Tag Archives: Nosferatu

Fright Club: Nosferatu’s Influence

Happy Halloween! We’re celebrating the holiday and Nosferatu‘s 100th birthday with a look at the movies most influenced by F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece.

5. Dracula (1992)

Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus called this film Francis Ford Coppola’s last must-watch. It does look amazing. Gary Oldman and Tom Waits are great, too. Everybody else…

Coppola’s inspiration for the film was Murnau’s masterpiece, which is especially obvious in the opening act. Not only is Oldman styled as a goofy older character, but his shadow seems to move on its own. A clear homage to what Murnau did to such startling effect.

At the heart of the film is a glorious Oldman, who is particularly memorable as the almost goofily macabre pre-London Dracula. Butthe film feels more Hammer than Murnau, as the lovely Sadie Frost joins a slew of nubile vampire women to keep the film simmering. It’s a sloppy stew, but it is just so tasty.

4. What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

In the weeks leading up to the Unholy Masquerade – a celebration for Wellington, New Zealand’s surprisingly numerous undead population – a documentary crew begins following four vampire flatmates.

Viago (co-writer/co-director Taika Waititi) – derided by the local werewolf pack as Count Fagula – acts as our guide. He’s joined by Vladislav (co-writer/co-director Jemaine Clement), who describes his look as “dead but delicious.” There’s also Deacon (Jonathan Brugh) – the newbie at only 187 years old – and Petyr. Styled meticulously and delightfully on the old Nosferatu Count Orlock, Petyr is 8000 years old and does whatever he wants.

The filmmakers know how to mine the absurd just as well as they handle the hum drum minutia. The balance generates easily the best mock doc since Christopher Guest.

3. Salem’s Lot (1979)

Tobe Hooper was such an epic choice to direct this made-for-TV event film in 1979. Stephen King’s beloved novel seems an odd fit for network television, especially in Hooper’s delightfully macabre hands.

Though David Soul may have been the draw in ’79, it’s James Mason’s rich and peculiar delivery of every line that kept the film odd and fascinating.

Hooper’s best choice? Going full Orlock with Mr. Barlow!

2. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

Also in 1979, Werner Herzog committed his own take on the Murnau masterpiece to film, and what a glorious endeavor that was! Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre looks hypnotic, and his score feels like a haunting ode to the live accompaniment the original might have boasted.

Klaus Kinski effortlessly revives the ratlike presence of Max Schreck, while Herzog’s script teases out a melancholy the original only hinted at. Isabelle Adjani’s heartbroken central figure is the anchor for the film, but Herzog has a great twist up his sleeve to leave a final scene impression.

1. Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

E. Elias Merhige revisits F. W. Murnau’s masterpiece Nosferatu with smashing results in Shadow of the Vampire. Wickedly funny and just a little catty, ‘Shadow’ entertains with every frame.

This is the fictional tale of the filming of Nosferatu. Egomaniacal artists and vain actors come together to create Murnau’s groundbreaking achievement in nightmarish authenticity. As they make the movie, they discover the obvious: the actor playing Count Orlok, Max Schreck is, in fact, a vampire.

The film is ingenious in the way it’s developed: murder among a pack of paranoid, insecure backstabbers; the mad artistic genius Murnau directing all the while. And it would have been only clever were it not for Willem Dafoe’s perversely brilliant performance as Schreck. There is a goofiness about his Schreck that gives the otherwise deeply horrible character an oddly endearing quality.

Fright Club: Best Cinematography

A poetry of dread – that’s what the best in this business can conjure with the right framing, movement, stillness. Whether it’s Dick Pope creating that just-off feel of bucolic 1950s Idaho for The Reflecting Skin or Owen Roizman forever narrowing the screen, our gaze and our options in The Exorcist, the cinematographer is horror’s true master. Mike Giolakis kept us looking around us and behind us to see where the monster might be in It Follows. John Alcott (The Shining), Chung-hoon Chung (The Handmaiden) and Mo-gae Lee (A Tale of Two Sisters) haunted and mesmerized us with color, movement and atmosphere. Has anybody done it better?

Here are our nominees for the best cinematography in horror.

5. Kwaidan (1964) – Yoshio Miyajima

Gorgeous. If you’re looking for something theatrical, a true marriage between cinematography and set design, Masaki Kobayashi’s Oscar nominee Kwaidan delivers the goods.

