[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.34 Fireheart Media Hello world and welcome to Jala-Chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes, she, her, and today i am joined by Dave, he, him, to talk about Nosferatu, the 2024 film by Robert Eggers. 00:00:16.41 Fireheart Media Yay. Dave, I know how you're doing, but tell the folks how you're doing. 00:00:22.64 Fireheart Media I'm doing pretty good. This was, this was a spooky movie, so it's fun to talk about it. 00:00:32.54 Fireheart Media Right. And we most recently... went to go see a live showing of it with organ accompaniment by Brett Miller from the Houston Symphony. And it was a really cool time. it was great to see the original 1922 film ah ah with the live accompaniment. We did this last year as well. They were playing a double feature of the cabinet of Dr. Caligari, as well as the Phantom of the Opera. 00:01:03.19 Fireheart Media And that was also a great time. So I'm hoping that they continue this trend and do more of this in the future. I'm definitely going to be attending any more of these that they do. But um this going out to go see the original 1922 film, along with the fact that last Christmas, our Christmas movie was the Nosferatu film, ah and we both really liked it, that that was all kind of what... caused me to decide that this is what we were going to talk about for the month of November of this year. So here we are for the holidays, vampires. 00:01:40.35 Fireheart Media kicking us off right here at the start is just a little bit of an overview for y'all. As usual, we will have a spoiler wall. So this starting part is just about overview things, the stuff about production and different little tidbits, impressions, things like that, that will not ruin the movie for you. So if you have not seen the film, you can still listen up to the spoiler wall and then come back to check out the rest. 00:02:10.10 Fireheart Media So this is a gothic horror film, which is a remake of Nosferatu, a symphony of horror. And it was directed and written by Robert Eggers based on that movie, as well as Dracula, of course, because that's what the original was based off of. 00:02:27.29 Fireheart Media So Dave, how about you tell folks about like the weird copyright stuff and and the almost destruction of the original film? Because I think that's that's kind of important here as to why this film was based partially on Dracula and partially on on the original film. 00:02:45.30 Fireheart Media Okay, so the director of Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, he just made the movie. He made it, and when they released it, the estate of, the the Stoker estate, 00:03:01.56 Fireheart Media ah which was at the time Bram Stoker's widow, basically put a copyright strike on the film and won in court. And as such, the original film and score were were supposed to be destroyed. the score was the film was left in tatters and the current Kino Lorber version of it is an amalgam of bits of the original print and bits of other surviving pieces that they had to kind of reassemble. 00:03:39.54 Fireheart Media and it it's there's two versions and one of them is it is quite a bit longer than the other uh it's none of them are of an extant print it's all kind of had to be cobbled back together and the score was redone from the original composers like a book on music where he snuck in some of his original score under, if you film a movie in such a way like this, where there might be a castle surrounded by bats, the score would sound something like this. And so they've used that to piece together and and recreate ah the score for the surviving prince. 00:04:24.76 Fireheart Media Right, right. So it's kind of a wiggly woggily experience when it comes to this movie. There is it much like with the 1925 Phantom of the Opera. 00:04:36.79 Fireheart Media um That movie also is like in in little pieces and there's various versions of it, some of which have scenes and some of which don't and whatever, because just nobody was keeping track of their films or or preserving them back in those days. But um in either case, this was just distributed by Focus Features. The budget was $50 million. It boxed $181.3 million. 00:05:01.50 Fireheart Media the runtime is one hundred and thirty two minutes So as for reviews, it was kind of weird when I was looking this up. The reviews, there were lots of them that were like, oh yeah, this is a great film. 00:05:14.90 Fireheart Media The people who already knew what the original was like. Then there were a lot of people who were like, um what was it? and Like Napsferatu, I think was the name of one of the reviews I saw. And I was like, damn, that's that's cold. And that's because this movie is very suspenseful. The original is very suspenseful. There's not any kind of big fight scene or anything like that. There's not a confrontation that goes on. And because of that, the modern movie going audience, I think, is a little skewed because they're they're used to their marvels and John Wicks and such. 00:05:52.95 Fireheart Media There's confrontations in the movie, but a lot of the conflict itself is is internal. So it's up to the actors to kind of portray that there's a struggle or that they are suffering, but they're not in direct conflict with ah with like the main antagonist of the film. 00:06:15.29 Fireheart Media it's It's all... things happening to them that they really can't react to other than either hide or run away. And those stylings make it a little bit tougher to engage with, I think, for younger generations and then the general movie going audience, which yes, has over the past 20 something odd years been generally provided with popcorn action flicks. 00:06:48.41 Fireheart Media Right, right. So let's talk a little bit about the plot in spoiler-free terms. We have a young woman who accidentally makes a pact with a vampire. When she grows up and gets married, her husband is sent on a long journey to sell a property to an eccentric nobleman. And between these two situations, darkness, plague, and destruction is brought to Visberg. 00:07:11.29 Fireheart Media So that's that's your summary in a nutshell. That's that's what the movie is about. um And from that premise is is actually a really awesome movie. This is one that Robert Eggers had wanted to make since he was like eight years old, I think he said, something like that, because he had seen the original silent film and just was stricken by it. And in high school, he had done like ah a play version of it, like a stage play of it. And that was then noticed by somebody who ended up like hooking him up with film school stuff, which actually kind of launched his career. So like this is like a big thing for him overall, which is why this movie is such a careful love letter to the original work. while also being its own iteration. And this is something that you guys are all going to hear again when I talk about Frankenstein, because this is like my goth end of the year slash beginning of the next year phase. 00:08:12.86 Fireheart Media And we are all going to go through this phase of romantic goth movies together. We've got Nosferatu now. Then I'm going to be covering the Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelley. And then I'm going to be camping out on, for a couple of episodes, the Frankenstein movie from Guillermo del Toro. So buckle up, there's a lot of this stuff to come. And we will be talking after the spoiler wall about some similarities between this movie, Nosferatu, and GDT's Frankenstein as well. 00:08:43.80 Fireheart Media So Dave, tell us a little bit about the beginning of development. Sure. Development began in 2015 when Eggers planned to make it his second film. He described it as a passion project, but eventually opted to delay its production. 00:09:00.57 Fireheart Media So his first film that was a commercial success was Witch. And that had, so Eggers himself has made it a point to kind of work with some of the same actors and crew and production designs ah ah in a way that we will, again, as a tangency with Guillermo del Toro, whose full film obra is, 00:09:31.12 Fireheart Media generally created using a lot of the same set designers, costumers. There's people that he enjoys working with and actors and that really shows in something like Nosferatu where everyone is comfortable on set with each other, ah more or less, but it makes the whole production, um, cohesive in a way that you can watch his films and watch these actors grow, um, over the course of several movies. 00:10:03.58 Fireheart Media ah Right. So the word Nosferatu is perhaps a misunderstanding of the Romanian word. i ne ferri tool um I don't know. I'm probably mispronouncing that. Anyway, it means the offensive or insufferable one. 00:10:20.34 Fireheart Media And i like that because i feel like that is more applicable to this iteration of the movie than the original 22 version. Just because the Orlok, the Count Orlok that we get in this film um seems a lot more noxious overall, not just in his physical presentation, but just like the the responses and the powers that he has and everything. Because of course, you know, we have the benefits of so many years of movie production since 1922 to embellish all of this on screen for faults. 00:10:58.07 Fireheart Media um So Eggers envisioned Count Orlok with an aristocratic air. As makeup effects designer David White explained, Orlok was of noble stature, a distinct departure from the original version, which was nearly hairless except for some bushy hair on his ears and some expressive eyebrows. 00:11:17.34 Fireheart Media And all of Orlok's teeth are sharp, with the top central and lateral incisors being the longest. Eggers did not want to have him have the little bunny teeth of the original, ah or, you know, like the more are traditional, as we know it, Dracula teeth, you know, with the canines being elongated. He wanted it to be like, nope, the whole mouth, get the whole thing. 00:11:39.95 Fireheart Media Give me a maw. And the thing is with Eggers Count Morlock, the teeth, they're sharp, but part of that is due to them being damaged and broken. And it's just like if yeah it's the teeth of a corpse that... 00:11:59.71 Fireheart Media might have caught one or two strikes to the jaw because the teeth are just they're horrendous and and and serrated and just it's real messed up but they leave uh a singular impression upon his victims where is it that's in direct contrast to the original film ah Count Orlok's incisors are the protruding teeth. And while they're, they look formidable, but when you get bitten, it is as if two mosquitoes very close together have pierced your neck. 00:12:42.36 Fireheart Media an actual quote from the silent film. There was a, like one of the inter interstitial cards where, um, Hutter, the male protagonist character is like, Oh, the mosquitoes, they bit me. And there were two of them on my neck real close together. Huh? 00:13:01.20 Fireheart Media You know, so, so yeah, but like, in this movie, when you are bitten by Orlok, it's like, no, there's like a maw. It's a, it's a maw mark on your body. It's like a big chunk. 00:13:13.88 Fireheart Media I mean, it's, it's a, it's ah ah a big love bite. If someone got too vigorous and you didn't get a hickey, but you got like some teeth marks. That's what this looks like. It's just a little bit more jaggedy. 00:13:26.49 Fireheart Media Right, that's somebody's fetish, but we're not going there. So ah moving on to talk a little bit more about Orlok. So when he speaks, he often has to breathe in and gather air into his lungs. And that shows that since he's legally dead, he doesn't actually need air unless he's trying to run it over his vocal cords so he can talk. And so he has this kind of wheezing, like, you know, kind of thing going as he's talking and you know it's it's kind of a ponderous pace and the reason for that is because he has to like remember to breathe so he can get the words out actually so uh this is the second time that bill skarsgård portrayed a vampire the first time is in the netflix show hemlock grove from 2013 i did not watch that did you dave 00:14:17.43 Fireheart Media I caught an episode or two. It's that was in the years around. um Oh, I don't even remember the show is called. It's something blood. 00:14:31.64 Fireheart Media And then that was on HBO. It's a vampire. There was kind of like 90210, but with vampires. True blood. true blood uh and also there was a remake of a british show um being human i think something like that and it's it's roommates there were one's a werewolf one's a vampire and it's less uh it's not really funny so it's actually kind of 00:15:06.00 Fireheart Media it's a drama, but set in an apartment mainly. So it's that era. And i think I was just, excuse me. 00:15:20.15 Fireheart Media I was just done with that at the time. So I really didn't get into um Hemlock Grove. And I think they were doing the Teen Wolf um adaptation. so there was a there was a lot going on for monster TV shows like reboots and things. But um yeah, that one just did not grab my attention. 00:15:49.85 Fireheart Media So a little bit more about the preparation for Orlok is the mega bardist David White said that Bill Skarsgård wore nine prosthetics for his head and his face alone. So that would be like the neck, the back of the head, chin, cheeks, bottom and top lip, ears, nose, forehead and nose bridge. And facial hair such as a mustache and hair pieces were also added. 00:16:14.65 Fireheart Media And he was fitted with top and bottom hand prosthetics with eight finger extensions incorporating nails and two thumbs which were each applied with a blender prosthetic to disguise the edges. 00:16:26.68 Fireheart Media So, um, mostly it's just his head in his hands. So even though he was in the makeup chair for sometimes up to five hours, uh, as we'll talk about in Frankenstein, uh, for the creature, Jacob Elordi had makeup for 10 hours because he had full body prosthetics and stuff and and makeup applied to him. So, um, not too bad to be honest. I mean, what's wild to me is that I found out that, um, 00:16:53.98 Fireheart Media Tim Curry in the movie legend when he plays darkness and he's like the devil with the horns and the whole nine, that was only five, foot five and a half hours of being in the makeup chair to get all that crap on him, which is wild to me. But Jacob, I think it's because Jacob already had to have all of the paint, you know, like actually painted on him, not just the prosthetics applied, but everything was then painted with, you know, all of the little crease marks and and all of that stuff, the, the, um, incision points. But, um, 00:17:23.32 Fireheart Media Anyway, Skarsgård trained with an Icelandic opera coach to lower his voice a full octave to make Orlok as deep-voiced as possible. And it's very effective and very cool. And his voice was the aspect ah that he was working the most on, spending six weeks before shooting, not doing much else other than just recording himself. And on set, he would keep on doing these exercises because he was doing like Mongolian throat singing, which he had studied, and then also just working with this opera coach. So that's pretty wild. 00:17:58.01 Fireheart Media So Dave, tell us a little bit about how tall Orlok is. So Count Orlok is seven feet tall. Bill Skarsgård, who portrays the character, six foot four. To make him even taller and make the character much more imposing, Skarsgård had to wear heels. and we saw some behind-the-scenes footage of these particular heels. The boots are, of course, like everything else, custom-made. But the heel itself was an iron-shod... 00:18:25.75 Fireheart Media piece that resembled like a horse's hoof or if you took a horseshoe and just extended it several inches like taller um they're they're very cool and that's definitely like something that i'm sure people would be like oh if i could get a hold of that prop or some boots custom made like that that would be fantastic 00:18:48.36 Fireheart Media And also with those particular boots that you don't ever really see them on scene, except for in a few seconds, when he's um ascending a staircase, you do hear, them when he's walking them because of the stone, the stone floors of the castle. 00:19:05.50 Fireheart Media Right. So in an interview with Variety, Robert Eggers explained that the design for Orlok deliberately went back to folklore and the culture of Orlok's home region, with his costume having very, very long sleeves, high-heeled shoes, a furry hat, and he has a mustache, which again, that's new for this movie versus the old And I think that that makes him far more imposing and and really just like extra cool because, you know, it's it's referring back to like the origins and what he would actually look like. 00:19:39.96 Fireheart Media And they do the same with his hair. It's stylized in a way where it's basically so completely shaven on one side and the back. And it's just sort of a fop of hair um leaning over the other side. It's ah from the time period. And they went through nobility, like paintings and things of the era to kind of put this together. And the mustache itself was a point of contention for folks familiar with the original film or just even like thinking of of our general portrayals of Dracula um in films. 