Sunday, March 15, 2009

Ahead of the New Yorker curve ... yay!

This week's New Yorker has a long and obscure history of the vampire myth. About a month ago, for no apparent reason, I went on a vampire-watching tear myself. Well, not so much a tear really, as a little brace of vampire movies---F.W. Murnau's (1921) silent original "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror" and Werner Herzog's 1979 remake "Nosferatu: The Vampyre".

Murnau's original is often rated very highly among vampire buffs : ) ... but for me, it's little more than a curiosity. Herzog's movie, however, is top-notch. Klaus Kinski plays a maniacal Count Dracula. Isabelle Adjani is Lucy (I think that's what her name was) and the whole movie rises to the crescendo of the Count slavering over her pale nape. Aside from truly sinister and terrifying opening scene, this movie is an artfully dark take on the classic story rather than a gore fest.

All of this is pretty strange stuff, and I find the mythology pretty hilarious (not just Herzog's movie). Does the vampire myth really resonate so deeply that it deserves repeated treatment (according to the New Yorker, Warhol, Coppola, Polanski, Herzog ... all made vampire movies) and then this extended critique in the New Yorker? I got bored and didn't finish the article.

3 comments:

  1. I actually know a vampire. He lives in Seattle, wears fingerless gloves, and ages back and forth. Tizita can back me up on it, though she doesn't like to, because nobody ever believes it, anyway.

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  2. Hey Nik!

    I just saw you blog, cool. The vampire hype seems to be global, the twilight series is sold here even in newsstands all over the place (in French, no less).

    Scary-fashions seems to cycle, we're past zombies since a couple of years ago, and well into vampires. I can't wait for the "mad scientist" era to come :-)

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  3. what did you think of the movie 'shadow of the vampire'? have you seen it?

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