Yoshi Miyajima lenses four different ghost stories, each almost entirely shot on highly decorated sound stages, and what he captures is the feeling of make believe that gives each story the sense that it is being told, being embellished for your spooky enjoyment.

Each story is given its own look, its own personality. It’s bold and memorable filmmaking, and an absolute sight to behold.

4. Antichrist (2009) – Anthony Dod Mantle

Whether it’s the utter poetry of the opening tragedy, the claustrophobic dread of the middle section, or the lurking menace of the final reels, Antichrist is an absolute treasure trove of emotional manipulation.

At times, Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography feels at odds with the actual content on the screen—particularly in Act 1. But mining for beauty in pain is one of many ways director Lars von Trier succeeds in surprising and horrifying with this film.

Mantle finds a terrifying beauty in ugly thing von Trier throws at you, and the end result is a mesmerizing and brutal work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4U5rdi9w-U&t=20s

3. Nosferatu (1922) – Fritz Arno Wagner

We needed to pay our respects to some of the earliest and most memorable work in cinema. Why F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu? Because nearly 100 years later, there are still images that haunt your dreams.

Fritz Arno Wagner (who also lensed Fritz Lang’s glorious M) capitalizes on the unseemly, vermin-like look of Count Orlock (Max Schreck, genius) with creeping silhouettes, lurking shadows, and camera angles that emphasized his hideousness.

Whether it’s the shocking rise from the coffin, the shadow on the staircase, or the image of the sole survivor of the ship recently decimated by “the plague,” Murnau and Wagner’s images are as evocative today as they were in ’22.

2. The Lighthouse (2019) – Jarin Blaschke

The atmosphere is thick and brisk as sea fog, immersing you early with Oscar nominee Jarin Blasche’s chilly black and white cinematography and a Damian Volpe sound design echoing of loss and one persistent, ominous foghorn.

Director/co-writer Robert Eggers follows The Witch, his incandescent 2015 feature debut, with another painstakingly crafted, moody period piece. The Lighthouse strands you, along with two wickies, on the unforgiving island home of one lonely 1890s New England lighthouse.

Salty sea dog Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) keeps the light, mind ye. He also handles among the most impressive briny soliloquies delivered on screen in a lifetime. Joining him as second is one Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson)—aimless, prone to self-abuse, disinclined to appreciate a man’s cooking.

1. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – Guillermo Navarro

In 2006, Guillermo Del Toro’s masterpiece may have somehow been overlooked as Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film, but at least the Academy had the common sense to notice Guillermo Navarro’s cinematography.

He manages to create an atmosphere equally imaginative and bitterly realistic, something befitting a child’s logic. Like a fairy tale, the screen blends the magical beauty of good and evil. His vision is as hypnotic as it needs to be, as childlike as we need it to be. It’s beautiful, innocent and utterly heartbreaking.

Fright Club: Best German Horror Movies

How is it even possible that we’ve recorded 109 Fright Club podcasts and we have not covered German horror yet?! It’s high time we remedy that situation, and we do so with the help of Fright Clubber #1, John Dean.

German has an incredible history in this genre, from some of the earliest and most memorable horror films through the contemporary indie gems that will become the next generation of classics. We talk through the five best – and a bunch of others you should really see.

5. Rammbock: Berlin Undead (2010)

Why does this film work?

Michael (Michael Fruith) arrives in Berlin to visit his recently-ex girlfriend. She’s not home. While he waits in her apartment, Berlin falls prey to the zombipocalypse.

It’s actually the rage virus, and it’s how well Rammbock plays like the Berlin equivalent of 28 Days Later or Quarantine that helps it excel.

Michael finds himself trapped inside his ex’s apartment building, scheming survival tricks with the plumber hiding out with him. The team work, strategy, human kindness and pathos all combine with really solid acting and more than a few well-choreographed action bits to help this film more than transcend familiar tropes.

You love these guys. You believe in them, and the idea that they won’t make it through this is dreadful. Director/co-writer Marvin Kren, blessed with a stellar cast, works your sympathies and your nerves.

4. Der Samurai (2014)

Writer/director Till Kleinert’s atmospheric Der Samurai blends Grimm Brother ideas with Samurai legend to tell a story that borders on the familiar but manages always to surprise.