00:20:18.61 Fireheart Media And i as well, I think just really added a good dimension. It definitely divorces um scars aside from the prosthetics. 00:20:29.62 Fireheart Media that his particular silhouette is now changed with the addition of that mustache and then giant like fuzzy hat ah so he definitely is fully lost in like the role you don't see You can't look at Orlok and go, oh, that's Bill Skarsgård. 00:20:50.17 Fireheart Media yeah They just are two definitely separate entities. um You know, yes, that's acting, but also the the costume department just went full bore and really helped put together this imposing figure. 00:21:06.49 Fireheart Media Yeah. And something that we saw when we were watching some behind the scenes stuff was that everybody on set was really creeped out by Orlok because it was so convincing and he was in character when he was on set most of the time. But then when he would like, he had to force himself to like, like, crack jokes and stuff just to release the tension because some of the people were were really kind of super creeped out by the whole ordeal actually um the funny thing is is that Skarsgård was originally cast as Thomas Hutter the main male protagonist however after dealing with the film's long film film's long pre-production the director decided to recast him as Orlok instead 00:21:51.35 Fireheart Media So the producer, Chris Columbus said that Skarsgård was so terrifying that he couldn't even approach him on the set. So um yeah, it it was ah kind of like, again, this whole thing where not even the producers, not even the people directly hands-on on the movie, but like the producer who's just hanging out there is just kind of like, I i don't want to go over there. He's scary. 00:22:15.42 Fireheart Media So that's very cool. But even Eggers was like, ah Bill has so transformed, I'm fearful he might not get the credit he deserves because he's just not there. 00:22:27.38 Fireheart Media he feels like honoring who had come before him. It's very subtle, but I think the main thing is that he's even more a folk vampire. In my opinion, he looks like a dead Transylvanian nobleman and in a way that we've never actually seen what an actual dead Transylvanian nobleman would look like and be dressed like. 00:22:48.12 Fireheart Media So... How would you tell us a little bit about Lily Rose Depp, who plays the main character, Ellen? Sure. So director Robert Eggers revealed that Lily-Rose Depp brought him to tears during her audition. He praised her, revealing her audition was insane, calling her a feral actor. 00:23:07.89 Fireheart Media Eggers explained, i had a meeting with Lily and she just impressed me so much. She understood the script so well. She had seen every major Dracula adaptation and a lot more obscure ones. She immediately brought up Polish director Andrzej Zalowski and I knew we were on the same page. 00:23:24.00 Fireheart Media But then we did an audition, a screen test, and it was just as raw and powerful as what she's doing on the screen. I'm not exaggerating. I was in tears be because her audition was so insane. And she's just a disciplined, courageous, and like feral actor. 00:23:38.00 Fireheart Media She's amazing. we had the benefit of during the extras on the blu-ray release of nosferatu there is a bit of the test footage of fully rose depp's um audition like her initial one that she sent in um over like it just as an uh yeah just a video file and she's doing like dramatic line reads and demonic possession ah moments and it's just like yeah I can see why anyone else trying out for that role would have very very big shoes to put on absolutely and so throughout the movie Ellen this main character and character ah has these moments of possession as mentioned possession and like these hard switches between her her different aspects and 00:24:35.06 Fireheart Media For all of this, to prepare for all of this, Lily-Rose had not just a movement coach, but also she studied the Japanese dance buto, which is a dance of resurrecting the dead. And this is something that, again, overlaps with Frankenstein. Jacob Elordi, for his preparation for the creature, also was studying that same dance style. 00:24:59.00 Fireheart Media So in the notes, I will link just like a video of an example performance of Butoh just so that people can see what that looks like. So you can compare that in your mind to what this is. But there's a lot of like jerky movements and kind of like as if you are moving for the first time awkwardness. So there's a little bit of of kind of a child childlike aspect to it but at the same time stiffness is is maybe the best word yeah at at its core buto is symbolic of a corpse being reanimated by like an outside force So it's more so than childlike. It's something that may have never been human trying to move around in human skin. And Lily Rose Depp pretty much sells that impression during the film on on multiple occasions. 00:26:01.34 Fireheart Media Yeah, so moving right along, Ellen has a cat in the movie and she says that the cat has no master or nor mistress and it's named Greta after Ellen Hutter's original actress, Greta Schroeder. 00:26:14.94 Fireheart Media And Ellen owned a cat in Nosferatu, a symphony of horror as well. You only see it for a moment, but it's there. So that's another little call back there. So how about you tell us about Willem Dafoe? 00:26:30.26 Fireheart Media All right, so in the film, Willem Dafoe portrays Professor Albin Erberhard von Franz, an academic from Switzerland who was excommunicated for studying the occult and alchemy. 00:26:41.74 Fireheart Media In real life, a professor named C.G. Jung left his position at the University of Zurich in 1913 in part due to his studies of occultism and alchemy. 00:26:52.31 Fireheart Media One of his most prominent students, Marie-Louise von Franz, a psychologist from Switzerland, is well known for her studies in fairy tales and alchemy. Defoe and Von Franz also share a similar haircut in the film. And in the original Symphony of Horror, of Von Franz is a Paracelsian. 00:27:13.11 Fireheart Media So he's someone who studies Paracelsius and and alchemy and ah the the folks that general science kind of pushed away um after the Enlightenment. 00:27:27.19 Fireheart Media Right. And I like this change that happens where, um you know, in the 2024 film, you have this character who... was a man of science who was in the academy and knows his shit. And then also, you know, was veered off into occultism and things like that. But he has a wide breadth of knowledge, you know, that, that spans supernatural as well as, you know, natural forces. So I like that quite a bit. This is actually the second Nosferatu related film that Willem Dafoe has been in because he starred in the shadow of the vampire from 2000, where he played Max Schreck in a fictional, uh, 00:28:13.35 Fireheart Media biopic and I saw that quite a long time ago back when it first came out and not since but I remember that that was a very weird movie at the time um you know kind of a hard pitch for for that era I think but it was interesting for sure and and Max Schreck is the actor who portrayed Orlok in the original Nosferatu It's something where I remember as didn't see Shadow of the Vampire, but we had the trailers playing on at work all the time. 00:28:46.46 Fireheart Media and the performance that willem defoe is given as the off stage like behind the scenes max shrek is more powerful than the actual max shrek performance in what we have of the footage of the original film so i like i kind of wanted to just see that version as a remake like i don't know um but i mean we we 00:29:19.16 Fireheart Media We get something like that now, just not with the bald mouse tooth and little tufts of hair above the ear or lock. 00:29:31.77 Fireheart Media Right. And something else to know about Max Schreck, the actor who played Nosferatu, the original character from 22, is that he stayed in character the whole time while he was on set. So that's what led to a bunch of legends about him actually being a vampire and things like that. And everybody on the set was creeped out because he was really method acting, you know, and all of that mess. So in the Shadow of the Vampire movie, it's the same kind of situation. And um there's a little a little callback to that as well. Because Von Franz in this movie, at one point offers everybody schnapps and his Max Schreck from the 2000 Shadow of the Vampire loves schnapps. So you know, like that was a direct reference. 00:30:17.21 Fireheart Media Yeah. And the other part to that legend is in, I believe, Shadow of the Vampire, his appearance is just what he looked like. Whereas when you watch the original film, you could definitely, okay, everything is clearly appliances, you know, put onto to him and that that change from scene to scene. And you can see the outline of his ear with the little extra pointy ears on top. um the the The makeup that they do for Willem Dafoe is, 00:30:46.17 Fireheart Media you would venture to go, oh, that's just what he looks like. Because of course it's like very, very well done. Absolutely. So let's segue onto Nick Holt. So I've already talked about Nick Holt a little bit as Lex Luthor from the Superman movie from this year, but he also was Thomas Hutter in Nosferatu. This is the first time that I watched him in anything, but Dave, you watched Renfield from 2023 he plays in that movie. 00:31:14.87 Fireheart Media Yes, we actually covered that on Monster, Dear Monster. He's starring in that as Renfield alongside Nicolas Cage, who's portraying Dracula. And his performance in there kind 00:31:30.20 Fireheart Media kind of scatterbrained, sniveling, but then realizing that, oh, he can be his own man and not just have to be beholden to this um undead count from that he's been obeying for years and years and years under a thrall. is He can be his own thrall. and goes to, um i think I think he shows up at a like ah it's like a drug intervention or AA meetings, and he's like just trying to be there to to learn not to be like a sick event. 00:32:05.50 Fireheart Media it's It's a pretty good performance. Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Cage. So it's it's fun seeing him in that. And then he was originally ah Beast, I believe, in the two of the X-Men movies a very long time ago at this point. 00:32:22.33 Fireheart Media um no he's he's doing very well for himself and in this role he's uniquely suited with his he probably lost a little bit of weight for this but he he has a nice uh cheekbones and facial features that are very distinctive i actually don't think I would have liked to see Bill Skarsgård as Hutter. It's and not after watching Nicholas Holt's performance. And as we talked about um for Superman, ah yeah his performances in general have like just intimidated other actors that knowing of the same age range, they're like, Oh, Nick Holt's here, I might as well even not try, because he's just going to get the role. 00:33:05.75 Fireheart Media Right, right. I've got to second you on that. Bill Sparsgard is awesome, but I cannot imagine him doing a better performance of Hutter's character. Most of the time, Thomas Hutter is either nervous or screaming and terrified. And that's most of his role for the entire movie is to just be constantly scared. And, you know, like that to keep keep that interesting is a difficult thing. And I think that he did a very good job. Most of the time, this ends up being um like female characters in horror movies that are the terrified screaming ones that are screaming the entire time. And it's nice to see this reversal and have a man shrieking instead. so 00:33:49.11 Fireheart Media Well, he has a ah boyish charm to him. He looks younger than his years in general, yeah even though he's very lanky and tall. But the innocence that he brings to this role in particular, it's it's a lot of fun because you're looking at him and he's reacting to everything. And then you're looking at everyone else who's like world weary going, who's this guy? this is... 00:34:13.37 Fireheart Media ridiculous but he again he just brings that and you can see um his relationships to the other characters are predicated on him ah actually being a nice guy with not weird quotes around it Right, right. So ah Nick Holt also was talking about he had a diva moment on the set. And so one of the various travails that the actors had to deal with, the challenges of of working on this movie included 5,000 trained rats on set. So um that's a lot of rats. But like. ah 00:34:54.95 Fireheart Media It's 5,000 trained rats that they that they had. I just man, you don't. notice it, it feels like substantially less than I believe in the original, they had that many or more. And you're like, I've counted 20. I don't know where the other rats are. But they must be in the parts of the film that they couldn't like put back together. 00:35:18.39 Fireheart Media Right. It wasn't that many. I think it was like um ah several hundred rats or something for the original film. But this one was 5,000. Wild. Absolutely wild. But rats are cute. I don't know. that's They're fine. But anyway, he did say, though, that there's a certain point where he has to eat a a food-like substance. And he thought that it was ice cream because it looked like ice cream. And he took a big old bite. And then he found out that it was this. ah nasty lard mixed with food coloring and sugar and it was horrible and his character was supposed to be eating this all throughout the day and so he's like I'm sorry this i i put my foot down at this I cannot eat this this lard and the reason they had done the lard thing is because it wouldn't melt 00:36:10.14 Fireheart Media because since he has to eat it all day long uh they didn't want the ice cream to melt and he's like no get me actual ice cream i'm not i i'm not i can't do this not not this lard and just pretend like i'm i'm enjoying this that's not something i can do that's beyond my acting range um so they went to tesco's and picked up a bunch of actual ice cream so uh that was pretty funny But when all the people were doing their table read of the script, what was kind of interesting is that ah like Willem Dafoe and Bill Skarsgård particularly were actually startled by Ralph inno Innocent's really deep voice. He plays Dr. Sievers. And people who have seen Frankenstein, because I'm going to keep mentioning it, will also recognize that he is one of the Academy judges in that film. He's there for a very brief moment, you know, in just like five minutes of a scene. 00:37:07.10 Fireheart Media But he's there and you can tell. And I was like, Dave, I know that guy. And he's like, yeah, that guy was in Nosferatu. And I was like, he was. So when we went back and watched it, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's that guy. 00:37:17.98 Fireheart Media And you'll very much recognize that distinctive voice because he is the ah lead, the the father in the witch film. So you get to be blasted by that baritone for three hours watching multiple of his movies back to back. 00:37:38.33 Fireheart Media Right. And the thing particularly for Skarsgård that was kind of intimidating is because Ralph and Innocent has this naturally deep baritone voice. And yet he who's playing Orlok has to have a deeper voice than this man and make it scarier and have more reverb and all of this stuff. And, you know, it was kind of intimidating for him at the table, you know, to be like, 00:38:02.58 Fireheart Media Oh, damn, actually. So that that's a pretty cool thing. So tell us a little bit about the symbolism of flowers. 00:38:14.68 Fireheart Media So flowers often carry symbolism. Purple lilacs are handled and mentioned throughout the movie on significant moments. The specific variants with a lighter shade of purple are traditionally associated with one's first love or the first time one feels love for someone, an important theme in the movie. 00:38:34.14 Fireheart Media Yeah, yeah. And so like the Lilacs, that's actually even i think one of the the tracks on the score is also related to the Lilacs as well. And to get the moonlit look for the night scenes, the crew filmed during the daytime and and then in post-production ran it through a computer to remove red and yellow color spectra. 