Yes, Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu is chilling, and takes an attitude that Wang-Ka might appreciate - the vampire is utterly unromantic and the atmosphere is one of dread mixed with, well, the fatigue of centuries in that type of life I suppose. It’s a slowly paced and there’s not a whole lot of action, but if you let yourself really go with it it’s creepy as all get-out.
I agree that Coppola’s take on Dracula is lovely and lush (how does he get that gorgeous golden-brown light that permeates The Godfather and this film? Perhaps someone knowledgeable in cinematography techniques will, um, cast some light on the subject) but I thought the back-story supported the notion of the Count as a romantic character in a romantic tale quite well. It’s different, but that didn’t necessarily make it bad in my eyes. And his selfish, single-minded pursuit of that which he wished to possess seemed consistent with the character. Finally, the fact that Coppola provides us with as specific a history as he does, and one which does not seem terribly at odds with the collective legends already in existence, lends an odd kind of verisimilitude which isn’t present in many of the other films mentioned here - given some (ok, a lot) initial suspension of disbelief, the back-story seems a not-unreasonable explanation for this creature’s existence in the first place.
The idea of Dracula looking fr the re-incarnatoion of his dead love wasn’t original with Coppola’s movie. It had appeared earlier in the Jack Palance version, made by th same guy who made Dark Shadows, and scripted by the legendary Ricard Matheson. The same idea showed up in the old version of The Mummy, from which Matheson may have lifted the idea in the fist place.
Has anyone mentioned The Addiction? It’s vampire-as-junkie and has Christopher Walkin as a vampire (highly plausable I think.)
(I swear it exists but I can’t find it on Amazon or any where else. I hate to think it’s not on video.)
At the other end of the spectrum I think ** Love at First Bite** was very amusing.
Ya know, I plumb forgot about Lifeforce! AKA…The Space Vampires! Man, that was a great movie. At the time it seemed like the effects were decades ahead of other horror films. Several severely creepy sequences too.
LIFEFORCE rocks (all hail the Vampire Nudist Mathilda May)!
as does, on a totally different cerebral level- THE ADDICTION- yes, I did see that! Existentialism & Calvinism & Sacramentalism also mesh together in the plot. Heck, one vampire even quotes modern Calvinist theologian RC Sproul! It has been on video- I own it. Btw- anyone wanna give an opinion on NADJA? I’ve kinda watched it & wasn’t enthralled- much as I wanted to enjoy it (David Lynch produced it).
and I caught A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK one Saturday afternoon on Captain USA’s show (when USA Network was cheesy, unpolished & thoroughly entertaining)- I enjoyed that! Which reminds me of another little known gem- BLOOD AND DONUTS.
VAMP was just awful.
I’ve never gotten to see THE HUNGER- which I think was recently rereleased on video. Whitley Strieber (yeah, the COMMUNION guy) has written two sequels in the past couple years.
1958 HORROR OF DRACULA (US title)/ DRACULA (UK title)- the scene, which was totally awesome indeed, was also used at the beginning of DRACULA-PRINCE OF DARKNESS.
CalMeacham- I’m glad someone enjoyed Franco’s COUNT DRACULA. I wish I could. I do appreciate Klaus Kinski’s minimalist Renfield more than I had, however.
I guess I’ll be the first to say that I loathed Coppola’s version of Dracula. I can’t figure out why he called it “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” since the book was obviously thrown in the trash pretty early on. Coppola ignored the admirable subtlety of the story, instead going for patently obvious cliches and overdone visuals. Keanu Reeves as Harker? Go on, pull the other one. And, hi, can Lucy writhe around a little more on a tomb? Yeah, thanks. :rolleyes: What a waste of celluloid. Anthony Hopkins was wasted in his role… about the only good thing about it was Gary Oldman, and Tom Waits was a nice touch as Renfield. Overall, though, Dracula was further proof to me that Coppola has offically lost it. A final nail in his coffin, as it were.
For my money, a faithful translation of Dracula (as in Bram Stoker’s book) hasn’t yet made it to the screen. The Christopher Lee version is pretty good, though, and he was probably the best Dracula.
sigh Anyway. For good vampire films, I think they’ve mostly been covered. Near Dark is realy, astonishingly good. If you haven’t seen it you’re missing out.
Nosferatu is a chilling work of genius, and Shadow of the Vampire is its clever, funny companion. Dafoe was absolutely amazing in it!