Jakob, an unintimidating police officer in a remote German berg, has been charged with eliminating the wolf that’s frightening villagers. Moved by compassion or longing, Jakob can’t quite make himself accomplish his task – a fact that villagers and his commanding officer find predictably soft. But a chance encounter with a wild-eyed stranger wearing a dress and carrying a samurai sword clarifies that the wolf is probably not the villagers’ – or Jakob’s – biggest problem.

Pit Bukowski cuts a peculiar but creepy figure as the Samurai – kind of a cross between Iggy Pop and Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs’s Buffalo Bill). His raw sexuality offers the perfect counterpoint to the repressed Jakob (Michel Diercks).

Kleinert’s sneaky camera builds tension in every scene, and the film’s magnificent sound design echoes with Jakob’s isolation as well as that of the village itself. And though much of the imagery is connected in a way to familiar fairy tales or horror movies, the understated approach gives it all a naturalism that is unsettling.

It’s a beautiful film about embracing or forever suppressing your inner monster, but this is no ordinary Jekyll and Hyde retread. Kleinert’s vision is steeped in sexuality and sexual identity, giving it a fascinating relevance often missing in this style of horror film.

3. Goodnight Mommy (2014)

There is something eerily beautiful about Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s rural Austrian horror Goodnight Mommy (Ich seh, Ich seh).

During one languid summer, twin brothers Lukas and Elias await their mother’s return from the hospital. They spend their time bouncing on a trampoline, floating in a pond, or exploring the fields and woods around the house. But when their mom comes home, bandaged from the cosmetic surgery she underwent, the brothers fear more has changed than just her face.

Franz and Fiala owe a great debt to an older American film, but to name it would be to give far too much away, and the less you know about Goodnight Mommy, the better.

Inside this elegantly filmed environment, where sun dappled fields lead to leafy forests, the filmmakers mine a kind of primal childhood fear. There’s a subtle lack of compassion that works the nerves beautifully, because it’s hard to feel too badly for the boys or for their mother. You don’t wish harm on any of them, but at the same time, their flaws make all three a bit terrifying.

The filmmakers’ graceful storytelling leads you down one path before utterly upending everything you think you know. They never spoon feed you information, depending instead on your astute observation – a refreshing approach in this genre.

Performances by young brothers Lukas and Elias Schwarz compel interest, while Susanne Wuest’s cagey turn as the boys’ mother propels the mystery. It’s a hypnotic, bucolic adventure as visually arresting as it is utterly creepy.

The film is going to go where you don’t expect it to go, even if you expect you’ve uncovered its secrets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hisSd7qyY40

2. Funny Games (1997)

A family pulls into their vacation lake home, and are quickly bothered by two young men in white gloves. Things, to put it mildly, deteriorate.

Writer/director Michael Haneke begins this nerve wracking exercise by treading tensions created through etiquette, toying with subtle social mores and yet building dread so deftly, so authentically, that you begin to clench your teeth long before the first act of true violence.

His teen thugs’ calm, bemused sadism leaves you both indignant and terrified as they put the family through a series of horrifying games. And several times, they (and Haneke) remind us that we are participating in this ugliness, too, as we’ve tuned in to see the family suffer. Sure, we root for the innocent to prevail, but we came into this with the specific intention of seeing harm come to them. So, the villains rather insist that we play, too.

Once Haneke’s establishes that he’ll break the 4th wall, the director chooses – in a particularly famous scene that will likely determine your overall view of the film – to play games with us as well.

But it is the villains who sell the premise. With actors Arno Frisch and Frank Giering, the bored sadism that wafts from these kids is seriously unsettling, as, in turn, is the film.

1. Nosferatu (1922)

Best vampire ever. Not the seductive, European aristocrat, cloaked and mysterious, oh no. With Count Orlock, filmmaker F. W. Murnau explores something more repellent, casting an actor who resembles an albino naked mole rat.

Given that Murnau equates the film’s vampire-related deaths with the plague, this vermin-like image fits well. But more than that, thanks to a peculiarly perfect performance by Max Schreck, Murnau mines the carnality of the vampire myth for revulsion and fear rather than eroticism.