00:38:54.62 Fireheart Media So that's kind of interesting. And the snow that was used in the movie is not computer generated. Eggers used a technique from the forties where frozen potato flakes are crushed and made into snow like particles. It used to be very common, but um because of snow candles being banned on movie sets because of toxic gas that is emitted from them, they stopped being used. So, 00:39:21.08 Fireheart Media um Even though that's the case, he insisted on using them anyhow. But I think they were outdoors, so it made it a little bit more tolerable. Yeah. So the potato flakes are separate from the snow candles. 00:39:34.52 Fireheart Media Two different things. The potato flakes aren't going to be toxic. But that was instead of using so CGI, you have things that are actually in the scene affecting the environment. 00:39:50.78 Fireheart Media Right, right. Just ah emphasis on practical effects to the best of their abilities, only using CGI for certain things that would be extremely outside of their budget to do any other way. um So in that way, again, more Frankenstein overlap. So... um And what's kind of cool is that there is a historically used method of identifying the grave of a vampire. And this is a thing that's actually seen in this film. 00:40:19.06 Fireheart Media It's to lead a virgin woman riding atop a virgin stallion through a graveyard. Supposedly, the horse would balk or stomp at a grave containing a vampire and the identified grave would then be opened and the corpse dealt with. um the required color of the horse varied from different regions. Typically a black horse was. The white horses, like the one that's in the film, were used in the Albanian region. 00:40:43.67 Fireheart Media And the sex of the virgin also varied, with it being more common to use a virgin male child, actually. And the virgin was usually clothed in either case. Unlike in this movie, where you got a bear lady right in bare back on a bear horse. 00:41:00.69 Fireheart Media So there's a lot of bear. um This movie, that that's another thing I wanted to talk about anyway. This movie's really ah sexy. in Yeah. And then in general, it's not in a, like a titillating fashion. It's, it's using sensuality to acts like accent certain character ah moods, I would say, but this isn't something that's applied directly to Orlok. He is the most unsexy vampire. I think we've had, 00:41:38.87 Fireheart Media That's debatable. I know that there are people who really are into that thing. Yes. So we will not kink shame anyone that's into monsters. um But. 00:41:52.28 Fireheart Media ah yeah Well, mean, yeah, there's there's also like. Orlok Peen. Yes, we we get the the dongle of Orlok, whereas in Frankenstein, that's quite hidden. 00:42:07.74 Fireheart Media Although um we also get front and back side of Orlok, and I think the most we get is some ah Victor of Frankenstein's buns. 00:42:20.54 Fireheart Media And a little bit of the bush, too. and a little bit of the button and A little bit of that. And a little bit. There's some bath time. but We don't have bath time with Orlok, unfortunately. Unfortunately, i don't, I don't want bath time with Orlok. That's okay. We'll, we'll keep that. Anyway. ah Well, anyway, so, so um there's, there's ah some bare skin and things and kind of like sensuality involved with the characters and their different characters. 00:42:50.30 Fireheart Media emotions towards each other. There's also the kind of sensuality of the way that the vampire's kiss is is taken by the people who are bitten by by the vampire. And mostly this is pertaining to Ellen, the main character. And there are some scenes which we'll get to after the spoiler wall, which kind of like elaborate on, on how that element kind of evolved her own sensuality, which is shown in the film. So it's kind of interesting. That's a ah thing that is entirely absent from the original film. But adding that in there kind of grounds it into like more of a reality because to me, 00:43:39.16 Fireheart Media The times where the the sexiness comes out are always when there's a lot of tension and this is kind of like a release or a desperation kind of of feeling behind the choices that the characters are making and the things that they decide that they're gonna do with themselves. So just to wrap up a little bit more of the production notes, the castle scenes were filmed in the, I cannot say that word. What is so what is that word? what what castle Okay, so the castle scenes were filmed in the Pernstein Castle in the Czech Republic, which is the same location that was used for Werner Herzog's film Nosferatu the Vampire in 1979. 00:44:22.14 Fireheart Media There you go. Okay. I didn't know what that stray J was doing in there. um So anyway, when Dr. Sievers first goes to visit Bonfronz, he whispers to him some words in Latin. I'm not going to go there. And Bonfronz replies with some words in Latin. And this exchange is actually from Matthew 7, 6, which translates to do not give dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to pigs. 00:44:50.81 Fireheart Media And um that's like, I guess, like they're they're kind of secret, you know, a society of academics code or something. Right. Something like that, because like that is not translated at all in the film, even if you put the subtitles on. So I just wanted to add that in there because I was curious what the hell that meant. 00:45:10.20 Fireheart Media And so I had to go look it up and I wanted to put it put it here for the benefit of listeners. It's used in the film as a way to draw Von Franz kind of out of his mania and reconnect him with his academic past, which he had been kind of pushed away from. ah So, yeah, it's it's that code, but between mentor and student. 00:45:34.65 Fireheart Media Yeah, so that's all the production notes that we have pre-spoiler wall. And um as for just kind of overview of the film, the score is excellent. The art, like the cinematography and everything is very moody. you know There's a lot of framing going on. And a lot of the shots call back to shots from the original film and probably other iterations of Dracula, 00:46:02.94 Fireheart Media So as far as the set and set design is concerned, it's all, everything's on point. They built as much of the sets as they could practically so to limit the CGI. It's used mainly instead of in or in lieu of matte paintings in the background, but the Visberg, the city of Visberg itself was all hand constructed Yes, five blocks of the city, and as well as um the Roma town where Hutter stops along the way to the castle. 00:46:39.70 Fireheart Media Not only that, but a historian had actually come on set, a historian and I think also their cultural advisor for that area, for the Romani. And those folks, when they came on to that little village set that was created, ended up having like this massive wave of nostalgia for something that they haven't seen in like years and years because apparently they were older and this is like a scene that they would have seen back in the day that was now recreated by people who have no connection to that culture which is ah pretty cool so what you're seeing there is actually you know pretty authentic to the region and the time period and all of that and that is something that I am always going to give mad props for 00:47:25.02 Fireheart Media Absolutely. Also, just another note about the Romani. There is a part where there's like 50 Romani people and these are actual Romani folks and they were not trained actors. And so that whole scene was done with just actual people that were in that area living there who performed and did this whole section. But it took them forever. It took them tons and tons of tries to do because they weren't trained actors. 00:47:51.77 Fireheart Media Yeah, and that's another part that um Robert Eggers was very proud of because in ah in his first film, The Witch, there really was only the cabin. It's like, oh there's very limited sets on there. And they built that by hand as well. And at the time, he was like, this is the this is the most amazing thing. I built a whole house you know for this. And now he switches. Like, I've built a town. And um he's been working again again with the same set designer, 00:48:20.76 Fireheart Media um and it it just shows the love of the craft that that he's he's developed over the years. Absolutely. So in terms of pacing, a lot of people, again, a lot of reviews said, oh, this is such a slow movie, blah, blah, blah. It's not a slow movie. It's a suspenseful movie. It's well-paced. I don't feel that there is any kind of pacing problem at all. like I don't feel like there's too much or too little of anything. It feels... 00:48:49.21 Fireheart Media just right for for what is you know what Eggers was setting out to do with this film. And I am fully satisfied with it. I think this is a top tier movie. And I definitely picked it up as soon as it came out on a physical format. 00:49:03.29 Fireheart Media So Dave, what are your notes about just kind of general overview, your thoughts about Pace and stuff? Yeah. Well, particularly after recently watching the original film that it's based on, ah the, the pacing is quite similar, um if not a little speedier, um, than the original film and has roughly around the same runtime. So there's a little bit more characterization added into the care of the core cast and some more care decision given to characters that were 00:49:40.88 Fireheart Media they they're like a one-offs um in the original and we'll we'll get to some of the performances that in this version uh really excelled and were almost an afterthought in the original film absolutely harding harding uh so anyway uh overall thoughts uh excellent film it's It's definitely not something that if you are like, you spend all of your time playing action games and and watching action movies and this, that, and the other, and you you need constant spikes of of stimulation, maybe this is not your jam, but if you can do with a slow burn, with a suspenseful movie, with something that is about interior spaces being explored and and expressed in and really artful performances of complex themes and emotions and things like that, then this would be an absolutely great film for you to check to check out. It's also a very good representation of and like homage homage to the original, but also being its own thing. 00:50:52.70 Fireheart Media So definitely worth your time to see. I would recommend this to folks who like the original movie folks who like dracula or gothic romantic stuff in general um those kinds of folks and again just like be aware that it's not going to be action-packed and you're not going to get guns a-blazing or anything like that and if you are aware of this and you are good to go then great you you're here 00:51:22.20 Fireheart Media just echoing that yeah maybe for fans also of uh the hammer studios uh horror films they're in fact those may be more action-packed than this is um but the pacing is similar where you get a lot of payoff um through time given to all the characters and the situations unfolding and that's really more of the heart of this film is that it's it's one whole piece that just a lot of love and attention have been given to all the individual parts that make up the whole 00:51:59.51 Fireheart Media So something that I was just thinking about while you were talking is that um we've had different conversations over the years about what type of horror does Jala like? Because it's it's picky. Like, i don't I don't like all kinds of horror. I'm not like a big slasher fan, for example. I'm not into major gore fest or anything like that. But they're, you know, and jump scares, but they don't work at me at all. Like, they don't work. I just sit there and I'm just like, okay, whatever. um So certain types of horror just don't don't lend themselves to my particular palette. But um this film is doing a lot of stuff that I like. I like suspenseful things with mystery to them. i like things that have a lot of psychological elements. Psychological horror is one that I really enjoy. um and a lot of what's going on here and in the frankenstein movie actually both of them have a lot of these interior spaces in these complex situations that are being navigated by people who have a lot of um disparate elements that they have to kind of like unify and and find peace with um and things like that and so As a result, like this film is directly in my wheelhouse of this is the type of horror that I like. 00:53:13.08 Fireheart Media So um yeah, in the pocket for me. Anyway, I think that's all that we've got for now in terms of the non-spoilery section. Dave, tell us about your show, Monster, Dear Monster. 00:53:28.06 Fireheart Media Sure. My podcast, Monster, Dear Monster, is ostensibly on monsters from their folkloric origins to their current pop culture incarnations. So vampires, of course, being one of those, we would look at things like the original ah Bram Stoker's Dracula and then go, okay, What is the new version of that? How did the Twilight films change the appearance of vampires in in in current popular culture? When they go back... 00:54:04.79 Fireheart Media to the roots of something so is this nosferatu film closer to how vampires were portrayed um in in their original ah cultures and we do that with all sorts of monsters um sometimes that ends up being man is the monster all along as well but then that just gives us time to do kind of character studies so we go through ah various forms of multimedia it's not just films we look at books comic books um animated things the whole gamut of the experience. And yeah, we have guests and interviews and things that are tangential. 00:54:50.90 Fireheart Media And there's a whole film club going on right now. So basically once a month, we take a look at one or two films um as ah as a like a consensus and then just sort of really dig into why we enjoy that film or what that what really works in that. 00:55:09.08 Fireheart Media And that's multi-genre, so that's not monster-specific. Right, and of course you know this show, so without further ado, the spoiler wall is being erected. 00:55:21.43 Fireheart Media It is erected. it is erect. 00:55:28.38 Fireheart Media And we're back from the spoiler wall, which is fully erect, to talk about this movie in detail from the top. So, kicking this off, we've got in the early 1800s, a young girl named Ellen prays for a companion to ease her loneliness. she inadvertently contacts a powerful being known as the Nosferatu, forging a psychic link between them. This opening scene is really powerful. You get this young girl who's just sobbing and crying at the window and, you know, like the the moonlight is streaming in and and she's in her little nightdress and and all of that. Dave, tell us a little bit about what you think about this opening. 00:56:07.67 Fireheart Media So it's this pitiable young woman and she's begging the heavens, the hells, anything, angel, demon, whatever, just she's alone. And she wants a companion or someone, a friend, anything. And of course, what she gets is a hundreds of years old, uh, 00:56:30.64 Fireheart Media decaying corpse slash lover. um This becomes very impressionable on her. She already apparently suffers from visions or other things. So this just basically cemented her in her mind and in her immediate surroundings as kind of an outcast to society. 00:56:52.79 Fireheart Media Well, there's also a whole scene where she ends up going out into like the the garden or whatever and then ah having an encounter an encounter with him in the shadows. And that's talked about a little bit later, but you don't get very much of it at that time. You don't get her family or any the reaction. You just get that and then we just kind of like time jump forward. 00:57:15.64 Fireheart Media Yeah, but it's you can see that the that what she's summoned up isn't what she was actually seeking. um But it's something that bears very much on her character as the movie progresses. 00:57:31.96 Fireheart Media Right. So now we jump forward to 1838, when Ellen has married Thomas Hutter and the couple are living in the German town of Wiesburg. Thomas accepts a look lucrative commission from his employer, Herr Nock, to sell the decrepit Gunnwald Manor to the reclusive Count Orlach. 00:57:51.26 Fireheart Media So at this point, when we're talking about this, this whole thing ah with with this real estate agent. um When you first watch this movie and you're looking at this guy, you're like, this guy's a little weird. He's just like, Providence, Providence. And he's just chuckling to himself. And he's like a little short guy with some tufts of of weird hair that makes him look sort of like ah a little gnome or something like that, kind of, especially like with the outfit that he's got on with the long tails. 00:58:20.08 Fireheart Media um But yeah, he's ah he's a little weird and creepy, but like also you just kind of get the impression as well that Thomas is just like a nervous boy to begin with because he just always looks nervous no matter what. Yeah, he's Scrooge McDucking the Herr Knuck. 