Vampyr (1931) and Eraserhead (1977)

Vampyr (1931): Loosely based on J. Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Room In the Dragon Volant" and "Carmilla" by writers Christian Jul and Carl Dreyer; directed by Carl Dreyer; starring Julian West (Allan Grey), Maurice Schutz (Father), Rena Mandel (Gisele), Sybille Schmitz (Leone), Jan Hieronimko (The Doctor), and Henriette Gerard (The Vampyr): Carl (best known as the director of the excruciating classic The Passion of Joan of Arc) Dreyer's intentionally nightmare-like, early sound film remains one of a handful of the most unusual vampire movies ever made. There's a fairly tight, simple plot. But that plot is secondary to the images that come and go, images that often defy the plot. 

Does our protagonist have a number of dreams, waking or otherwise, during his pursuit of a vampire? What is up with that creepy doll in the corner of that shot? What the Hell is going on with all the shadows doing weird stuff? And so on, and so forth. It's a languorous movie in the best possible way, best watched late at night. Highly recommended.

Eraserhead (1977): written and directed by David Lynch; starring Jack Nance (Henry Spencer), Charlotte Stewart (Mary X), Allen Joseph (Mr. X), Jeanne Bates (Mrs. X), Judith Roberts (Beautiful Girl Across the Hall), and Laurel Near (Lady In the Radiator): Watching David Lynch's first full-length movie -- filmed over the course of several years! -- is always a disturbing treat, but Twin Peaks: The Return makes it almost mandatory today. 

That terrific, innovative, terrifying miniseries (maxiseries?) echoes with the sounds of Eraserhead. Literally, at certain points, given the sound design of the two projects. Eraserhead is a necessity on its own, of course, a masterpiece of horrors cloachal, bodily, existential, and cosmic. It remains as essential now as it was 40 years ago, one of the crowning moments of 'Art Cinema' and cult horror and WTF movie-making. Highly recommended.

Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu (1922): adapted by Henrik Galeen from Barm Stoker's Dracula; directed by F.W. Murnau; starring Max Schreck (Count Orlok), Gustav von Wangenheim (Hutter), Greta Schroder (Ellen), Gustav Botz (Professor Sievers), John Gottowt (The Paracelsian), and Alexander Granach (Knock): Ah, Nosferatu. Director F.W. Murnau and his film team adapted Bram Stoker's Dracula without paying for it. Stoker's estate successfully sued to have all copies of the film destroyed. But the film, like a vampire or Steven Seagal, turned out to be hard to kill. 

The trick is to see a decent restored version, as Nosferatu has endless, crappy, public-domain versions floating around on the Internet and on cheapo DVD's. If it's in black-and-white, it's probably crappy: Nosferatu was tinted different colours throughout. The late Nash the Slash used to tour bars with a copy of Nosferatu to accompany with electronic music. Good times!

The film itself remains the finest adaptation of Dracula, legal or otherwise, ever made. It's the sinister, otherworldly quality of Max Schreck as Count Orlok that dominates the film, and memories of that film, a triumph of make-up and silent-film acting and Murnau's compositional talents. 

Schreck looks so bafflingly inhuman that a movie was made about Schreck actually being a centuries-old vampire (Shadow of the Vampire). The Schreck vampire designs continues to pop up again and again in pop culture, whether in Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu, the 1970's TV adaptation of Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot, or in that episode of Angel set mostly on a submarine during WWII. 

Unless you're stoned immaculate, you'll probably want to watch Nosferatu over at least a couple of nights. The pacing is deliberate, which is to say slow and a bit scattered. But again and again visuals show up that are striking and disturbing. 

Silent film hadn't started to 'move' much in 1922, so most of the striking visuals are static. Peculiarly effective are shots of forests with the negative flipped, and pretty much any scene with Orlok in it. At times, he's a grasping shadow against a wall. In other shots, one waits in suspense for his appearance. Everybody run! Ship-board shots in which Orlok comes creeping out from hiding or rises board-straight from supine to erect still conjure a sort of abject dread.

The TCM copy I watched was extremely text-heavy -- it made me wonder if Murnau later made the almost-text-free The Last Man/ aka The Last Laugh in part as a reaction to the preponderance of explanatory intertitles required for Nosferatu. Oh, well. 