Famously, the film was meant to be the first Dracula movie, but Murnau could not work out an agreement with Bram Stoker’s estate (who later sued, and all copies of the film were nearly lost). He changed a handful of things in an attempt to avoid the eventual lawsuit and filmed anyway. Names are changed (Harker is now Hutter, Dracula is Orlock, etc.), and details are altered, but the story remains largely – well, criminally – the same.

The genius move is the spindly, bald hunchback for a vampire – why, he’s almost a European Monty Burns! Murnau’s mastery behind the camera – particularly his ability to capture the vampire’s shadow – made the film a breathtaking horror show at the time. But don’t discount this as dusty history.

Sure, the silent film style of acting appears nothing short of quaint today, and the Dracula tale has been told too, too often at this point. But Max Schreck is a freak, and in his bony, clawlike hands, Count Orlock remains the greatest vampire ever undone by a sinless maiden.





Fright Club: Best Black and White Horror

Finally! We’ve been kicking this one around for a long time, but this week – with the help of Vince and Grant of the podcast In the Record Store – we finally tackle the best black and white films in horror.

What a list! We had no choice but to employ fuzzy math for this one, and even so we had to leave off so many greats – including some that Grant and Vince would have included.

6. Night of the Living Dead (1968)

From the brightly lit opening cemetery sequence to the paranoid power struggle in the house to the devastating closing montage, Night of the Living Dead teems with the racial, sexual and political tensions of its time. An unsettlingly relevant George A. Romero knew how to push societal panic buttons.

As the first film of its kind, the lasting impact of this picture on horror cinema is hard to overstate. Romero’s inventive imagination created the genre and the monster from the ground up.

They’re dead.

They’re back.

They’re hungry for human flesh.

Their bite infects the bitten.

The bitten will eventually bite.

Aim for the head.

Romero served as cinematographer for this project, likely choosing black and white as a cost saver, but we’d later learn that this format is 1) highly forgiving of zombie makeup, and 2) spookier. The color palette turns the Waltons-esque setting of the farm house into something isolated and sinister.

The shrill sense of confinement, the danger of one survivor turning on another, and the unthinkable transformation going on in the cellar build to a startling climax – one that utterly upends expectations – followed by the kind of absolutely genius ending that guarantees the film’s eternal position in the annals of horror cinema.

5. Eraserhead (1977)

There truly is no film quite like David Lynch’s first feature, eh?

Eraserhead defies simple summarization. Easily the most surreal of all Lynch’s films – which is a huge statement – the film follows sad-sack Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) dealing poorly with fatherhood.

The film becomes a nightmare of paternal angst and existential crisis – indeed, it may be impossible to name a film or filmmaker more able to bring a nightmare to life.

It’s also among the finest examples of corporeal horror you will find. The shadowy, grimy b/w photography – partially handled by Lynch’s longtime cinematographer Frederick Elmes – amplifies the dismal stagnation facing Henry.

At the same time, it gives a weird, nostalgic camp factor to the Lady in the Radiator and adds a particularly lurid element to that whole bleeding “chicken” thing.

Plus, the baby. Yikes. Alive with the most disturbing imagery, Eraserhead is impossible to forget.

4. Psycho (1960)

Among the four Oscar nominations the film garnered was one for John L Russell and his gorgeous black and white cinematography.

By 1960, most folks had abandoned black and white – including Hitchcock. But with his truest foray into horror, the master returned to the high contrast imagery for a number of reasons.

Sure, one of those was that it freed him up with the blood. Had all that stuff in the shower been red, he’d never have gotten away with it. Mrs. Bates wouldn’t have looked quite right, either.

Russell’s visuals also gave the film its lonesome American Gothic quality. Norman seemed more innocent, Marion Crane seemed more mysterious, and the old Bates house seemed spookier.

Of course, was there ever a question Hitch knew what he was doing?

3. Frankenstein (1931)

James Whale’s genius was in finding the monster fascinating, rather than the doctor. Nearly every other Frankenstein made before or since has been preoccupied with the doctor, but Whale understood that it was this unique beast, baby and man, evil and innocent, that should compel our interest. Who cares about one more doctor with a god complex?

Luckily for Whale, he had Boris Karloff. Karloff’s gift was in seeing the monster as a neglected child. His monster is sweet and tragic, characterized by the terrible freedom of a loosed child full of fear, unbridled excitement and shame. Karloff nails this childlike energy and ignorance married to a grown man’s strength in a way that no other actor truly has.

