Unconventional Halloween-time movie rec: I’m going to suggest listening to the Karloff/Corman episode of the You Must Remember This podcast and then watching Targets (1968), a movie that’s loosely based on a real-life mass shooting event and also a loosely autobiographical movie about Boris Karloff as a frail, elderly movie star reckoning with his own declining relevance in the age of modern terrors.
Boris’s body began to fall apart in 1931 or whenever Frankenstein came out. A lot of actor protections happened because of him.
Nosferatu (1922)
I’m pretty sure this counts as a normal movie made way, way after I was born.
Anyway, this was great. Even as someone who generally doesn’t acknowledge any need to grade on an age-related curve at least for anything 1940 and beyond, the silent era is its own beast and I do think that this certainly goes back far enough that it felt like a very live possibility that I may not be able to take to this one. I’m very glad to have been wrong; it immediately became one of my favorite 1920s movies (though admittedly that’s a short list).
It’s certainly of its own era, but I love the way that it looks, especially those scenes in the sepia tone. And while it sounds like we unfortunately lost the original score to time - and very nearly lost the movie entirely to time, but for the great efforts of people who meticulously restored it - the replacement scoring that has been applied to the movie since is brilliant and fits the movie perfectly.
As someone who got enjoyment from 1931 Dracula, I couldn’t help but feel while I watched this that the 1931 early talkie adaptation of the story was fairly boring by comparison to this. I might never revisit that one again now; I certainly expect to revisit this. And now I’m quite a bit more stoked than I previously was for the upcoming 2024 Nosferatu.
4/5
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Maybe try to check out the Spanish language Dracula. Some people say it’s better than the Lugosi version. It was shot using the same sets at the same time as the Lugosi version, but at night.
Also, there are a lot of good Lon Chaney movies from the 1920s if you want to see more of what was going on then in silents, if you haven’t already checked those out.
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I think this is the entirety of my 1920s watching so far.
Basically had amounted to me being a Chaplin > Keaton guy before this; this is the first non-comedy I’ve watched from that decade.
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Definitely check out some Chaney. Laugh Clown Laugh, The Unknown, and Ace of Hearts are all good. None are comedies lol.
I just resolved an internal mystery; I was pretty sure I had seen Lon Chaney as The Wolf Man. Turns out that was his son, Lon, Jr. I’ll make a note to check Lon, Sr. out.
I know that I definitely need to see Metropolis also as an essential 1920s film. Also The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Boris and Bela were both OG union activists. They were founding members of the SAG, IIRC.
That’s because Dracula was fundamentally a stage play put on film, whereas Nosferatu is a movie that’s filmed like a movie.
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Metropolis is good.
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Justice for Ben Tramer!
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Can’t say I actually put together that it was the off-screen Ben from the first one that was in on the dumbest car crash I’ve seen in a movie. (I’m rejecting Meet Joe Black nominations obviously.)
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This was lots of fun. Warning though this is the most “have to pay attention” movie ever, You can’t be playing on phone or doing other things.
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That’s The Flash treatment right there
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They’re both $200m losers lol. Not sure The Flash deserved that, but from all accounts Joker is a huge misfire and audiences aren’t afraid to tell each other to stay away.
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Nearly 25 years of working with Warner Bros. has taught me they love a good write off in a year of big movies. I’m pretty sure they were expecting that movie to bomb, but did not expect Furiosa to bomb. Their year got saved (or ruined) by Wonka, Godzilla, Dune 2, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. They aren’t gonna have a lot of tears other than having to pay a lot more taxes than they want to. Aquaman probably fits on their list of bombs even though it broke even and launched in 2023. Horizon certainly is, but they probably only had a small investment in that.
The Flash definitely didn’t deserve it, but WB hoisted themselves by their own petard on that one. They almost began to believe it could be something after the Super Bowl launch but then remembered it wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a write off too late. And then they dropped it like a hot potato. It had one of the worst treatments I’ve ever seen of a major movie after its release…apparently until this one.
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Or they’re both just terrible films. 