Nosferatu

Nosferatu

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Ellen Hunter (Lily-Rose Depp) screaming

The films of Robert Eggers can get a bit overwrought and Nosferatu is no exception. Both The Northman and The Lighthouse (The Witch not so much) overdid it. All well and good if you subscribe to the view that too much gothic is still not enough. And you’ll be doubly re-assured by Eggers’s decision to go back to the sensational source as the inspiration for his turreted gothic assemblage. That’s not entirely true. Eggers does lean narratively and visually on FW Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu, but that itself was a blatant steal from Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. Murnau and co hadn’t paid for the rights and hoped that changing character names would be enough … Read more

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

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Dracula from behind in silhouette

The Last Voyage of the Demeter lifts a chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and turns it into a standalone story. Ambitious enough. If you haven’t read it, it’s a dark, storm-tossed episode told through the captain’s log of the doomed vessel the Demeter, a cargo ship which sails from Varna in Bulgaria, laden with boxes containing Transylvanian earth – plus one containing Dracula himself – destination London. By the time the ship reaches the UK, everyone on board is dead, having been sucked dry on successive nights by the Count. Spoiler? Yes, except the film gives us this grim conclusion right up front – a ship wrecked off the coast of Whitby and … Read more

23 November 2015-11-23

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Tom Cruise hangs onto a cargo plane in Mission Impossible Rogue Nation

Out This Week Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (Paramount, cert 12) Tom Cruise’s desire to be James Bond really gets the better of him in M:I5, a flabby action spectacular which has visited Vienna, London, Langley, Paris and Havana within its first 20 minutes or so, right after the pre-credits sequence which sees Jason Bourne, hang on, Ethan Hunt clambering onto the outside of a cargo plane as it’s taking off. A stunt done for real, we’re told, and impressive whether it was or wasn’t. Christopher McQuarrie wrote and directed, so there’s plenty of that “who is the real bad guy?” attitude that was the making of The Usual Suspects, but here is … Read more

Nosferatu

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Max Schreck as Nosferatu

Murnau’s 1922 silent expressionist classic is one of defining moments in movie-making. It borrowed its story wholesale from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, gave it the lightest of resprays and hoped no one would notice the theft. Bram Stoker’s widow noticed and sued for breach of copyright, won the case and had all the prints of Nosferatu destroyed. But the film refused to die, and rose from the undead. Its star, who plays Count Orlok (aka Nosferatu), is one Max Schreck, “Schreck” being the German word for terror. Maximum Terror – and you thought modern Hollywood had a lock on this sort of thing. Adding to that in terms of myth-making, it was always rumoured that … Read more