Obviously, in 1931 Whale had no choice but to film in black and white, but how fascinating that a movie without color created a green monster. What a testament to the film’s vidid imagery – created with the help of make-up guru Jack Pierce. A nightmare of greying flesh, black stitches and mechanical pieces, this image of the monster speaks of death, mad science and bad intentions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McUce_xwxeA

2. Nosferatu (1922)

Not the seductive, European aristocrat, cloaked and mysterious, oh no. With Count Orlock, filmmaker F. W. Murnau explores something more repellant, casting an actor who resembles an albino naked mole rat.

Given that Murnau equates the film’s vampire-related deaths with the plague, this vermin-like image fits well. But more than that, thanks to a peculiarly perfect performance by Max Schreck, Murnau mines the carnality of the vampire myth for revulsion and fear rather than eroticism.

Murnau’s gift was not solely in casting. The shadows danced, the dead rose and Europe writhed with the dead and dying. His skill with the camera was unparalleled. Between his casting and his camera, he made the most authentic vampire movie – perhaps ever.

Sure, the silent film style of acting appears nothing short of quaint today, and the Dracula tale has been told too, too often at this point. But Max Schreck is a freak, and in his bony, clawlike hands, Count Orlock remains the greatest vampire ever undone by a sinless maiden.

1. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

James Whale and Boris Karloff – with tag along make-up man Jack Pierce – returned to Castle Frankenstein for an altogether superior tale of horror. What makes this one a stronger picture is the dark humor and subversive attitude, mostly animated by Frankenstein’s colleague Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger).

Thesiger’s mad doctor makes for a suitable counterpart to the earnest and contrite Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive, again), and a sly vehicle for Whale. This fey and peculiar monster-maker handles the most brilliant dialogue the film has to offer, including the iconic toast, “To gods and monsters.”

The sequel casts off the earnestness of the original, presenting a darker film that’s far funnier, often outrageous for its time, with a fuller story. Karloff again combines tenderness and menace, and Elsa Lanchester becomes the greatest goth goddess of all film history as his Bride.





Fright Club: Horror’s Best Weirdos

Horror loves it some weirdos – and so do we! Be honest, Carrie would not have done nearly so much damage had she fit in somehow, right?

Oh, Carrie – how we love you and your nutcase of a mom. And the White women are hardly alone. Freaks and misfits litter the horror cinema landscape – and thank God for it! Whether Edwin Neal – the hitchhiker and harbinger of what’s to come in West Texas – or an unseemly Pit Bukowski, white gown and katana bedecked in Der Samurai.

You want to get really weird? How about anybody from Calvaire? Possession’s swinging Heinrich? Let’s not forget our favorite prom non-goer, The Loved Ones’ Lola (Robin McLeavy).

And these aren’t even the best. Who are the five best weirdos in horror cinema?

5. Orlok (Willem Dafoe) Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

Veteran actor/effortless weirdo Willem Dafoe picked up an Oscar nomination playing Max Schreck, the “actor” who portrayed vampire Count Orlock in FW Murnau’s groundbreaking 1922 film Nosferatu.

Shadow film pokes good natured but pointed fun at the industry, but it’s based on the rumor at the time that Schreck’s performance was so authentic because he was, indeed, a vampire.

Dafoe is odd as they come, and also heartbreaking, goofy, lovable, wounded and terrifying.

4. Ichi (Nao Ohmori) Ichi the Killer (2001)

Clearly someone from a Takashi Miike film was bound to make this list. Indeed, just about every character in this film would have been in contention. But no one out-weirds Ichi.

A man-child who’s equal parts sympathetic and repellant, Ichi does the bidding of those who care for him. Their moral compass does not always point North, though they try to do the right thing by letting Ichi unleash his very, very wrong behavior in a kind of, sort of heroic way.

Which is why some of his actions are so profoundly, scarringly surprising. Because Ichi does some seriously fucked up shit. And he’s not even the one who skins a guy alive.

3. May (Angela Bettis) May (2002)

Oh, Angela Bettis. No one – not even Sissy Spacek – captured the crushing awkwardness of trying to fit in when you are, deep down, cripplingly odd as well as Bettis.