00:58:35.38 Fireheart Media He's he's but by the window staring out at actually the Grunewald property, which is a across the street from the offices that he works at. And um in i in in this edition isn't next door to the Hudders, which that's something... 00:58:58.74 Fireheart Media that they changed, but I think that it works a little better here because the state the the property is an estate rather than like a row house. I think that's in the original. um But yeah, we get a lot of... 00:59:14.47 Fireheart Media both um thomas's relationship with his his wife they're they're newlywed as in like they just got married and then they're back from their honeymoon you know wherever that was they they may have not gone anywhere but they took time uh to be alone together but whatever it was it was too short he has to start his new job And he goes into work ah at at the the estate and it's it's like a little, like a ledger house where everyone's on super tall little stools and surrounded by books and everyone's probably a good like, 00:59:54.78 Fireheart Media 40 years his senior. um he He's nervous to be there mainly because he's not an official ah worker for the company. Like he's coming in and he's given a business proposition that would cement him as a formal partner for the office. 01:00:15.10 Fireheart Media Right, and not suspicious at all that Herk Nock is like, and that they even though it's spelled Nock, like K-N-O-C-K, They say knock throughout the whole thing. So I don't know. I don't know what that's about. That would be the German. So there's like. 01:00:32.94 Fireheart Media Knockwurst, which is the sausages, but it's not like knockwurst. It's knockwurst. It's like they're pronouncing it maybe a little harsher than it would be. 01:00:44.83 Fireheart Media Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so Herr Nock, he is absolutely like this this kind of off-putting little weird guy who's like, oh, you know, because um Thomas rolls in late, that's another reason why he's nervous, because he was late leaving Ellen because Ellen was begging him to stay home and everything. And so anyway, he goes in, he gets his proposition and he's like, OK, and he's told that he has to travel to this remote area where this eccentric nobleman lives in order to cement this deal because he he's old and and has you know a hard time getting around. So he has to be. 01:01:28.22 Fireheart Media like the paperwork has to be brought to him instead of him just signing it when he gets to Visberg. So that's the proposition. So then Thomas goes home. 01:01:39.83 Fireheart Media And when he tells Ellen, guess what? I got this thing. And once I do that, I'm going to be a full-time partner. And then she just is immediately against it. And she is who freaking out. She's relating her nightmares to him immediately. 01:01:54.84 Fireheart Media talking about them as a bad omen saying that she you know like she was wedding death like instead of their wedding it was her going up to the altar and then um getting married to death and that everybody was dead in the the place or whatever this whole thing and then uh she's like no no no no something bad's gonna happen don't go don't go and he's like we yeah i'm doing this for us because we need money because we're poor as hell And she's like, I don't care about the money. i don't need a nice house or servants or anything. And he's like, I just want to take care of you because you're sick and whatever. Because again, she's got these visions and this other stuff. They they call it her melancholy. So, you know, ah but she... ends up in the care of his wealthy friend Friedrich Harding and his pregnant wife Anna, along with their two young daughters Clara and Louise. So um before he goes, he takes Ellen over to his friend's house, and he learns from Harding that the Hardings are expecting a third child, and this time they are hoping will be little Friedrich, you know, a boy this time. 01:03:05.11 Fireheart Media Yeah. And the the Hardings, um, are ah like he's a, he's a ship magnet. He basically controls like the, he's like the port controller um for Visberg. 01:03:18.97 Fireheart Media ah So he's well-to-do, but it's clear that he has a relationship with Tomas, like ah from their youth, like they're from the same town. So they grew up together and they just took separate paths. And I think that the Hardings is in inherited position. I believe it's his father that ran the shipyard prior to him. 01:03:41.05 Fireheart Media And they are, it's also not only or is Harding friends with Hutter, but then Ellen? 01:03:52.57 Fireheart Media Ellen? ellen and Yes, Ellen um and Anna are also, I believe they're are longtime friends as well. So it's ah it's a mutual friendship. She's not, ah um Ellen is not adverse to staying with the Hardings. 01:04:13.34 Fireheart Media ah Although with her disposition, the children are are somewhat afraid of her Oh, they they immediately just say there's a monster in the room. There's a big monster. And then Harding is like, oh, I've got to be a monster hunter. I must go. You know, bye, Thomas. Have a good trip. i got I got to go hunt monsters now and all of that. But they were like, don't leave me alone with her. 01:04:37.98 Fireheart Media So like they know that there's some kind of creepy force attached to Ellen and they can sense it. And I like that detail being in this movie because usually, um you know, when it comes to anything beyond our normal Ken, It's most often attributed to animals and children are open and receptive and can notice these things and see them for what they are, you know, in these supernatural types of settings rather than sciencing their brain and going, oh, it must have been the wind or whatever. 01:05:10.17 Fireheart Media So. 01:05:16.92 Fireheart Media So it's and it's a pretty quick cut, basically. Tomas, you know, he grabs his saddlebags and then gets on a horse and and goes off. It's a several day journey. 01:05:29.02 Fireheart Media He also gets the locket. ah Yes. He's given a locket ah um from his wife and which contains a small snip of her hair. And that's to take with him to keep him safe. 01:05:41.24 Fireheart Media So he heads out on his his trip. It's definitely quite chilly where he's going. And i I believe he's wearing a wool long jacket, but in either case, his little hat and jacket seem to be barely enough to contend with like the snowy mountains he's going to be traveling toward. It just looks, it looks very cold. 01:06:03.03 Fireheart Media um And he, he makes his way. It's, we don't have to worry too much about like a montage of traveling. It's, it really sort of feels more like the never ending story where the travel part, or I guess maybe Indiana Jones, um where we don't get a map with a little plane on it, but he's where he needs to go pretty quickly. He's, he finds himself in a village, the um Romani village that's nestled beneath the Carpathian mountains. 01:06:40.76 Fireheart Media Right, and once he gets there, he encounters a whole band of Romani people who are performing and kind of asking him for money and you know for for their performances and things, and otherwise just kind of observing him and everything. But then they start kind of like laughing a little bit at him, and he's just like completely off foot because he has no idea what any of them are saying. And he goes up to this inn, And the innkeeper comes out and, you know, he says that he's going to the castle of Count Orlok. And then they're like, don't say the words. Don't say the name. You know, don't, don't, we live under his shadow and this, that, and the other. And um he ends up having to really kind of bargain with the innkeeper and say, look, I'll give you double the rate if you let me stay. Because the innkeeper didn't even want to have him in anywhere near his property because he was on his way to see Orlok. 01:07:36.38 Fireheart Media And eventually he does end up convincing the innkeeper to allow him in and give him a room. And this old lady, when he goes in and he's he's trying to eat some food before he retires, ends up handing him, um what is it, like a string of garlic or is it a cross? I forget. She hands him an Orthodox cross. 01:07:57.23 Fireheart Media She's hanging garlic. she's Yes. She's hanging garlic and she hands him an Orthodox crucifix. And then she says, she's basically giving him lowdown on to to be safe. And then she does her, the the I love it. The best like little old lady that's spitting to like, 01:08:18.10 Fireheart Media avoid a curse. And she's like, okay. And then she toddles off. It's, and she has a fantastic hat. She does, in fact, have a fantastic hat. But yeah, she basically tells him, you know, be careful. Don't don't let his shadow overtake you. Shadow, shadow, shadow. um That's that's part of the original film's lore is that like the shadow of the Nosferatu can ah assert its power over you. And that is a thing that happens throughout the entire movie. So it's set up directly in the beginning. 01:08:48.92 Fireheart Media And she says specifically, don't let, don't fall into the thrall of his shadow. If you do, you'll be as if you're in a waking dream. 01:08:59.29 Fireheart Media And surprise, that's basically what happens to him. Right. So he goes to sleep that night. And so so I have to stop for just a second about summarizing this movie just to say the original movie has some funny parts in it. Like when when Hutter gets to the inn and everything in the original movie, he sees this book that has all this information about like, you know, the vampires and the Nosferatu and everything. And like he reads through some of it and he's just like laughing his ass off. He thinks it's hilarious actually. 01:09:32.70 Fireheart Media And um you know, all this other mess. And like, there's lot like a lot of other situations where it's, it's kind of like weird and awkward and funny, which is, is interesting. ah None of the humor is in this movie at all. This, this movie does not have any of those elements. So a lot of those elements that are in the original are because the warnings are coming from like Romani and country folk. And he's, he's from the the modern city. So not only is, are these things considered superstitious, but they're like backwards superstition that has nothing to do with the modern world. And he, he, he glances at this little book and it's telling him some useful information. And he just like, he literally just chucks it on the floor because he's like, Oh, that's ridiculous. Who would believe in that? and is just too caught up in the promise of ah the the money that he would be getting from this this job. Now in this the 2024 version, Thomas Hutter is not really blinded by the 01:10:43.77 Fireheart Media um fully by the prospect of this position that he would get that's like a lifelong you know security and getting this big advance those things are important to him but he is nonetheless like quite perturbed by the goings-on in the village to the point where it it does disturb him and his eventual like when he does try to sleep Right, because as soon as he tries to go to sleep, we get a cut to him ah witnessing a bunch of Romani taking his horse, his horse that he had outside, and a naked lady, a naked virgin, um 01:11:25.18 Fireheart Media and like guiding that through a graveyard in this forest and coming across this grave and digging it up and finding a vampire and like staking it through the heart while ah you know Hutter is watching and he just like kind of screams out like no oh my god and then he wakes up in his bed but then when he looks at his shoes his shoes are all covered in mud so that means that he was either somnambulating or, you know, ah this was actually something and then he just like passed out and, and you know, lost some time in there somewhere. 01:11:59.35 Fireheart Media He does have a bit of a nervous disposition. So I could see that he probably fainted. Right. I'm pretty sure he did. So no Shea Lounge for him. Anyway, so ah he wakes up, his horse is gone. Everybody is gone. Like all the Romani are gone. Everything is is just empty and vacant. And so he just goes on foot because he doesn't have any other options. There's there's nobody else out there for him and there his horse is not there anymore. 01:12:26.58 Fireheart Media So he goes across this bridge, which has a whole bunch of like a little prayer prayer thing set up with a bunch of crosses at it. Yeah, it's ah it's a roadside shrine, um and it's filled it's filled with relic, where like, it's it's a reliquary, so it's filled with like little relics and crucifixes, but it also marks the extent of the Count's influence on the region directly. Like, this bridge, once he crosses that first bit, he's now within, like, the thrall of Warlock. 01:13:07.42 Fireheart Media And it does not take long for an unmanned carriage to pull on up. And then he just kind of floats into the carriage. Like it's immediate. He's immediately, as soon as he gets there, he's, he's at this weird crossroads and then there's this carriage and then he just kind of floats into the carriage and then just kind of goes and there's all these wolves following behind him. And, you know, he's going up this steep slope to go to the castle. Yeah. 01:13:30.55 Fireheart Media And from there, we get the opening shot of the castle. We get, you know, which again, for for for me as a video game player, I'm just thinking Castlevania, you know, in the the castle on the cliff or whatever. But um anyway, he gets there, opens up the door. and then you know comes inside and orlock is sitting in front of the fireplace very very much in shadow heavily heavily in shadow and he remains in shadow for most of the movie actually um you don't get very clear images of him except his dongle that one time in a little bit yeah so they the 01:14:13.24 Fireheart Media The appearance of Orlok in this is once Thomas arrives at the, he opens the main entrance, cause way into the castle and then orlok's just basically standing there and kind of ushers him up the stairs to the to the dining area but he tells um thomas that he's he's basically disappointed because he showed up way later than he was supposed to arrive and all the servants have gone to sleep which is a direct line um from the original uh film However, one large difference is in the original film and ah tying back into Bram Stoker's Dracula, when the carriage arrives in the original Nosferatu and for Jonathan Harker in the Bram Stoker novel, the coachman is Dracula or Orlok. 01:15:04.31 Fireheart Media And we are treated in the original version to to make things mystical. They just sped the camera up so the whole... the carriage and and everything is going really, really fast um where everything else is just moving at a regular pace. 01:15:20.92 Fireheart Media And it's, um it's humorous to watch only in hindsight, but if you're looking at this, that would still have been like a, I don't think it was a revolutionary technique. Cause it was, it was 30 years into into filmmaking at that point, but it's something that does stand out and would have been the kind of probably standard special effect of the time for signaling that something's going very fast. In this, we switch it the other way around and everything's moving in this dreamlike morass. 01:15:53.56 Fireheart Media um And the we get treated to Thomas standing at these crossroads and we see the coach coming toward him but it's very it's very far away and then it kind of the the time frame jumps and all of a sudden the coach is closer like by half and then by half again it's just right next to him stopped um that i think was a is a fun nod to the original but something that still made this like 01:16:25.28 Fireheart Media suspenseful. Like you don't know, okay, what's going on here. And then he like slides into the, um, into the coach. And then even when he's being led up the stairs, he doesn't seem like he's all there anymore. 01:16:40.66 Fireheart Media So ah if I remember correctly, when we watched this movie for the first time in the theater last year, when we got to the point where he's floating to the ah carriage, I think I turned to you and was like, oh shit. Because I was like, oh, you know holy crap. That did not take long. Homeboy was immediately enthralled. Like the moment he walked across that bridge, automatically, automatically. So, ah but yeah, we get Orlok. 