Nosferatu (1922)

* * * *

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way. — Charles Bukowski

Hi Guys,

I just finished watching Shadow of the Vampire. Starring John Malkovich as Friedrich Murnau, the famous director of Nosferatu.

The story focus on Friedrich Murnau (John Malkovich) who is struggling to create his silent classic "Nosferatu" on location in Eastern Europe. The director is obsessed with making this the most authentic vampire movie ever. To that end, Murnau has employed a real vampire, Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), explaining to the crew that he is the ultimate of that new breed, the "method actor" -- trained by Stanislavsky himself. Schreck will appear only in character and only at night.

To this day Nosferatu remains the most remembered of all Vampires Horror Films.

This October I decided I’d bite the bullet and see all those horror films everyone’s always talking about. But I’m a scaredy pants, so I decided I’d mix the genuinely terrifying with old-timey Halloween treats. * indicates it was new to me.

*Nosferatu, October 17th: My first really classic horror movie. Gorgeous music. I love the faces you find in silent movies, craggy and overdramatic by modern standards. Sweet stuff. Kinda boring. 

*We Are The Night, October 17th: This had everything a vampire movie needs -- killing sprees, shopping sprees, immortal angst, militant feminism, and some epic parkour. 

*House On Haunted Hill, October 20th: This was a charming tale of how rich people throw shitty parties and superstitious drunks are silly. First jump scares of the month. Loved it. 

*The American Scream, October 21st: I squeezed in this documentary about haunted yards as inspiration to finish my own yard haunt. It was a good documentary, but painfully awkward in some places. 

*Dracula: The Vampire & the Voivode, October 23rd & 24th: Okay, yeah, another documentary, but it was about Dracula! This was actually really thorough and interesting.

*The Shining, October 25th: So, I'm still having nightmares and sleeping with the bathroom light on, but I am so glad I watched this. Seriously, if you're as much of a scaredy cat as I am and you're going to watch one horror film, make it this. It's about how the kyriarchy destroys everyone it touches. Brilliant. 

*Room 237, October 27th: Documentary about people's fringe theories about The Shining. Most were focusing on specific horrors, (the Holocaust, genocides of native cultures), one was about blaming the kid and mother (I predicted that would happen, considering the movie is actually very anti-patriarchy/kyriarchy), and the most out there one was about how it's Kubrick's confession about faking the moon landing. 237 and the Shining were a perfect pairing. 

Halloweentown, October 27th: Okay, it was a bad idea to revisit this. To be fair, I hadn't seen it since I was 11, and I thought it was corny then. I just thought it might be corny in a good way, like Hocus Pocus. It did not hold up.