Her May aches for a friend. She has some heartbreaking trouble finding that in Adam (Jeremy Sisto) and Polly (Anna Faris – brilliant). But if you can’t find a friend, you might just have to make one.

Her performance is all awkward pauses, embarrassing gestures and longing. It’s beautiful, tender, sweet and – eventually – forgivingly bloody. We love May.

2. Bubby (Nicholas Hope) Bad Boy Bubby (1993)

Christ, kid, you’re a weirdo.

Writer/director Rolf de Heer explores something amazing in his Aussie arthouse horror Bad Boy Bubby. Bubby has spent his entire 30 years in a single, windowless room with Mam. She leaves now and again, affixing a gas mask and warning the boy that he’ll die if he sets foot outside.

No, things aren’t that great for Bubby. They’re even worse for Cat. When Bubby eventually has to meander out into the open, his adventure is so authentically pieced together. He assimilates information and behaviors with the perfect sense of childishness.

Nicholas Hope’s performance is a minor miracle in a film that is wild, disturbing and pretty amazing.

1. Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels ) Greasy Strangler (2016)

Honestly, just about anybody from this film might have made the list. Big Brayden (Sky Elobar) was an obvious possibility. Those glasses! And he’s shit scared!

But it’s Big Ronnie (or is it Private Eye Jodie?!) who earns the accolade. Yes, he may be a bullshit artist, but that smile, the disco suit, the “big rat,” – let’s not even get started on his diet or hygiene. We’d never have thought of using a carwash quite that way, and yet we will never be able to think of it otherwise again.

Big Ronnie is the Weirdo All Star. Celebrate with some potato chips?





Halloween Countdown, Day 29: Nosferatu

Nosferatu (1922)

Best vampire ever. Not the seductive, European aristocrat, cloaked and mysterious, oh no. With Count Orlock, filmmaker F. W. Murnau explores something more repellant, casting an actor who resembles an albino naked mole rat.

Given that Murnau equates the film’s vampire-related deaths with the plague, this vermin-like image fits well. But more than that, thanks to a peculiarly perfect performance by Max Schreck, Murnau mines the carnality of the vampire myth for revulsion and fear rather than eroticism.

Famously, the film was meant to be the first Dracula movie, but Murnau could not work out an agreement with Bram Stoker’s estate (who later sued, and all copies of the film were nearly lost). He changed a handful of things in an attempt to avoid the eventual lawsuit and filmed anyway. Names are changed (Harker is now Hutter, Dracula is Orlock, etc.), and details are altered, but the story remains largely – well, criminally – the same.

The genius move is the spindly, bald hunchback for a vampire – why, he’s almost a European Monty Burns! Murnau’s mastery behind the camera – particularly his ability to capture the vampire’s shadow – made the film a breathtaking horror show at the time. But don’t discount this as dusty history.

Sure, the silent film style of acting appears nothing short of quaint today, and the Dracula tale has been told too, too often at this point. But Max Schreck is a freak, and in his bony, clawlike hands, Count Orlock remains the greatest vampire ever undone by a sinless maiden.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!





Fright Club: Best Silent Horror Movies

Horror movies have been around for as long as movies have been around, and we jumped into the way back machine to look at some of the earliest and most influential horror films the genre has to offer. So many fundamental genre elements – tropes the genre adheres to today – were created in these early, eerily beautiful silent gems that they deserve some attention. While there are actually loads of options – nearly everything Lon Chaney ever did, for instance – these are the five films we deem the best.

Listen to the whole podcast HERE.

5) The Unknown (1927)

When Tod Browning makes a movie about side show freaks, color us excited. In this unseemly tale, the great silent monster Lon Chaney is The Amazing Alonzo, an armless knife thrower/sharp shooter/guitar player/smoker in a circus. He has eyes for his show partner Nanon (Joan Crawford, pre-wire hanger), but the circus strongman is hot for her.

So, it all sounds a tad like Browning’s infamous Freaks. But Nanon spurns the strongman because she can’t stand to be groped by men’s hands – which makes it seem like Alonzo is a shoe-in, except that he is not what he appears to be.

Camera trickery, an actual circus performer, and Chaney’s convincing performance work together to create a believable side show character in Alonzo. Browning couples this unsettling performance with an air of seediness and some bizarre plot twists to leave a lasting impression.

