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Halloweentober Day 5

Nosferatu The Vampire. Warner Herzog's reimagining of Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula.

This movie is incredibly unsettling. This very well may be the most intriguing, yet scary, vampire film I've ever watched. I added this movie to my collection thanks to Scream Factory. This is certainly a movie to revisit on dark and dreary weather. The entire film, the setting to the characters, makes me feel icky for lack of a better word.

The movie opens with enchanting, haunting music over horrifying corpses and dramatic slow-motion cinematography that is so unsettling. The character of Renfield may be one of the most, again to use this word for lack of a better one, unsettling of the character I have ever seen in a film. In all the hundreds of movies I have watched over 40 years, this one character makes my skin crawl and my soul want to leap from my body and hide in the shadows. He's a horrific laughing little man and I'd prefer never to see him ever again to be honest with you.

There is one scene in this film, thankfully, that breaks the thick as blood tension momentarily where Count Orlock, sorry Count Dracula, is traipsing around town hiding his dirt-filled coffins all over the place. The hilarity is in just imaging his state of mind as he places these things sporadically, methodically, in various spots to best suit his needs to hide from the sun in his nightly quest to feed. There is something so simple yet entirely pathetic about his desperation here that it lends the character some pity; he's like a rat trying to escape a sinking ship...

But fairly quickly the film finds its horror again... This movie is brilliant in making me feel yucky as I've said but this is what makes this film so good. It's truly horror in that it's a frightening film from the ghost town to the vampire, which transcends physical bodies if he's forced to. Being a German-Franco collaboration lends the movie more alienation for the modern viewer. 

The movie is like a fever-dream Dracula adaptation. I personally think Bram Stoker's Dracula by Francis Ford Copola (1992) is the better version of the book, but it's (Herzog's) Kinski's Dracula which gets under my skin and stays there for a while, like a tick's burrowed head in my skin, gnawing at me even after it's over. Watching Klaus Kinski stare down Jonathan Harker after sucking the blood from his finger is fascinating and truly breathtaking! He stands, ready to attack Harker, but holds firm in his resolve, understanding that Harker may be more useful to him once he arrives in Wismar (which stands in for London). Incredibly more useful, you will see.

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