealing Christian children for blood in their matzos. And like, you know, Jews were persecuted as werewolves, as. As vampires, and also just as Jews. And the thing is, is that, like, you know, this. You know, you could say, sratu's not at you. He's a strigoi. The fuck do you think a strigoi is at its heart?
[00:44:52] Speaker B: I don't necessarily think you're wrong. Like I said, like the first written down thing in 1672 about the Strigoi, the idea of them changed over time. You know what I mean? Like I said, like, it used to be like the seventh child born. The red hair, stuff like that. And then it turned into, you know, something rat, like, with teeth. Like. I don't think you're wrong.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: And I. I think that at the end of the day, we like the monsters because we feel like we're othered, you know, not just because, like, I'm queer and you're a woman, but also just because we're weird and we like strange things. And frankly, we look at that monster and we're like, hey, that monster's a little misunderstood. I mean, what the fuck, you know, you watch the 1979 Engel der Nacht Nosferatu, Engel der Nacht by Herzog, and.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: You feel bad for him. You love him, you can't help it.
[00:45:50] Speaker A: Where's he supposed to go?
[00:45:51] Speaker B: I know. I will tell you, though. In real life, Klaus Kinski was a totally horrible human being. And most actresses did not want to work with him because of how he treated them. He was, in fact, an actual monster.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Well, I'm just not. Not a cool monster.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: More like a. Yeah, like the bad kind. Like, not the cool monster. Not the kind of monsters that we love.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Yeah, well, he wasn't. He wasn't a movie called Vampire in Venice, so.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: And it was really bad.
I watched 15 minutes of it, dude. I was like, I will finish it because I have this thing where I have to watch every vampire movie ever made. It's been since I was a child. It's ridiculous. But that one's hard.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: 1979. No, wait, it's an Italian movie.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's. It's not Herzog. I'm just saying it's not Herzog.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: It's real good.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you want to give me that? Give me subspecies and I'll watch that. The second one's the best one.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: Did Kinski die?
All right, well, go ahead and watch his movies. You're not giving him money. It's cool.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. And honestly, especially the 1979 Nosferatu because. Because it is a surrealistic dream house.
Also, Annie Lennox's video cold totally borrows imagery from this movie, and it is magic. She also did Love Song for a Vampire for Bram Stoker's Dracula, but she didn't base it off of the Dracula novel. She read Anne Rice's novels, and it made her feel some kind of way because she'd been through some really traumatic experiences that I'm not going to talk about because that's her own story. She found these lyrics, and she wrote Love Song for a Vampire. And I'm not gonna lie, I had that on rotate. Like, I listened to it on repeat for, like, a year when I was in seventh grade. It's fine.
[00:47:45] Speaker A: She wears Nosferatu's hat. Here it is right here.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: She wears a hat like Jeanette on Forever Night.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Forever Night.
[00:47:52] Speaker B: And yes, I. I want a hat like that. And also, Greta wears this same hat in Shadow of the Vampire because I'm a nerd.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Forever Night. The whole reason we made this show.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: I know we still got to get to that because we're cool. Like, that just gives you guys something to look forward to.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: Forever Night. Here's a still from it right here.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: The Endless Forever Night.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: Well, I guess on that note, I mean, when does Eggers come out? Eggers?
[00:48:19] Speaker B: Not Christmas Day. Not that I'm excited.
[00:48:22] Speaker A: Christmas Day. Oh, so just before Sonic 3.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Yes. There is also a version of Nosferatu that neither Daniel nor I have watched that has Doug Jones in it, which is accompanied by a symphony, and I am dying to watch that. So when we review Nosferatu, we will also review the Doug Jones one if.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: We want, if we can find it. I don't know.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: It's literally streaming everywhere. You can find it.
[00:48:46] Speaker A: Yeah, but. Yeah, but don't have to pay money for it.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I'm gonna pay the four bucks to watch it, because it's like, four bucks, and it's Doug Jones four dollars who does it. Okay. If your money's going to Doug Jones. Are you really not gonna buy it?
[00:48:58] Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean, like, you know, that's a sandwich right there, you know, Doug Jones.
Well, at any rate, we love Doug Jones. Love your demons. Write poetry.
Stay spooky. Make art.
[00:49:13] Speaker B: Stay spooky, my friends.
[00:49:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
King Loki swinging in from the future just to ask you to like and subscribe if you enjoyed what you saw. And also follow us on Patreon. Go subscribe there because we'll be dropping the second part of this video where we talk about Robert Eggers new Nosferatu movie, as well as some exclusive stuff that'll be there. Also, special shout out to Tuxed Media, where, you know, they handle all of our social media needs. So, you know, it's always wise to shout out your social media sorceress.