01:17:08.28 Fireheart Media in this massive room with this big table and he's insisting that Thomas sit down and eat something. He's like, it's past midnight. It's so late. I'm eager to go ahead and seal this deal on this sale and this, that, and the other. Show me the papers. And so Thomas hands everything over and he's calling Orlok, sir. 01:17:26.81 Fireheart Media And Orlok corrects him and says, no. your lord you will call me by what my you know my proper station is and so at that point then he has to continually say my lord my lord and he's adding it in extra times to kind of reaffirm it for orlock because he's scared shitless this entire time Yeah, and I do so we get the booming voice, which is a little more even more effective rather in this environment because it's just it's resonating off of like this, the stones of the this large room. And I love that when Thomas first he has his saddlebags in his hand and then or locks just kind of like looks at him dismissively and he's like, 01:18:14.68 Fireheart Media put down your conveniences like on the table and sit and it just it's just it's the the voice is fantastic and it's because you don't see him you kind of see him in silhouette like the voice is doing a lot of heavy lifting and it she just really nailed it in this one Absolutely. Is this the part where he ends up being told to eat food and then he accidentally cuts himself with the knife? is that That's on this first night. So he accidentally cuts himself because he's scared shitless, as as previously mentioned several times. You'll continually hear this phrase. um 01:18:55.56 Fireheart Media And he ends up cutting himself with a knife when he's trying to get a piece of bread. And then Orlok has a bit of a reaction. Yeah, ah it's... 01:19:09.14 Fireheart Media He just like kind of seizes up and then he's like, no, I will. I'll fix that for you. And um he was like the precious blood. Yeah, youre you can't you can't waste your precious blood. 01:19:23.35 Fireheart Media And and that again, that's a a direct line, I think, from the original. um But it's far more spooky here. ah and Again, in the way that Thomas was dragged kind of unwittingly into the carriage here, 01:19:41.63 Fireheart Media there's some camera trickery and all of a sudden he's just in a chair by the fireplace and and he's sweating rivulets and not because he heard him he's just so afraid and realizes i shouldn't be here like this was the worst mistake like i didn't get it but now i definitely i think i understand um But even still, he doesn't quite understand the full like mistake that he's made in coming here. 01:20:14.39 Fireheart Media So what does Orlok do with Hutter's Finger? I don't, it doesn't show. um He grabs it. He grabs it He's pulling it. And then and then cut we cut like they're just in the chairs and apparently we're there all night long. 01:20:35.42 Fireheart Media And then Thomas just wakes up the next morning, like sprawled in a very uncomfortable, but nicely crafted, um, wooden seat. 01:20:48.06 Fireheart Media Right, and he's looking around, and something that I like about the castle in this is the original castle from the first movie wasn't all super decayed or anything. It was a castle. that That was it. But in this one, the castle is mostly in ruins, and that's what I like about it is because it's in ruins very much like Warlock himself. Anytime that the place mirrors the people that live there in such you know a way to this extent, know, it's always a good time for me. Like I love it for the set design to be like that. um 01:21:22.14 Fireheart Media So he gets up and he's kind of wandering around and trying to navigate this space and figure out where Orlok is. If there's anybody else there, he's like looking around the halls and going, hello. And there is nobody there. 01:21:37.43 Fireheart Media And then he gets himself into a little bit of trouble. Yeah, so there you know there are no servants. There's no one else here. It's just the two of them. The castle is the other character, really. 01:21:50.74 Fireheart Media um And in this part, he's looking around the rooms. I think this first night, he the the time is um mutable. Like, he doesn't know that time's passing. Mm-hmm. 01:22:08.70 Fireheart Media All of a sudden it's just, oh, it's nighttime now. And I was just, I thought I was just walking around the corridors. But didn't he see Orlok, like when he was calling and looking around, didn't Orlok just like up appear and then just like, you know, or am I thinking about a later part? 01:22:27.83 Fireheart Media might be a later part i again like like with thomas like this part's a little it's it's dream logic so it's it's a little hazy in in my mind as well i do know that later is when it gets really bad Well, on the second night, in either case, Orlok ends up trying to get Thomas to sign some paperwork. And it's in Orlok's original language, he says, for his comfort. But he says that this is the paperwork for signing over the house to him. 01:23:06.26 Fireheart Media And so he insists that Thomas sign this paperwork. And, you know, the covenant is what he refers to it as. and when Thomas is leaning over to do that, his locket that Ellen gave him spills out, and then the Count notices it and goes, oh this is from your wife. 01:23:27.42 Fireheart Media you know You know, like, this is this is a token from your wife, and and all of that, and then he just kind of takes it and so holds it up to his face and just kind of, like, breathes in in the super creepy, like, I'm smelling your hair business. That's quite a lot. 01:23:43.06 Fireheart Media I mean, he's breathing it like it's a. um ah What is a little. The thing if you have asthma inhale inhaler, he's just like, like all up in there. 01:24:00.06 Fireheart Media And he does it like several times and um he's just kind of chilling there ah while he's telling Tomas to sign it. And again, Tomas is just, he's afraid. He's looking at it. You can't read what the thing is, but he something's up. 01:24:18.55 Fireheart Media um And at this moment, Tomas, Orlok like pops open a little ah ah treasure treasure chest and then it you know digs out a small bag of gold and just like Todd, here's your advance. 01:24:34.71 Fireheart Media And um it's at this point, like I, I still don't feel like that Thomas is, is money hungry. It was more probably the, the, Oh, trying to get back to business. This is a business transaction. And he was using that to kind of keep hold of himself. 01:24:55.13 Fireheart Media And then of course signs the, the document. 01:25:00.09 Fireheart Media After which time, Orlok is like, the covenant is signed. And then, you know, like, takes that and he's all, like, happy with that. And he just, like, doesn't he just, like, keep the locket? He doesn't ever give it back. he He walks out and then the door closes behind him and then Thomas is kind of just standing there like, what? just Okay, the thing's done. And he's like, you do you you have my locket? i my My locket? 01:25:24.98 Fireheart Media Yeah, I mean, like, the man looks like he's he already did pee his pants or he's about to pee his pants. And he's just like, but my locket, you know, and like in that the weakest, most fragile little voice and and cannot, cannot do anything. So, you know, that was a whole thing. 01:25:45.82 Fireheart Media But um after that, when Thomas wakes up the next night, he discovers a bite on his chest and starts to feel increasingly ill and scared. And he decides that he's going to leave. He demands to leave, as a matter of fact, from Orlok when he meets up with Orlok again. And Orlok tells him, no, it's a bad omen to to travel while you're ill. You will stay here and get better first. 01:26:12.63 Fireheart Media And um so Thomas drifts in and out of sleep and finds more but bite marks on his chest at different points. And again, this is like days passing at this point. and We don't actually know how much time he's here for. 01:26:26.30 Fireheart Media um But then he decides that he's going to try to escape. And it's at this point that he ends up opening up the wrong door and finding himself down below. 01:26:40.79 Fireheart Media Yeah, so in the castle, Orlok sleeps in like a little crypt. it's It's underground, but it's off of the main building. ah And it is a um specific a mausoleum. 01:26:55.89 Fireheart Media um But he has a very ornate a coffin that he's in. And it's... it's it's ah It's carved and has symbols kind of all over it. they look It looks like a hermetic seal, so other nods to occultism. 01:27:15.06 Fireheart Media um and and like he potentially himself was like a sorcerer but before his his vampiric turn. That's something that's actually brought up later. We'll talk about it. 01:27:29.34 Fireheart Media Yes, and so Thomas knows something's up. He finds, like I think, a pickaxe is just on the ground, and he you know moves the the lid of the coffin open and recoils in horror at the the naked shriveled dongle before him. 01:27:53.14 Fireheart Media Yeah, I'm like, why would you go and open up the- you said you were gonna escape. Why are you trying to go and and open up this crypt? What is wrong with you, you know, Mr. Terrified of Everything P-Pants? You need to just go. Like, what are you doing? But anyway, he he decides that he's he's ah horrified enough of of whatever's going on with Orlok that he's gonna open up this crypt, and he gets the pickaxe, and then the dongle rises. 01:28:18.90 Fireheart Media Along with some wolves that come out of fucking nowhere and they're there out of nowhere. And suddenly he realizes i have made a massive error and he runs for his life and tries to to close the door and then run away, run away. 01:28:34.17 Fireheart Media He does take a swing yeah with the pickaxe and then it's just caught immediately by Orlok, who's massive. um And he, Thomas bars the door and just kind of like sits behind it. 01:28:47.32 Fireheart Media um The wolves did show up previously. They were chasing the carriage. carriage, yes. But other than that, they weren't around house. So they're like little servitors of Orlok. 01:28:59.61 Fireheart Media Right. There's a whole chase scene throughout the castle. And this is eventually ended when Thomas ends up, what, jumping out a window? 01:29:12.49 Fireheart Media He's in his room and he's had nightmares of like ah waking and then Orlok's just like floating above him and and giving him chest hickeys. And he just doesn't want that. 01:29:24.50 Fireheart Media He doesn't want him to come through the door and come after him. So he, you know, pokes his head out the window and then There's a ledge and he he's attempting, I guess, to like walk around the edge of the castle on the outside. He makes it like three steps and slips off and falls into a, thankfully there's a river right below the edge of the castle. 01:29:47.29 Fireheart Media Right, right. So ah Thomas is, like, I have to say, he is a very good example of a common fucking man. you know, a common man in an uncommon situation doing his best and failing hard. Failing so hard at everything. Like, he means well, but he is but a mere mortal in the presence of massive supernatural forces far beyond his ken. 01:30:14.62 Fireheart Media Well, he doesn't seem particularly adept at much of anything. And that is just, it's in it's endearing to his character. He just seems like he's just a quiet little guy. 01:30:28.28 Fireheart Media And he probably would become like Bartleby the Scrivener eventually. But for now, he's not he's not really meant for, he should have just been born like a hobbit. He's not meant for these grand adventures. 01:30:42.58 Fireheart Media right right one the one thing he's very good at and this is something that is mentioned later in the movie is that because of him and his love it calmed ellen's melancholy where she didn't have all the supernatural shit happening to her anymore once she was with him so he kind of like calmed her down somehow even though he's a a deeply deeply nervous man um But anyway, so he falls in the river and he gets pulled out and saved by nuns. So these Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox nuns take him into the church and they are are praying and talking and this, that, and the other and say that he was under the shadow of Orlok, but he's safe here because Orlok cannot come into this church. They also tell him that Orlok was a Solemnar who became a vampire after making a pact with the devil. 01:31:34.01 Fireheart Media And Solemnar is a wizard from Romanian folklore said to ride a dragon and control the weather causing rain, thunder, and hailstorms. And this comes into play because while Thomas is off, you know, in the care of the nuns and, and you know, doing his business, Orlok deuces out. He goes and sets sail for Visberg inside of his coffin on a ship with plague-carrying rats. So ah there's several... 01:32:02.74 Fireheart Media put different boxes of dirt along with him and that's because he has to sleep in the earth which he he was buried in and that's part of his requirements for nosferatu living you know best life or whatever um so there's that and you know he and his rats and his dirt go onto the ship And this is all in ah alignment with the original. 01:32:34.14 Fireheart Media However, I will say in in the original film, we are treated to more of that speedy magic as Orlok flees the castle and is like of her... cu ah her Herculean strength and is carrying like seven boxes of seven little coffin boxes ah and can like, he teleports or not, he floats himself into a box and then like floats the lid up. 01:33:03.38 Fireheart Media And it's, it's very cute. um We don't get that little magic traveling with this new movie. However, we do get a voiceover where Orlok is using his sorcerous ways to command the winds to to make a tempest to speed him on his way to his love. 01:33:22.62 Fireheart Media Indeed. And meanwhile, back with the nuns, just to wrap up Thomas's part here, the nuns are like, you need to stay here because you're sick. You need to be here for a while until you can recover because you're under his his thrall still. And he's like, no, I have to go. He's going after my wife. 01:33:39.67 Fireheart Media And he he leaves. He's like, I got to go back home. And so he is also traveling back to Visburg at this time. But then we get a cut back to Ellen and the Hardings. 01:33:50.87 Fireheart Media So during Thomas's absence, Ellen, under Orlok's influence, begins suffering from seizures and sleepwalking. And her doctor, Wilhelm Sievers, is struggling to treat it. He's trying to keep her drugged up. And then Harding ends up tying her to the bedposts and stuff to keep her from thrashing in the night. and things like that. There's also some other scenes where you get Ellen and Anna talking to each other and Anna is trying to comfort her friend. They're walking on the beach and Ellen is just talking about how she's lost without Thomas and Don't you ever feel like, you know, sometimes you are the most insignificant speck and, you know, you have no by will or power of your own and this, that, and the other. And then Anna's like, God, it's God talking to you 01:34:42.87 Fireheart Media So Ellen goes, and something outside of you is controlling you like a puppet. And then that's when Anna's like, thatll you mean God? She's like, no like some kind of demon thing. But, you know, guess you're on the other side of the coin of the track. don't Right, but it's just Anna doing her best to try to to spin everything in a positive light for her friend because she cares and loves her. And um so like then Ellen is is struggling pretty hard. is Is this the point where she has, i think this is where she has her seizure on the shore when she's like, I want to stay on the shore a little bit longer and wait for Thomas. And then Anna and her husband Friedrich are off in the lane, you know, past the beach, back on the the street again. And they're starting to make out in public because they're, you know, ah Randy, Randy and much in love and and a very happy couple. And then they get interrupted by screams as they find Ellen thrashing and and having a seizure. 01:35:46.07 Fireheart Media So um the and most of the entirety of the time that we see Harding interacting with Ellen, he's like aloof and resentful of her presence in his household. And this isn't directly explained in the theatrical cut. But there are extended scenes in which ah Harding and his wife um are attempting to make love and are interrupted, presumably on multiple occasions because it's late at night, by Ellen having her her night fits. 01:36:27.42 Fireheart Media So here again, he's he's interrupted in it's tryst, just romance. And that is putting... just their romance and that is putting like an extra pressure um that Harding has in addition to the ships and his business. Yes. 01:36:52.41 Fireheart Media And so he's not getting any sleep because he's up making sure that his friend's wife is like not gonna bite off her tongue or go sleepwalking or whatever. So um yeah, he's, he's doubly addled by, by Alan's presence. 01:37:09.85 Fireheart Media Right. And I think that's important to know because even though I don't know that the scene with them making love is particularly additive, it does give a little bit more background to why he's so bothered by Ellen being there for sure. 01:37:24.70 Fireheart Media But so basically Harding calls Seavers the doctor and then Seavers, as this kind of continues and she worsens and he's not finding a way to treat her, um ends up suggesting that they call on a professor of his, Albin Eberhard von Franz. 