Nosferatu - A Century of Horror

In the 20s, several years after a worldwide plague had decimated the population of the globe and the U.S. government had lifted public mask mandates - and while Russia was undergoing a widely-publicized political upheaval - audiences gathered in theaters to watch a silent vampire movie called Nosferatu. Wait, hang on a second, my notes must have gotten confused...

No, astounding as it is to believe, those really were the circumstances that F.W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece was created under, and if they seem almost uncannily familiar, that just speaks to the curious novelty of the movie’s main character: vampires just seem to keep coming back.

Every culture in every part of the world throughout history has had some version of the vampire legend, horror tales to frighten children and the superstitious according to respective mores and traditions around death - corpses that shrugged off their grave shrouds and prowled their hometowns after dark, evil spirits that could be warded off with garlic or silver, charming tempters that you could never, under any circumstances, allow to cross over your threshold. I've made a long study of as many of them as I could get my hands on, and a highlight of my professional career has been teaching some of the better ones to high school seniors enrolled in my Horror & Mystery classes of the Pinkerton Academy English Department. Did you know that right here in New England, for example, a young tuberculosis victim was exhumed from her grave in 1892, beheaded, staked through the heart, and burned, for fear that she was spreading her infection to relatives in a small Rhode Island town? Heartwarming stuff, that's how I like to think about it... even if that's only because those hearts were literally warmed to the point of incineration to end the "vampire's" curse.

The remarkable achievement of Irish writer and theater manager Bram Stoker was to gather many of these disparate threads together and weave them for the first time into a cohesive whole with 1897’s Dracula; the eponymous fangy Transylvanian Count has since become arguably the most recognizable character in world literature.

Last night, my dad and his co-workers at Middlesex Community College held a special screening of the first filmed adaptation of that story as part of their new ongoing series of classic films held at the historic and newly-renovated Boston & Maine Theater in downtown Lowell. To the accompaniment of a live four-piece band (who composed their own original score for the silent flick), a packed room of Lowell theatergoers settled ourselves in for a perfect Halloween season treat.

Nosferatu follows a young real estate lawyer, sent by his mysterious employer deep into the mountains of the frontier East for a private land sale. He is greeted with displays of terror whenever he speaks of his mission to local peasants and villagers, who all inform him in no uncertain terms that he is heading into terrible danger and present him with gifts like a Bible and a crucifix. Spectacularly, comically ignorant of these warnings, the lawyer chooses to press on and arrives at his castle destination, where he is greeted by the monstrous Count (in Nosferatu, named Orlock), a hideous vampire with a bald skull, rat’s fangs, and sickle claws for hands.... not to mention a peculiar penchant for human blood that the Count doesn’t even attempt to conceal. The lawyer has a beautiful and devoted wife at home, who reacts to news of her husband’s travel assignment with terror and dread from the outset. While he is away, she maintains a constant vigil of prayer for his well-being and safe-return, and it is this divine brand of protection that ultimately saves her husband when the Count begins prowling his castle at all hours of the night. The contracts purchased and deeds signed, the Count departs for the lawyer’s hometown in coffins filled with soil from the burial fields of plague victims, literally bringing pestilence in his wake. When the plague soil arrives in port, the town goes into an emergency quarantine lockdown, leaving the Count free to prowl the streets; only by sacrificing herself, luring the Count to her bedroom for a meal of blood, does the lawyer’s wife keep the vampire out long enough to be caught in the first rays of sunlight, vanquishing him forever.

It was a unique and unforgettable experience seeing this classic (which I'd seen before only on Youtube, with a prerecorded score) performed in circumstances nearly identical to those of its original release, and it required no very great leap on the audience's part to understand why the film was such a huge success upon its release both in its native Germany and abroad. It has the distinction of being one of the very first critically and commercially successful horror movies, as well as a landmark production from a country that was still morally and financially ravaged by unfair reparations in the wake of the First World War. There was perhaps only one dissenting voice in heaping praise upon the production, however - that of Bram Stoker’s widow, perhaps understandably outraged that her husband’s ideas and entire bestselling novel had been plagiarized without so much as a name credit, let alone a cent of royalties. Mrs. Stoker took her case to court and sued, where the judge ruled very obviously in her favor (it would have been impossible for any case to be easier), and all copies of the film’s print were summarily ordered for destruction.