There is some humour in Nosferatu, though most of it is unintentional. The sequence following Orlok's arrival at the town he will soon start depopulating is the height of this inadvertent humour as we follow Orlok, coffin under his arm, as he searches for his new home. Funny as it is, it's still better than anything in any of Bela Lugosi's Dracula films. Highly recommended.

Metropolis



(L-R): Joh Fredersen, Rotwang and the robot. Yes, Rotwang's look influenced Peter Sellers's Dr. Strangelove, Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown and Christopher Walken's Max Schreck in BATMAN RETURNS.

Metropolis, adapted by Thea von Harbou from her novel of the same name, directed by Fritz Lang, starring Alfred Abel (Joh Fredersen), Gustav Frohlich (Freder Fredersen), Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Rotwang), Fritz Rasp (The Thin Man), Theodor Loos (Josaphat), Erwin Biswanger (11811 - Georgy), Heinrich George (Grot), and Brigitte Helm (The Machine Man/Maria) (1927; this version restored 2010) (145 minutes; 210 minutes premiere, 153 minutes mass distribution):

Simplistic in characterization and message (that message, flashed on the screen at the start, really is, quite simply, "The Heart must be the Mediator between the Head and the Hands!", with the figurative level of this statement simply being Head = Management/Government, Hands = Workers/Citizens and Heart = unh, somebody who wants to mediate between the two), Metropolis is nonetheless a towering achievement in science-fiction film for the complexity and scope of its visual and special effects. Its vast and teeming cityscape looms over later science-fictional cities such as those in Blade Runner and Batman Returns, as do many other often startling visual elements herein.

In today's dollars, Metropolis would have cost something north of $200 million, and it nearly bankrupted the German studio that produced it. Lang wouldn't return to epic science fiction again, and would flee the Nazis for Hollywood in the 1930's, there to become a well-regarded director of film noir. Along with the expressionistic German crime film M., Metropolis is a high point of his career. He's one of the essential directors of world cinema's rapid stage of artistic growth in the 1920's.

The film itself depicts a battle between labour and management, who in the world of the future are also governor and governed. Down below the streets of Metropolis (yes, the city really is called Metropolis), workers manipulate often hilariously touchy machines to keep the city running. Apparently the city of the future is in constant danger of being blown up if a worker passes out at his 12-hour shift. As is often the case in science-fiction movies and television shows, the designers of the future have never heard of fail-safes or fuse boxes.

Up above, the rich frolic. But young Freder Fredersen, son of city patriarch Joh Fredersen, falls in love with a young, beautiful revolutionary, Maria, and tries to make things better for everybody. In response, Joh Fredersen gets old, crazy-ass, crazy-haired scientist/magician Rotwang to make a rabble-rousing robot in the likeness of Maria to destroy the revolution. But Rotwang has his own vengeful plans. And some idiot has built the Undercity of the workers directly below the reservoir! Oh noes! Will the dangerous idiocy of the designers of this city never end?

Rotwang and Maria/Robot-Maria are beautifully acted. Brigitte Helm's Robot-Maria moves like a demented marionette in contrast to normal Maria's more languid movements. Of course, this is a silent movie, with silent-movie acting -- big gestures and big facial expressions. But Helm really stands out.

Then there are the visuals of the film: massive sets, detailed models, and visual effects that, in total, took two years to complete, given the technical limitations of the time. Much of the movie still looks terrific, most notably the scene in which Rotwang gives life to Robot-Maria. Lang also used astonishingly large armies of extras for many scenes. Metropolis is a film that could only be made with CGI today unless the filmmaker had an unlimited budget.

This version, compiled in 2010 using newly discovered 16mm footage, is almost complete -- written narration explains the two missing segments. It would be nice if someone fronted the money to fix up the 16mm footage, which is still quite damaged and not the same aspect ratio as the rest of the film. James Cameron? Spielberg? You listening? For a couple of million bucks of CGI, you could fix one of the most important movies ever made!

In any event, don't make the mistake of watching one of the cheapo, 90-minute versions that still populate discount DVD bins everywhere. And really, really, really avoid the 88-minute-or-so 1980's version with the Giorgio Moroder (Flashdance, Footloose) soundtrack. Seriously. Highly recommended.