4) The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

You know the story – a shadowy figure haunts the Paris opera house, demading that the object of his affection, Christine, be given the lead in Faust. In what amounts to a cautionary tale about women prioritizing career over family, the story revolves around a masked and disfigured madman and the singer who is easily duped, then saved by righteous men.

The reason this particular version of the film works so well is, of course, Lon Chaney’s now-legendary look. The actor devised his own make up and underwent painful tricks of physical contortion, succeeding in shocking audiences with a ghastly but very realistic visage. His flair as an actor is also on display, and though other versions sometimes mine for a bit of empathy or heartbreak as this hideous creature connives for a love triumphant, Chaney delivers menace and horror.

3) The Man Who Laughs (1928)

The German Expressionist director Paul Leni (Waxworks, The Cat and the Canary) worked with J. Grubb Alexander’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel to cast a macabre spell with this film – one of our very favorites.

A nobleman offends the king, who kills the nobleman (iron maiden!) and has his son, Gwynplaine, disfigured by a surgeon so he can spend his life laughing at his fool of a father. The boy is tossed out, wandering in the snow. He finds a blind baby girl, and the two are saved by a traveling carny.

As is Hugo’s way, goodness is found in the tormented and hideous while the gorgeous society show themselves to be the true beasts. The film looks gloomily gorgeous, and in the hands of silent film star Conrad Veidt, Gwynplaine becomes Hugo’s most sympathetic and heartbreaking monster.

2) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Few films of the silent era or any other are as visually striking as this. Another German Expressionist, director Robert Wiene uses light and shadow, exaggerated angles and shadowy spirals to envelope us in a nightmare.

In a story told in flashback we learn of Francis, who is visiting his bewitched beloved in an asylum. He tells the tale madness – a traveling hypnotist and his somnambulist, performing at a town fair; murder, magic, and lunacy.

The film’s twist ending and framed storytelling have become commonplace in horror, but the look of this film has never been truly recreated. Taken in the context of the time, Caligari becomes a metaphor and premonition of German’s mindless obedience to lunatic, homicidal authority figure. Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz wrote it just after WWI to reflect their experiences in the war, but it mirrored a growing phenomenon in their country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0A0sfxM6AE

1) Nosferatu (1922)

Best vampire ever.

Not the seductive, European aristocrat, cloaked and mysterious – oh no. With Count Orlock, filmmaker F. W. Murnau explores something more repellant, casting an actor who resembles an albino naked mole rat. Given that Murnau equates the film’s vampire-related deaths with the plague, this vermin-like image fits well. But more than that, thanks to a peculiarly perfect performance by Max Schreck, Murnau mines the carnality of the vampire myth for revulsion and fear, rather than eroticism.

Murnau’s mastery behind the camera – particularly his ability to capture the vampire’s shadow – made the film a breathtaking horror show at the time. But don’t discount this as dusty history. Max Schreck is a freak, and in his bony, clawlike hands, Count Orlock remains the greatest vampire ever undone by a sinless maiden.





Fright Club: Best Horror of the Seventies

The Seventies is when horror really took off. Blockbuster masterpieces like Alien and Jaws affected countless viewers and at least as many future filmmakers. Maverick young directors like Brian De Palma, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg and Dario Argento developed into the cinematic voices of a generation. Major studio efforts with A-list casts like The Omen kept the genre on the front burner for all movie goers, and Blaxploitation reached into the genre with the Blacula series.

We had to leave a lot off this list. In what may be the most crowded field of any decade, here we boil down the five best horror films (strictly horror – sorry Jaws & Alien!) of the 1970s.

5. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
In 1922, F.W. Murnau directed maybe the best vampire film we’ll ever see: Nosferatu. In 1979, Werner Herzog lovingly remade it. Both films are obviously based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, but where Stoker saw romance, these German filmmakers saw pestilence.

The effortlessly weird Klaus Kinski may play Dracula, but his look is 100% Orlock from Murnau’s film. Pasty and bald with hollowed eyes, pointy ears and rat teeth, this vampire relates far more to the vermin spreading the Black Plague across Europe than to the sultry beast luring women and men to an erotic end.

Herzog’s images are dreamy and wonderful, and the twists he gives the fairly tired storyline are genius. Isabel Adjani’s Lucy gets to be the hero, and the alteration to her beloved Jonathan Harker’s character is the work of dark genius.