Thankfully, however... vampires are very hard to kill, their films likewise. A very few private prints escaped destruction by hiding away in collectors vaults, and it is only through the discovery and restoration of these that we are able to enjoy Nosferatu today in 2022. Nearly a decade after Nosferatu’s release, Austro-Hungarian heartthrob Bela Lugosi immortalized the character for Universal Studios as tall, dark, and handsome; since that time, vampires have become everything from breakfast cereals to sex symbols for teenage girls who glitter in the sunlight. Count Orlock himself is probably most well-known to today's audiences for sharing scares and flickering the lights with the Hash-Slinging Slasher in "The Graveyard Shift," what I personally believe to still be the single greatest episode of Spongebob Squarepants ever animated. But last night was a perfect reminder, in all its black and white glory, of the very first attempt at capturing this bloodsucker onscreen (the rule that says he can’t appear in mirrors evidently doesn’t apply to celluloid reels), and a rock solid argument could be made that nothing in a century has bettered what was achieved there on the first go-around.

100 years on, and we here are perhaps closer to the original climate of Nosferatu than any audience before us has been since its initial release; when the villagers slam their windows shut to quarantine in a plague outbreak, we in 2022 are uniquely equipped to understand the kind of visceral horror effect F.W. Murnau intended. The jump scare hadn’t been invented yet, but make no mistake, this vampire is here to chill your blood before he tries to drink it. I can only hope that audiences in the next 100 years remember their garlic and crucifixes to ward him off.

One "Rings" to Rule Them All

As any reader of this (admittedly long, long-dormant) blog will probably know already, I'm what could be described as a pop-culture aficionado. Star Wars, Marvel superheroes, the most twisted recesses of Stephen King's horror catalogue - I'm pretty much here for all of it, and I wear it all proudly on my sleeve. Since early childhood, though, nothing has held a candle to one particular body of work above all others - or, to paraphrase, one to rule them all.

I was an impressionable eight-year old when my dad brought me along with some of his friends to a screening of Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring in December 2001, and although I may not have realized or appreciated it at the time (if anything, quite the opposite - the same creature work and monster makeup that won the New Zealand-based production several Oscars and other industry awards sent me scrambling for terrified cover under the theater seats), looking back, I now recognize it as one of those key turning points in life that's had an immeasurable influence on everything that's come after. Although it was only half-glimpsed at first through spaces in the fingers I'd placed over my eyes, that December screening marked the start of a lifelong preoccupation with J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth: not just the written words themselves, but any and all other morsels about Tolkien's life, his writing group the Inklings (founded with his best friend and Narnia author C.S. Lewis), and his legacy on all fantasy writings that have followed. Rereading the books every year as I do, there’s a quote from The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings that I can pull from for pretty much any and every occasion, and the collective body of Tolkien’s life’s work forms the North Star not just of my literary tastes, but of my professional and even private aspirations as well.

What's prompted me now to finally sit behind the old blogging keyboard again is nothing less than a second cosmic convergence of sorts, one that I hope will bring a new generation of viewers - and, even better, readers - to Tolkien's work, like the Jackson films did for me decades ago.

Let's talk The Rings of Power.

When news hit several years ago that Amazon Studios had acquired the adaptation rights for select storylines in Tolkien's extended universe, I was cautiously optimistic; I'll leap at any and every chance to return to Middle-Earth for new adventures, of course... so long as it's being handled with the proper care and respect due for a mythic body of work that one of the great literary minds of the 20th century devoted decades of his life to creating. Such attempts had famously been shot down before, first by Tolkien himself and then posthumously by his children and estate, who stonewalled any attempts to deviate from or in any way commercialize the books for a screen audience, with a strictness that bordered on outright hostility (most notoriously, Tolkien vetoed a hopeful Lord of the Rings movie produced by and starring The Fab Four, The Beatles themselves, almost sight-unseen). But word on the street was that this new project had not only the approval of the Tolkien Estate, but their involvement and cooperation as well, something that no other filmed treatment of Middle-Earth has ever been able to boast of. With increasing confidence and enthusiasm, then, my excitement began to grow as the show's release date grew closer. If the showrunners' vision had impressed the family, the harshest possible critics, that had to bode well.