01:37:45.15 Fireheart Media So he says, okay, let's go and see von Franz and goes to see von Franz. And, you know, this, this is this eccentric man who is into the occult, who's Not interested in answering the door or answering questions or taking calls or anything like that until Sievers does his little fist bump pro, you know, ah Latin words to kind of call him back from from ah wherever he was mentally to the academia where he originally met him. 01:38:17.18 Fireheart Media Well, they're, they're interrupting him in his attempt to turn. Yes. Well, it's like less. It's some other black steel. And he's like, I'm trying to turn the gold and you guys messed it up. 01:38:29.66 Fireheart Media You do interrupted my concentration. I've been at this a while and, um, Seaver like lays out, um, the situation. And then that, that peaks, um, von Francis interest because that's other, that that's another, 01:38:47.64 Fireheart Media side interest that he had is um studies into particular folkloric creatures. Right. And he identifies pretty quickly, hey, this is a Nosferatu. And so ah Harding's like, okay, great. What do we do about it? And he's like, i don't know, man. 01:39:08.02 Fireheart Media and And so Harding's like, what? And he's like, well, I haven't ever met one, but you know, the books say, and he's like, the books are It's, it's pretty fantastic because in contrast to say Van Helsing, um, 01:39:23.10 Fireheart Media this is not, um, when Francis, it's like life's work. He wants that gold. Um, this is just ah like a tertiary interest that he's like, yeah, I read some books once and they, you know, I, I came to some conclusions and the books all agree on specific aspects. So we can probably go with those. This might work, you know, it worked for somebody along the way. Let's, let's try that, you know, 01:39:52.22 Fireheart Media Right, and so um the Hardings are very skeptical, but he ends up going to see Ellen and is completely appalled by what Seavers has been doing. He's like, no, untie her immediately. And, you know, what the hell were you doing, Harding? And Harding's like, keeping her from breaking my entire fucking house, you know? And then he's like, Seavers, what were you doing giving her all these opiates? And he's like, trying to keep her calm. No, she has to be clear. She needs... to to be clear and you know um ellen has a moment of connection with von franz and is talking to him and that's really where he cements it is a nosferatu is when he's talking to her and she's saying to him all of these different things about what she's experiencing and he's like oh shit i've read about this i know what that is actually and then that's where we get this whole nosferatu thing but the hardings are are real skeptical about that and then they're you know harding was already pretty pissed that uh sievers brought this this quack doctor in and everything like that and as though one one thought he's talking to her and you know he's treating her with all all all due diligence and respect but like this this is a light bulb like the the same like mania and focus he has on alchemy like 01:41:11.80 Fireheart Media he had this at one point for something else. And you can see that he's actually excited and happy. Like he's like, this is great. You're a real vampire. And man, we could, this could be so cool. And then, you know, he's, he eventually is more realistic about it. 01:41:27.77 Fireheart Media um But his initial like excitement overrides, I think his better judgment um in the beginning, aside from, making sure that she's being treated respectfully and is more free to, to commune at night because that's something that he can use, um, to better like diagnose the situation. 01:41:54.33 Fireheart Media Right, right. But the Hardings end up throwing him out of the house. And they're like, don't don't let him come back here again. None of that bullshit. And meanwhile, Seavers ends up ah encountering Knott. 01:42:09.22 Fireheart Media knock because he is institutionalized he is like the master is coming the master is coming yeah he and then starts going off uh the marketplace i think and just like biting biting animals and like murdering things with this but he kills a sheep with his his bare hands in his mouth he just like tears into it and mouths down and so he ends up getting uh pulled into the hospital and then taken down into essentially the dungeon where they have him locked up and So initially Siebert is talking to um his head functionary. I don't know what the, it's a guard. or's an Orderly. Yeah. And he's like, we don't use the cells. That's like antiquated. Like they're just, that just came with the building. like bear Yeah. We don't use that. Why, why would you do that? And then he's like, well, well, doctor, he ate the sheep. Yeah. 01:43:04.92 Fireheart Media yeah And it's ah he ate raw. It was raw. You know, and he was so he was so distraught and upset. And then so then Seavers goes to see Knok, who is petting a pigeon. He's he's gotten a pigeon from somewhere. I guess it flew into the window and he just caught it. and he's petting it and then you know he's mumbling some stuff about but whatever and then like he ends up biting the head off the pigeon and you know just like reveling in it and by the way, the actor who plays Herr Canuck is so fucking good so fucking good this man steals the show every time he's on the stage um it's Simon McBurney I don't know that I've ever seen him in anything before but this guy is just so good in this role, holy crap 01:43:51.42 Fireheart Media did So um this is another character. And then the majority of the cast ah were um represented in the original and Herakonok is no exception. He has the same role. However, in the original, it's like mostly far more restrained. He does a lot of work with his eyes, the the the or the original actor, where he's just like playing He's kind of doing the same thing. He's chewing up some of the scenery because he just has this manic, like, ah I'm trying to think of the expression. he's He makes it a lot. It's the weird, like, grin, like he's about to do something sneaky. And then they just gave him massive eyebrows, like... 01:44:39.64 Fireheart Media extra makeup to eyebrows and so he's constantly just being a little imp and this version is scary just yeah it's he's legitimately terrifying um and the orderlies are correct to have probably put him down in this little dungeon Right. So one of the things that he is screaming is the blood is the life. The blood is the life. The master is coming and all this mess. And after he tears up all that stuff, they end up putting him into a chair and like, you tying him up. It's basically an electric chair, but without the electric stuff hooked up to it. He's just like locked in. hand and foot to this chair and then left in this cell and um so that's what they do with knuck and of course severs tells uh von franz about this about the situation and then von franz um is trying to see okay well who is this guy and meanwhile in the interim during the time that the doctors are having this little conversation and everything uh one of the guards or orderlies or whatever goes into the cell because uh they're like i think the the chair got knocked over and so then he goes to check knuck and then knuck bites like bites the shit out of him and then just like murders him by biting him to death and just biting him tore his neck open and you know like tore his jugular and just you know uh 01:46:08.15 Fireheart Media like tore it all up so after that happens um you know by the time ah von franz gets back because he's like take me to your madman i need to see this guy you know to to again to figure out more clues about what's going on uh by the time that happens the the orderly's already been killed and and knock has like actually vanished he's deuced out by this point he escaped And so then von Franz is just like looking at the whole area and, in you know, just trying to look around the cell and figure out what's going on. And then he's like, okay, who was this guy? And um like at some point they figure out that it is Knock is who it is. And then they go and check his office. And while they're inspecting that, they open up this cabinet and it's so funny. They're looking all over the office, but in the massive cabinet in the background, directly in the center console, You open it up and there's like this whole like magic circle and like all these, these, you know, pentacles and all kinds of shit in there. it's Yeah. It's an altar with like a bunch of. 01:47:08.43 Fireheart Media And a big book. you know but Yeah. He has a grimoire and it's all just like that. That's of the devil. And immediately Von Franz turns and goes, pull up the carpet. And they roll the carpet back and there's a, there's the his big um summoning circle. 01:47:26.30 Fireheart Media Which, by the way, we I don't remember where it is in the where exactly it is in the timeline here, but there is a point where he's buck naked with his book in his lap, and he's rocking back and forth with a bunch of candles lit in the middle of his little summiting circle and mumbling about the master and this, that, and the other. And he's just like, this is before he gets caught um you know eating the sheep raw. It was before Thomas Lohar, right after. comes it's right after thomas left according to what dave says uh i'll go with that that sounds right and um so like we've already had some scenes of this guy being a real fucking weirdo and uh so like it's persisted and then like the last we see of knock at this point is him going he's almost here or whatever and then like going down the canal in a boat because he's headed toward the grunwald estate which is where um orlok will meet him when he gets there yes 01:48:19.83 Fireheart Media So Von Franz ends up figuring out that like one of the ways that you can kill this creature is that he has to return to to the earth in which it was buried. So um you know if they can figure out where the earth is that he is buried, you know he was buried in, then they can possibly get rid of that, destroy everything, and then he will have nowhere to rest and then he will die that way. 01:48:45.94 Fireheart Media is is kind of the idea that they're running with but um so on the ship we have a whole sequence where the sailors are one by one getting sick and and dying and everybody's having weird malaise how about you tell us a little bit about the last voyage of the demeanor it's not the demeanor at this time but uh you know have to reference that movie Yeah, so the it it's basically boils down to the captain and the first mate are trying to keep the ship afloat because one by one, the the the few crew they had are falling prey to a sickness and some kind of plague, and they don't they don't know what's causing it. 01:49:29.40 Fireheart Media they like... they they start like 01:49:38.71 Fireheart Media becoming more sure that whatever is doing it is something in the hold. So eventually the first mate is like, I'm just going to go solve the problem. And when he goes down into the the hold ah to to open the crates that are in there, um they've I think that they started seeing the rats at that point. Yeah, the rats are in there. 01:50:01.14 Fireheart Media But yeah he pops or he pops open the crate, the top crate. um And it's it's full of rats. And then as soon as he turns around to go tell the captain, I guess, he gets oarlocked. Like, oarlock is right behind him and just does the biting. 01:50:21.02 Fireheart Media Well, and then the captain also lashes himself to the ah the wheel. And he's, like, you know, trying to make sure that he can still get, you know, get the ship out of here or whatever. And then he gets oarlocked as well. So... Once the ship kind of comes into Visburg's harbor, Harding is woken up in the middle of the night to go for an emergency because there's this ship that just crashed on the shore and there's plague rats everywhere. And those those rats are already everywhere by the time that the ship's folks you know come and and see what's going on. And they go, oh, shit. 01:51:01.72 Fireheart Media Yeah. And so this is something where the original, it has the same story. Like they, they goes on the ship and then the other boxes that he was bringing aboard, some were full of dirt and then some were full of rats because they opened the boxes to just check them, uh, when they're stowing them aboard and one spills over and has rats and the guys are like, 01:51:29.30 Fireheart Media That's no good. Don't put that box in. And then they they tell they put the other ones in there anyway and don't check them. That's on them, I guess. um But in this, they, yeah, they they're I think the rats, like, maybe they manifested in the dirt. it's It doesn't explain it. And you just take it on faith that there's rats there now. 01:51:51.90 Fireheart Media It's just like the wolves because the wolves kind of came out of where the fuck did they come out of? I mean, yeah you know, you don't know where they came from, but they they're there and then whatever they're magic in. I mean, Orlok, he can do what he wants. yeah He's a fucking wizard. I'm a wizard vampire. i mean, he's what are you even questioning where the rats are coming from? That's silly. and vampires can explode into a big horde of bats remember so and one of in one of the stones yes one of those bats is a dongle and that one always gets lost his detachable penis just went a different direction anyway that's a whole different uh that's a fanfic that i'm working on workshopping right now anyway no but so um ellen anyway she goes he's here she like wakes up and then she's just like he's here and you're not really sure what he she's talking about because this is the same time that orlok is reaching the shore and knok is going he's here he's here and you know like he's he's just fled from the asylum had just killed the porter and he's out the door so it's multiple people going he's here and you're not sure what she's talking about but then She runs downstairs and then Thomas is on a horse and he's kind of slumped over and he's trying to make his way to Harding's house. And he like falls off the horse. And then she ends up having to like tend to him because he is super sickly, but he just made it back in at the same time as Orlok. 01:53:13.46 Fireheart Media Yeah. So this to me was, was kind of coded as, um, uh, Prince charming's like ride after everyone's put to sleep in sleeping beauty in like the, the Disney cartoon. And he's just like riding on his horse, but mostly asleep. 01:53:33.69 Fireheart Media Like he's like half dead. um And Thomas here, yeah, he just, he doesn't look good. The man should not have been traveling, obviously, as as agreed by the nurses. 01:53:45.72 Fireheart Media So let me just say a little something here. Orlok used his magic to wizard the ship to go faster. And Thomas shows up at the same fucking time. So, it you know, that means that, like... 01:54:01.21 Fireheart Media he was flight like he is exhausted because he was riding as hard as he could to come home so we don't get to see that that whole trip that he has but props to him for being you know like to have already been sick and been having all of his blood drained and under the orlock shadow and all this other shit and then still managing to make it all the way the hell so back before orlock yeah he got back in advance of orlock on his magic on his magic mystery tour and he must have like swapped multiple horses because it's like days of travel to go, you know, back and forth. 01:54:38.23 Fireheart Media Right, so in either case, at this point, Orlok appears to Ellen, and basically she's having a nightmare ah where she gets up and then she's over by the window, and it it might actually be reality rather than a nightmare where she wakes up. It's never 100% sure because this is dream logic and Orlok does what he wants, so who knows? He might be there, he might be a dream, who knows? But he enters in through the window and demands that she give herself to him and redo their contract. And he says that Thomas had annulled their marriage and all this other mess. And so at this point she was free and clear because she's like, well, I'm married. I can't i can't do that because i'm I'm already married. And he's like, nope, no, you're not. 01:55:25.27 Fireheart Media Actually, i got the paper right here. It says it says no It says that you're free. So that means, yeah, you just got to say yes. That's it. That's all, you know, so say yes. And I like this exchange a lot because it's in this scene where she's talking to him, where they're talking about how they even first... 01:55:47.54 Fireheart Media you know, met in the first place. She's like, I don't want you to be around me, this, that, and the other. And he's like, you summoned me. Motherfucker, you summoned me in the first place. I was asleep and you woke me up and I am nothing but an appetite. 