Mick Raubenheimer’s Reel to Real continues a Halloween-themed swing into the horror genre with two appropriately vampiric films, following the demented wickedness of ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’:
BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA (1992): Possibly the definitive film version of Bram Stoker’s gothic classic. Ironically, possibly also the blueprint for what would devolve into The Mickey Mouse Vamp Club.
Hovering over the bared, inviting neck of kitsch, Bram Stoker’s Dracula positively oozes with crimsons and candles and darkness and bosoms and swooning blood. During what might have been my 13th viewing, I also noticed seemingly for the first time (or rather, flinched) that Keanu Reeves does his signature zombie skit throughout the film, and somehow doesn’t pull director Francis Ford Coppola’s whole project into his mindless abyss.
Coppola ingeniously recasts the brooding, claustrophobic horror of the novel as erogenously simmering romance. “I have crossed oceans of time to find you,” Gary Oldman’s Transylvanian, fanged seducer hoarsely informs the on-the-brink-of-fainting Wynona Ryder. The film belongs to Oldman, who brings a most unlikely sensuality – and most improbable erotic intensity – to the table, metamorphing from blood-drenched warlord to ancient, eerie man-creature to werewolf, to chic, Transylvanian womanizer.
Tom Waits also shines in an appropriately eccentric cameo, while the deliciously delicious Monica Bellucci leads a trio of orally fixated vamps. Funtastic stuff.
SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, E. ELAS MERHIGE (2000): An abiding cult favorite, Nosferatu became a movie of some legend. Shadow of the Vampire is a quirky, staged account of the filming of this silent classic of the vampire genre.
Central to the original 1933 film was the identity and, ahem, true nature of the chillingly convincing actor Max Schreck, who portrayed cinema’s most atypical, physically repellent vampire. So bizarre, in fact, was Schreck’s performance and the vampire’s twitchy physicality, that people became convinced it was too weird to be fiction.
In E. Elias Merhige’s post-modern take, Willem Dafoe – he of the erotically macabre mouth – climbs into Nosferatu’s skin. The film explores what could have been had the rumors been true – that Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau had bribed a down-and-out anemic vampire to appear in his film. Needless to say, the film’s crew members begin mysteriously disappearing, and rumors spread.
It all leads to a situation of mutiny, as John Malkovich’s Murnau is too blinded by hunger for greatness to admit that he might have made a deal with the wrong devil. Intriguing, fun, and more than a little creepy.
[First published in Muse magazine.]
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