Smash cut forward to one evening in mid-August, after months of hungrily devouring every news article and trailer that trickled its way online through Amazon's long-game marketing plan.  My phone ping'ed as I sat on the couch, and checking it, I saw that I'd received a message on Twitter from... no, wait, that couldn't be right... from the official Rings of Power social media team?  Bewildered and confused, I was eventually able to decipher that they were writing to inform me that, if I wanted them, they had two tickets for me to the premiere of the show's first two episodes at a special screening event in New York City, ten days before they were officially released on Amazon Prime's streaming platform. The staunchly Catholic Prof. Tolkien might have called me a Doubting Thomas, but my first reaction was that this had to be a prank, a scam, some targeted attempt at pulling my leg; this sort of thing sounded faaaaar too good to be true. To my utter astonishment and delight, however, it was the real gen-yoo-ine artifact after all - they were checkmark authenticated, and had no sketchy requests to send iTunes gift cards to some deposed Nigerian prince (AKA, an attempt at hacking so obvious it would have been simpler to write it in sky writing). They had seen from tweets that I'd sent out that I was not only a Tolkien diehard, but someone who seemed genuinely excited by and open to what the show had to offer - so ten days later, still riding the Cloud 9 feeling like I'd won a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's factory, my wife Katie & I found ourselves in the back of a taxi cab on Manhattan's 5th Avenue, en route to a 5:30 PM red carpet Alice Tully Hall.

Upon arrival, we were issued special VIP badges, then shown to a special cocktail reception where several of the world's leading Tolkien scholars, experts, and creators of online fan sites or other influential social media accounts were either networking or else giddily anticipating the new Middle-Earth content we were all about to see for the first time - a kind of Council of Elrond for fans, with wine and passed hors d'oeuvres. My head was already on a swivel from one impressive guest to another, not saying much but taking in the sheer presence of some of these giants of the field, when I started triple-taking and realized that, mingled among the rest of the night's attendees and engaged with them in spirited conversations, were the stars and creators of The Rings of Power themselves. Having seen their likenesses on posters or their characters delivering trailer-worthy soundbites as part of the scant clips that had been released as teasers, it was a bit surreal seeing the living, breathing actors themselves, cleaned up and dressed in 21st century eveningwear instead of dwarven chainmail armor. While it was an unforgettable experience from start to finish, some true highlights were getting the chance to meet (however briefly) and take pictures with Morfydd Clark & Ismael Cruz Cordova, Galadriel & Arondir respectively; Rings of Power has a massive ensemble cast featuring more than forty actors across several of Middle-Earths different races and species, but if there's such a thing as leads among them, Clark & Cordova probably fit that billing if the marketing material is anything to go by. I'm also happy to report that, for all their talent onscreen, they're incredibly gracious, down-to-earth people who just seem thrilled to be a part of this special project, looking suitably glamorous as they do so... but that's Elves for you, I suppose.

Elbows sufficiently rubbed and cocktails finished, we all then made our way into a spacious theater across the street, where Katie & I were shown all the way down to the third row from the front, sitting in the same row as several of the cast and crew; there's not many other experiences in my life I can compare to watching an elf lord projected fifty-feet high as he discusses his family's turbulent history, then turning to my right and seeing the actor who portrays him sitting about four seats away, watching along in unison. The first few episodes have released on Amazon Prime now, and I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to watch for yourself, but sitting in a packed theater with a state-of-the-art sound system and watching Tolkien's work brought to the big screen again, I was overwhelmed in the most positive sense of the word.