01:56:03.54 Fireheart Media And I like the way that he says that. And he's like, I am an appetite. I, you know, she's like, you can't love, you know, like, well, I can't join with you. You can't love. And he's like, but I also can't be sated by anything other than you you made sure of that lady when you did this, you did this, you called me here actually, and all of that. So that's a lot of information for Ellen to process. And it's also a lot for the person watching the film to process as well, because in the original, movie that's not the case like Orlok just decides he's gonna go and cuck cuck tutter and that that that was just his own decision there was no annulment he just decided he was just gonna cuck the shit out of this guy who just sold him a property across from his house um 01:56:53.59 Fireheart Media But in this one, it's this whole otherworldly thing where she, without understanding her own powers, accidentally made this pact with this vampire that, you know, now hungers for her specifically and and will not be sated and will only keep eating everybody until he can get her. 01:57:15.70 Fireheart Media And so um that's the kind of situation that we've got, which is real dire. So ah tell us about the three-day rule. So Orlok's fairly, um I mean, yes, he's intimidating, but he's otherwise congenial to um to Ellen to the point where it may be after this, but it doesn't really matter. He's talking to Canoc, who basically set him up in the Gunvald Manor. And Canoc's like, I'll just go get your like your lady friend. 01:57:53.91 Fireheart Media Like I just go grab her, like this is easy. You know, ain't gotta mess with this. I'll just go bring her right to you. And that's where Orlok's like, no, that like there's rules to this and I have to, I'm beholden to the rules as much as anyone else. So she has to of her own will, like ah come to me and then, you know, reinstate the contract, like re like renew her vow to me. 01:58:18.97 Fireheart Media Like that's just how it has to be. And so when she denies him and says that she's not going to do that, um he at that point becomes angry. And he's like, well, you say that now, but you won't in three days. i will give you you three days to to make up your mind. And at the end of it, you're going to say yes, because in the meantime, I'm going to kill everyone that you love and this whole town. 01:58:45.37 Fireheart Media Like that's like, that's just what's going to happen. and the sooner you say something that's, you know, the less people will die is what he's implying. But he's has unleashed the plague rats already. 01:58:58.26 Fireheart Media Right. And the plague rats come into play immediately because Ellen, after she has all of this exchange with Orlok, is of understandably upset. She goes to see Anna and Harding is too busy with the the shit going on with the plague rats and everything. So he's out late yeah dealing with that at the time. And so Anna is sleeping alone. And so Ellen goes in and asks... 01:59:22.05 Fireheart Media Anna if she can sleep with her and so Anna's like okay that you know that's fine and they're spending time together and talking and you know Anna gifts to Ellen like ah a cross that she has there's a lot of bestowing of crosses onto people who end up like having having no actual use for them in this movie because it doesn't do anything to Nosferatu at all so anyway ah So they go to sleep and everything. But then when Ellen wakes up after this whole thing with Orlok, she finds Anna on the floor covered in rats, but also a massive bite mark on her chest. And she has been Orlok'd, but she's not dead. She is dying. 02:00:06.14 Fireheart Media ah She is on her way to dying. And so Ellen is terrified and horrified and, you know, um... and Like all this other mess is going on. And then Harding gets so upset about the fact that Anna has fallen ill to this plague and all of this other stuff. And now he's got not just Ellen, but also Thomas in his house sick and everything. He's like, look. Y'all need to go. Y'all need to go because like my house is falling apart. I'm not getting any sleep, especially now with the plague brats and everything. I can't risk everything because yeah he didn't tell Ellen this. 02:00:41.82 Fireheart Media Ellen, I don't think ever finds out that Anna was pregnant, but Anna is pregnant with a child. And so he's concerned because of course, if Anna... dies or if the plague is is whatever then that ah compromises their child as well so he uh the concerns of his family his his two small children and everything says you need to get out of here and then ellen's like no please but he's so sick still and he's like no y'all gotta go so then we have the scene of thomas and ellen um kind of like struggle busing through the town where there's people you know um 02:01:17.78 Fireheart Media screaming and dying and and you know talking about the end times with their end times rants and and stuff like that and uh thomas is like fully leaning on ellen who's trying to you know toddle along with him you know hunched over her and stuff is on fire and it's a whole massive mess Yeah. And I mean, he, so she's carrying her husband and he's like six foot three or three. He's she's a pretty tall guy. um 02:01:48.89 Fireheart Media and um Lily Rose Depp is not tall and she's, If someone is waif-like, she is that. She's very, very thin. um So their struggle is like a physical one, but then a mental one too, because they're dealing with their friends, basically just kicking them to the curb. 02:02:09.69 Fireheart Media they have They have their house to go to, but that's it. And then on the way, the whole city might as well just be on fire. would be better than like this curse that everyone's suffering under. 02:02:23.19 Fireheart Media Right. So once they get home, Thomas is insisting that they need to leave town before the quarantine starts. And Ellen is like, no, i can't leave. You don't understand. And so that leads her to then get into this heated exchange with Thomas wherein she confesses her entire history with Orlok, who is now here to come and reclaim her. um That is like the the easiest, lightest overview. 02:02:55.35 Fireheart Media i will let you talk more about like that exact exchange and how how that goes, because it's a lot, it's a lot of Thomas going, but but i love you and then her like switching gears a bunch of different times there's a section where she's possessed there's a section where she's mad there's a section where now they're having sex i don't know ah talk a little more about that dave okay so yeah she is like basically pushed to her breaking point she's already been ah 02:03:28.42 Fireheart Media weakened by all of the the, basically the night terrors where she's visited in her dreams um for how who knows how long, at least a couple of weeks. And then dealing with her, you know her best friend is going to die. Like there's not a cure for the plague. 02:03:46.78 Fireheart Media um And the the the um encroaching like death of the town as well as her 02:03:58.23 Fireheart Media at this point feeling inescapable ah fate with Orlok. And that doesn't, it's not diminishing her love for her husband, but things are getting blended together with her old promises and all the stress she's under. She's, she starts because she's been kind of under the sway of Orlok as much as her husband has. 02:04:26.30 Fireheart Media and it's not like a direct control, but it's borderline like possession. So she's shifting almost personalities as well. 02:04:38.39 Fireheart Media And when she does, um when they start basically having sex, um, in the room, it's because she's threatening, not only, well, she's threatening Orlok and telling, telling Orlok in the Orlok in her head that, um, he can look as their, her love for Thomas is, is stronger than, ah just the appetite of Orlok. 02:05:06.97 Fireheart Media Um, but at the same time to goad because thomas is not in a great position they're like they're both neither of them are like at their their tip top healthy shape and to get thomas 02:05:25.88 Fireheart Media in a position to where he's also fervent about anything um she's telling him that you know, the, the, who he knows is a desiccated corpse. Orlok is a better, like better lover. The thing that their connection isn't just a physical one. It's a mental one. And so she's telling him, um like, she's like, you know, bite my heart, like reach with, with your, the passion of your lovemaking, like reach to like my soul, my heart, because when Orlok is biting people, it's over their heart. 02:06:06.55 Fireheart Media And that is something that Thomas like is not in this state like capable of doing. So the whole exchange, it's... um It's like heartbreaking to watch it because they're both they're both kind of just broken people suffering. 02:06:28.34 Fireheart Media And, you know, they didn't make any of this isn't like a sexy scene. It's just like this is this can't be good for anyone here. Right, right. It's almost like a feeling of of like disgust or like revulsion. Like, oh my God, like this is this is so so this is it's so sad that you're just like, at least for me, I was just like rejecting it. Like, what are you doing? No, don't do that. you know this is This isn't going to make it better. And it really doesn't. It it sets up a stage for something else. But yes, that was her her kink unlocked. You know, bite my heart. Okay. You know, like, that's a very specific demand. um But yeah, because like the the 02:07:11.71 Fireheart Media bond that she has with orlock goes beyond physical or mental it's like a spiritual connection that she made with this creature on this otherworldly plane that only she can access along with these creatures you know like she stirred him from his slumber underneath the earth and brought him back to life you know so because he wasn't he wasn't physically there with her when she was younger it was his dream astral self that like 02:07:45.24 Fireheart Media no Because during that scene with Thomas where she's used like yelling and historical hysterical, she says, no, my father found me naked and used. And you know he was shamed and this, that, and the other. and And that's when she's confessing to Thomas about her entire situation with Orlok and that she was deflowered quite a long time ago, actually, by him. so no, he was physically there. 02:08:12.33 Fireheart Media physically- I just took it as a phantasm, like- oh no no no no no had a physical form but wasn't orlock oh no that was him and and they did the thing before so so no they they actually know they yeah anyway so the whole point being um that was a thing but in retaliation for ah ellen's outburst and deciding that she was going to have sex with her husband who is no longer her husband because he annulled their marriage without realizing it um orlock ends up killing anna that night uh anna the friend who was attacked you know just the night before and had the plague rats all over all over her so um but before he does that he kills anna's two children in front of her eyes and then takes her out right after that and then harding wakes up to find all of them dead and he is completely broken at that point Yeah. And so when, um when Harding is at, they're all at home and Orlok is like, you will sleep and basically made Harding just comatose while he went about his dark work. 02:09:18.62 Fireheart Media ah So that's another thing where it comes back later because ah Harding basically says, you know, I can't ever sleep again because every time he falls asleep, something bad happens. 02:09:32.92 Fireheart Media Right, right. And during that whole heated exchange, Harding is initially blaming Ellen and Thomas for the death of everyone in the household. And then Thomas is like, no, this was a fucking monster here. Look, and then pulls his shirt aside to show. 02:09:49.21 Fireheart Media ah Harding that he too has the exact same bite mark on his chest and you know then Harding finally understands that no it really is this monster and they are all getting together at this point with Von Franz to try to figure out how they're going to go about killing him. This is where we get that suggestion of, well, if we can get rid of the dirt that he used, you know, that he was buried in, that he's caught carried with him here, if we can go there to Grunwald Manor and get that dirt and burn the place down, then he won't have a place to sleep. And then that's how we can take him out. 02:10:24.57 Fireheart Media and um they're talking about all of this ah there's also the funeral for Anna and the two girls and that is a heartbreaking scene where you know Harding is losing his shit and then uh Ellen and the others are all there and when he sees them he's like your very presence here does me wrong and he's just cracking just just breaking and breaking and um they They end up resolving that they are are going to ah go and and hit Grunwald Manor soon, you know like the next day or whatever. But before that can happen, Harding, before the time that they're going to meet, ends up being as heartbroken as he is going into the mausoleum where his wife and children are laying. and you know pets their coffins and then pulls his wife out of her a coffin and then just starts making out with it and get basically giving himself the plague and then sets the entire mausoleum on fire isn't it after that or did he just die in the in the mausoleum of plague died um von franz and thomas when they came they're like we need to burn this this is not good nobody should find them like this 02:11:37.78 Fireheart Media Right. the The last thing anybody needs is to see ah Harding having violated his his wife's corpse and, you know, then died of the plague and everything after that. So they burn everything down at at the mausoleum in the graveyard before moving on and... So when they're in the carriage and they are are getting ready for everything, Ellen is like, I'm going to go too. And then Thomas is like, no, you need to stay where it's safe. You're not going anywhere. We're going to drop you off at home. And when she's there, um and they're all, they're all going to be parting ways and everything. And she decides that she wants to talk to von Franz separately 02:12:20.57 Fireheart Media And it's something where Ron France had already keyed in on what was the actual plan. Mostly because of the, the the books when he was digging into them a little bit more. 02:12:32.22 Fireheart Media and so when he's speaking with Ellen, ah he i think it's, it doesn't matter. um During their conversation, 02:12:43.61 Fireheart Media he 02:12:46.81 Fireheart Media shows respect for her abilities um ah and laments the fact that she, as basically what would be a wise woman in any other age or a sage. priestess of Isis. Yes, a priestess of Isis, is, a hat you know, 02:13:09.01 Fireheart Media She's born in the wrong time and in the wrong place. um And thus her fate is is is has been you know as it is. um And she's you know she's branded basically a mad woman. 02:13:23.06 Fireheart Media ah But he he he sees like the truth of her and understands like this this great sacrifice that she's going to have to make because there isn't another... 02:13:37.05 Fireheart Media path Like the the the methods he has at his disposal, the the books, they aren't working out like he had hoped. 02:13:47.90 Fireheart Media And he can read he realizes like they're they're not going to be effective against Orlok. Right. And so basically Ellen and von Franz have a discussion and she says, keep Thomas away, keep Thomas away until dawn, you busy keep him busy, keep him away. Uh, don't let him come and see. 02:14:08.82 Fireheart Media And, uh, you know, cause she's fully intending to sacrifice herself and give in to Orlok in order to write the situation and stop everybody else from dying. So, um, 02:14:21.24 Fireheart Media As a result, Thomas von Franz and Sievers go to Grunwald Manor, where they accidentally kill Knok after finding him sleeping in Orlok's coffin like a real, you know, yet again a creeper, but like a creeper fanboy in like a whole new way. 02:14:36.98 Fireheart Media i mean, you know, the thrall decides he wants to. Yeah, the master's bedchambers. I'm going to sleep in his bed. 02:14:47.19 Fireheart Media Yeah. Providence. Yeah. So they, they kill him. and then the only, the only other recourse they have is just burn everything. so When they find that Orlok isn't there, Thomas is losing his shit because he's like, Ellen's in trouble. And he runs out because he needs to go and try to save Ellen, is his thought. And meanwhile, Von Franz is like, well, we can't leave all this shit here. So he decides he's going to burn everything down. And so that is what he is up to at that point. 