4. Halloween (1978)

No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.

Sure, you’ve seen it, but from the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Carpenter impeccably develops anxiety, breaking tradition by planting it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.

Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is terrifying. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. Just add John Carpenter’s spare score to ratchet up the terror. Nice.

3. Carrie (1976)

The seminal film about teen angst and high school carnage has to be Brian De Palma’s 1976 landmark adaptation of King’s first full length novel, the tale of an unpopular teenager who marks the arrival of her period by suddenly embracing her psychic powers.

Sissy Spacek is the perfect balance of freckle-faced vulnerability and awed vengeance, but she may be overshadowed by Piper Laurie’s glorious evil zeal as her religious nutjob mother. (Both were Oscar nominated.) We feel proud and cautiously optimistic when Carrie finally stands up to her mother, but Senior Prom, or “Love Among the Stars,” doesn’t go as well as it might have for poor Carrie White or her classmates. One ugly trick involving a bucket of cow’s blood, and Carrie’s psycho switch is flipped. Spacek’s blood drenched Gloria Swanson on the stage conducting the carnage is perfectly over-the-top. And after all the mean kids get their comeuppance, Carrie returns home to the real horror show.

De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen wisely streamline King’s meandering finale. From the prom sequence onward, De Palma commits to the genre, giving us teen carnage followed by the profoundly upsetting family horror, finished with one of cinema’s best “gotcha” moments.

The prom scene inspired a Halloween costume for us a couple years ago – we won best costume and a free round!

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2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Not everyone considers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a classic. Those people are wrong. Perhaps even stupid. It is classic because Hooper masterfully enlisted a low rent verite for this bizarre story to do something utterly new. The camera work, so home-movie like, worked with the “based on a true story” tag line like nothing before it, and the result seriously disturbed the folks of 1974. It has been ripped off and copied dozens of times since its release, but in the context of its time, it was so absolutely original it was terrifying.

Hooper sidestepped all the horror gimmicks audiences had grown accustomed to – a spooky score that let you know when to grow tense, shadowy interiors that predicted oncoming scares – and instead shot guerilla-style in broad daylight, outdoors, with no score at all. You just couldn’t predict what was coming.

Poor, doomed, unlikeable Franklin Hardesty, his pretty sister Sally, and a few other friends head out to Grampa Hardesty’s final resting place after hearing the news of some Texas cemeteries being grave robbed. They just want to make sure Grampy’s still resting in peace – an adventure which eventually leads to most of them making a second trip to a cemetery. Well, what’s left of them.

We got to meet Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface) and Marilyn Burns (Sally) a couple years ago. We were pretty geeked!

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1. The Exorcist (1973)

Slow moving, richly textured, gorgeously and thoughtfully framed, The Exorcist follows a very black and white, good versus evil conflict: Father Merrin V Satan for the soul of an innocent child. But thanks to an intricate and nuanced screenplay adapted by William Peter Blatty from his own novel, the film boasts any number of flawed characters struggling to find faith and to do what’s right in this situation. And thanks to Friedkin’s immaculate filming, we are entranced by early wide shots of a golden Middle East, then brought in a little closer to watch people running here and there on the campus at Georgetown or on the streets of NYC.

Then we pull in a bit closer: interiors of Chris MacNeil’s (Ellen Burstyn) place on location, the hospital where Fr. Karras’s mother is surrounded by loons, the labs and conference rooms where an impotent medical community fails to cure poor Regan (Linda Blair).

Then closer, in the bedroom, where you can see Regan’s breath in the chilly air, examine the flesh rotting off her young face. Here, in the intimacy, there’s no escaping that voice, toying with everyone with such vulgarity.
The voice belongs to Mercedes McCambridge, and she may have been the casting director’s greatest triumph. Of course, Jason Miller as poor, wounded Fr. Damien Karras could not have been better. Indeed, he, Burstyn and young Linda Blair were all nominated for Oscars.

So was Friedkin, the director who balanced every scene to expose its divinity and warts, and to quietly build tension. When he was good and ready, he let that tension burst into explosions of terrifying mayhem that became a blueprint for dozens of films throughout the Seventies and marked a lasting icon for the genre.

So that’s it! We hope you agree, but let us know if you don’t, and be sure to listen to the entire podcast on Fright Club!