02:15:24.02 Fireheart Media Yes. And it's it's. when they set out it's already kind of uh dusk so it's it's fully nighttime when they basically enter like the the little church area of grunewald and so when they're fleeing or and then when they're he's running back to his house it's like it's it's nighttime it's full dark and um it's it's he and uh sievert sievers yes sievers so they're just they're trying to get back there in time and we we're we're treated in in meanwhile to um ellen kind of preparing herself and she goes through like redoing her hair letting it down and then she puts on her like her bridal gown 02:16:14.39 Fireheart Media and and await and you know waits for orlock to show up well the specific scene that we get when she summons him is she opens up the windows and reaches her arms out and says you know come to me and everything and that particular scene is also in the original movie although this one's way more epic than the original movie's version of it and um so At that point, Orlok does come come in and she re-pledges her vow to him. 02:16:48.89 Fireheart Media And then he like she lays down in her bed. He gets on top of her and he's naked too. I don't know. Are they actually having sex at the same time? as They're they're ah having sex at the same time as he is like biting her and draining all of her blood and everything. And so you have monster sex scene and that is going on and she is supposed to distract him until the first cock crows and so that is what happens and the light of the sun comes in and orlok kind of looks up just in time to have all the blood like draining out of all of his orifices and he screams and kind of like fizzles and turns into a ah desiccated mound of flesh in and mummy mummy looking guy on top of ellen who is defiled and deflowered again in her wedding dress on the bed that she shared with thomas and then thomas comes in and he's horrified as you might imagine uh he's horrified and 02:17:51.13 Fireheart Media He still takes it like a champ. He, ah you know, like, holds her hand as she dies and everything. And then von Franz kind of reiterates that, yes, this has freed Visberg from the curse of the Nosferatu and everything. And then, like, the last shot we get is, like, from above where you see... um ellen's body you know covered in blood and in the dress with thomas beside her and then like uh you know like this corpse this gross corpse on top of her and uh that's that's the movie 02:18:26.23 Fireheart Media hoof yeah they um they didn't hold back on like that last shot it's full uh d d caked orlock ah Right, right. So um that was a ah very striking movie, a very harrowing movie, but like harrowing because of all of these different situations happening at the same time and the different um motivations that everyone has and the information that some people have and other people don't and so on and so forth. And the way that Harding 02:19:05.08 Fireheart Media ah Just kind of like starts out and, you know, you kind of like him right at first because he is like this cheerful guy who really loves his wife and kids and is trying to be good to his friend who's less well off and all of this stuff. And, you know, all all of these things happen. But then like he slowly starts breaking to the point that like by the end of the movie. you know, like it's, it's heartbreaking when he dies. And the, the actor who played Harding did a very good job of ah going through that entire emotional range. He probably has the biggest arc of things to do and like changes that happened to him throughout the entirety of this film. And the actor's name is Aaron Taylor Johnson. Yeah. 02:19:48.63 Fireheart Media So Knock definitely is ah like top billing in terms of like people who are are very awesome and and steal the show. Orlok, Bill Skarsgård as Orlok, absolutely fantastic. 02:20:02.97 Fireheart Media um Again, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Friedrich Harding, fantastic as well. But Lily-Rose Depp, we didn't really talk much about her fits throughout this movie when they were occurring other than to just mention that they happen. She's got like the demonic possession that goes on and all these just sudden jerking changes where, you know, she does 180 degree turn out of nowhere. And, you know, she pulls it off so convincingly. She is there. She's innocent. innocent She's scared, you know, and all of this other stuff. 02:20:37.08 Fireheart Media And then suddenly her eyes are rolling back on her head and she does this massive arching of her back and like her whole body is up off the bed. and then, you know, like she's, she's grabbing into her face and, you know, drooling and and all kinds of like creepy ass things that are happening. And just the way that she's moving, like she sunk in a lot of effort into that movement coaching and that Butoh performance. that she was practicing in order to get this down to nail it. And Eggers had said that she has this uncanny ability to just like turn it on. 02:21:12.21 Fireheart Media Like she can just switch, you know, flip the switch and then just be in the other mode immediately. And that usually other actors that he's worked with need like some time to get into the mode to psych themselves up for the different sections of those performances. But she just pulls it out. 02:21:32.82 Fireheart Media yeah it's it's it's awe-inspiring in a way um particularly the way that it's it's shot where the it's it's fluid even though it's jerky movements each one is like it's like snapping a puzzle piece into place like if you if you or uh if there's like a 02:21:58.80 Fireheart Media like maybe like a ball jointed toy and you turn it a certain way and it like locks into a different configuration. Like that's what she's like doing physically. And it's, it's, it's kind of hard to watch actually. Yeah. It's essentially like pop and lock, like the dance style of pop and lock. 02:22:16.92 Fireheart Media um But with, with like the, the trappings of like Butoh and like what that implies really. Yeah. and And she does tremors and other things and and and facial tics, but it's it's all or nothing like she's just there. And then the next she's twisted into it like a different configuration. um and goes back and forth between the two like states. 02:22:44.86 Fireheart Media um And you can tell like it's a physical strain to do so, but the that strain is not present once she turns it back off. 02:22:55.54 Fireheart Media And I think that's the more impressive thing is going from this in the same scene. She's not sitting in a like a possessed state for like an entire scenes. It's just moments of it. 02:23:06.87 Fireheart Media And then she won't be and then she will be and then she won't. And it's just like, oh, that's the there's a lot of whiplash going on. So I think um particularly if there are sections that ah required like maybe multiple takes. I'm hoping that they did them in as few takes as possible because it just looks ah demanding, like like utterly demanding to do that. 02:23:28.15 Fireheart Media Right. And we've already said before, we've already given Nick Holt props at being the most terrified, nervous man in existence. But like that really is his entire arc. Like you can tell that he loves Ellen and that's unquestioning that that he's a good man and that he loves Ellen and that he's just trying to do his best by her. And, you know, good, honest, honest guy. 02:23:48.41 Fireheart Media And, you know, like that's his character. Good, honest guy who happens to have a nervous disposition. And but like he he really is trying to do his best. And this poor man fails at everything. 02:24:00.70 Fireheart Media He can't do anything in this movie like at all, at all. Like he doesn't prevent anything from happening. He doesn't stop anything. He doesn't reassure anyone. he doesn't help anything at all. He is just there to basically be a victim the entire time and um like i've mentioned it before but like just the idea of having to spend you know like all this time in every one of these different scenarios and just being like constantly deer in the headlights slash terrified slash mr p pants man like all at all times has got to be a challenging role to do and like to get variety and get subtlety in there you know when you're having to perform all of these different uh slightly different versions of of the same thing yeah so the his character does have um a well of 02:25:01.83 Fireheart Media fortitude because despite his dispositions and all the things he run into he still keeps going forward and he does um mobilize him i mean he's leading the charge to try to like do something about orlock even though you know they're on a ah time crunch um so you can see like the strength of his character that um perhaps is something that attracted uh ellen to him in the first place i mean he's a gentle guy um and he you can kind of step on and over him but i think at the end of the day he's um he's like loyal to a fault like to his own detriment um 02:25:50.07 Fireheart Media ah Except for the one time that he tried to assert himself was, well, no, I'm doing this for us and I'm going to go do the thing. No, man, you like, you picked the wrong battle to, to charge forward with. 02:26:00.86 Fireheart Media um I will say also that when we discuss Frankenstein, we have, you know, there's a lot of parallels that this film and the directors kind of have with one another. And this isn't a specific parallel, but, uh, Jacob Lorty, uh, was told by, Guillermo del Toro, like to study his dog. 02:26:23.38 Fireheart Media Like, and he has a, he has a big, large dog and and to kind of like take that to heart, the dog's and mannerisms, um, in his, in, in, in, in some aspect of his performance as the creature in Frankenstein. And I like to imagine, that um Eggers was like, just study your dog. 02:26:43.10 Fireheart Media And his dog happened to be a little like Chihuahua or something. that's just frightened all the time and shivering and he's like okay i can do that right rights right i love you but i'm so scared indeed so right right but um the performance overall in this is like by everybody is fantastic the set design the costuming The research that went into it, the preparation work that went into it, everything about this movie is great. So this is this a really top tier movie for me. So um that's why I'm glad that we are talking about it. But now to kind of shift over to the promised. Let's talk about the the parallels between this and Frankenstein. Now, this is going to have. some stuff that may be possibly a little bit spoilery for Frankenstein. So just a warning, if you haven't watched Frankenstein, we are going to talk about some things about that film. So be aware. 02:27:42.65 Fireheart Media Anyway, so Nosferatu, just starting it out. Nosferatu and Frankenstein were both passion projects for both of these people who both were working on these projects for years and years and years of their life since childhood. 02:27:56.81 Fireheart Media Guillermo del Toro happens to be older because ah Robert Eggers is apparently Dave in my age. these is He's in his 40s or something, or maybe even a little bit younger. I don't even know. But he's a younger guy. but um So Guillermo del Toro is, I think, 61. So he's had a little bit more time. 02:28:16.41 Fireheart Media Anyway, um About the movies though, Ellen and Elizabeth from Frankenstein are both outcast characters that are estranged from society. Both of them find a creature as their solace, although this becomes Ellen's nightmare where Elizabeth finds joy from her union with the creature in Frankenstein. 02:28:36.28 Fireheart Media And Ellen also shares some parallels with Victor from the frank Frankenstein novel, um, Ellen's pact was accidental. Victor's creation of the creature was deliberate, but not thought through. 02:28:50.71 Fireheart Media ah But they're they're kind of like, they both unleash something that then comes around and bites them in the ass. So, I mean, her initial entreaty wasn't the like accident part. It was the not thought through thing where she just she just threw out there a cry. 02:29:10.65 Fireheart Media And something answered and she just kind of went with it. Well, she said anyone. And that was her problem. That was her mistake. She said anybody. I don't care who. Yes. 02:29:22.94 Fireheart Media That was the monkey's paw wish for her. But also for Ellen and Victor, their nemesis appears to them at night to entreat them for companionship in both instances. And in Ellen's case, Nosferatu wants her. And of course, in Victor's case, the creature wants Victor to make him a companion. 02:29:41.56 Fireheart Media So Nosferatu was awakened from slumber by Ellen and is now an appetite who can't be sated by anything else but her. And the creature was created by Victor, but his request for companionship can only be granted by Victor because Victor's the only person in the world who can make more, make more creatures. 02:30:00.34 Fireheart Media But in both cases, um, the monster has this need for another person and they're not getting that thing. 02:30:11.16 Fireheart Media And granted in Frankenstein, the creature, this is like, just like basic human needs companionship that he needs. Whereas for Nosferatu, Orlok, it's not basic human needs that he needs. He just needs the blood and he wants, you know, the the appetite to to stop so he can go back to sleep basically is what he wants. 02:30:34.36 Fireheart Media like, I don't, I don't like it here. too sunny in this place. I just look, I just want to go back to bed. And now just let me bite your heart and you know, we can get this done. Right, right. 02:30:46.23 Fireheart Media So yeah the post not clarity on that must be amazing. But anyway, ah Yes, I got him to facepalm. Okay, anyway, ah so both Thomas and William, who is Victor's brother ah in Frankenstein, are pretty well useless, but at least they both they both kind of try to do their thing. William ah in Frankenstein is kind of an understated character who is just looking for approval and trying to help Victor and support Victor through everything, even though Victor scares him. Yeah. And ah Thomas tries to support Ellen through everything and is loyal to a fault to Ellen. 02:31:22.73 Fireheart Media And he is a solid bro. And no matter what Ellen says or does, he is there beside her, which, you know, that's what made me kind of get a little soft hearted and go, who was the guy who played Thomas? I mean, You know, like on a second watch, I'm like, boy, that man is just 100% scared all of the time. But like the first time I watched it, I was more touched by the fact that he was, you know, steadfast the entire time, like no matter what she threw at him, even at the very end when he came in and probably would have fainted under any other circumstances. He was there with her because he was worried about her first and foremost. 02:31:57.75 Fireheart Media So ah some of the creature preparation is similar between Orlok and the creature from Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, specifically the mental prep, the voice work, things like that. And the Butoh performance that was done by Lily Rose Depp, was also something that was studied by Jacob Elordi for his creature. So, you know, there is a little bit of overlap there in that kind of prep as well. So, and then of course, both of these are kind of Gothic romantic-ish tales in a way, even though Nosferatu is a derivative that was made originally in the 20s, but Eggers did refer back to Dracula when he was working on this. 02:32:39.22 Fireheart Media So, Are there any other kind of parallels or other thoughts on the two movies that you had Dave to add? ah No, I think we covered the the main ones. I'm sure there's more. And we will have the chance on on the reverse side when we're discussing Frankenstein to to bring up any more parallels that we run into. 02:33:00.18 Fireheart Media Right. So ah that wraps this episode. I think we have very well thoroughly covered it in two and a half hours in about the length of the movie at this point. So ah thank you all for listening. The wrap up. Great movie. 02:33:14.42 Fireheart Media ah Watch it if you haven't already seen it. And you would benefit from watching the original 1922 film if you haven't seen that before. And definitely I'll have to get a Shadow of the Vampire so that Dave and I can titter at Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck. So Dave, any final thoughts? 02:33:34.33 Fireheart Media um No, aside from the fact that I will be covering the Werner Herzog Nosferatu on Monster, Dear Monster and We will kind of tie everything together that way through these two multi-episode podcasts. 02:33:50.14 Fireheart Media Right. And also the other episode that you mentioned earlier in the show, I will make sure to put a link in the show notes too so that people can check that episode out as well. So that is all for today, folks. So thank you for listening. Take care of yourself and remember to smile. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]