If there's one thing I wish for this show, it's that the conversation around it would shift more to that kind of positivity, which has been unanimously shared by those who've experienced the first few episodes for themselves. Unfortunately, much of the online dialogue (and certainly the media headlines) have centered around a shameful issue of outright ugliness and prejudice in the face of Rings of Power's race-blind casting policies. As someone born in South Africa who was down on record as being vehemently anti-apartheid and was even famously passive-aggressive to Nazi German publishers, Tolkien's writings are and always have been about multiple races, species, and classes of all sorts uniting in fellowship against an oppressively monolithic and intolerant evil; and yet, that same evil now seems to have somehow wormed its way into the opinions of so-called "purists." Apparently dragons, balrogs, orcs, and magic rings are all totally credible in a world such as Middle-Earth in the minds of these small and backwards-minded racists - let me be frank here and call them as such, because for all the semantic acrobatics trying to say otherwise, in the plain light of day it's the only reason they could have for outrage - but a dark-skinned elf? A dwarf with melanin? These things are sacrilege to them, and reason enough to boycott the show or even attempt to outright sabotage its ratings. 

On the one hand, it's a real shame to see such toxicity anywhere near a body of work I've spent so much of my life adoring - but on the other, it's also been incredibly affirming to see the majority of the community step up to speak out loudly against such hatred, stating in no uncertain terms that Middle-Earth is and always will be a place that welcomes all who visit it. As of this writing, you can watch the first four of eight scheduled episodes in the first season for yourself on Amazon Prime, with the remaining four scheduled to release Fridays at midnight over the coming weeks. It's not for me to plug a show from Amazon that's already doing quite well on its own without my meager assistance - and, despite hilariously deluded accusations from the literal trolls of the internet who are determined to do everything possible to see it fail, no, my positive opinion of the show is in no way, shape, or form bankrolled by Amazon conspirators. My real excitement and enthusiasm for Rings of Power is genuine, honest, and it has to be stated, earned. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Tolkien's two most well-known works, manage to play many keys on the tonal piano of genre, from horror to comedy to folklore to war epic, and The Rings of Power is already following suit, thanks in no small part to the performances and contributions of the same people the trolls are trying to turn away. This feels like Middle-Earth, and that's about the highest possible review I can give.

That feeling, maybe more than anything, is what's particularly drawn me to Tolkien as I've continued to grow older, especially as our own world has approached Mordor levels of darkness at times over the last few years. There's an adherence here to a concept that’s becoming so rare in fiction as to become almost revolutionary: purposeful hope in defiance of bleak despair. Unlike the majority of WWI veterans who traded their rifles for pens, Tolkien has never been considered a part of the so-called Lost Generation; while shell-shocked and disillusioned writers like T.S. Eliot & Ernest Hemingway drifted around fashionable Paris cafes, crafting works like "The Wasteland" & A Farewell to Arms that spoke to a societal loss of innocence and moral abandonment, Tolkien looked that same darkness straight in the eye and said "not here." His writings are instead full of wonder, heroism, the beauty of creation and of the natural world, and while they never fall into saccharine Hallmark card territory - the world of Middle-Earth is one constantly threatened (and often even marred) by war, destruction, and death, all sprouting from the pen of a WWI veteran who survived the hellish Battle of the Somme and so was intimately familiar with all three - it's a narrative that ultimately reinforces the power of goodness and light in the end.

The Rings of Power, more than any other question it poses to us - will we get to see the downfall of Numenor? What's the true identity of the mysterious Stranger who crashed to earth in a meteor (I've got a stroooooong, strong theory, just for the record)? Which of these characters could secretly be Sauron's seductive Annatar disguise that he uses to tempt the lords of Middle-Earth into his traps? - asks this one above all: what if fantasy television dared to build its foundations on optimism and hope? In contradiction to other prestige dramas like Better Call Saul or The House of the Dragon which often seem like they're trying to top each other in some unspoken contest of gritty nihilism (as one of The Rings of Power showrunners put it in a Q&A session after the NYC premiere, "peak bleak" seems to be the dominant fashion right now), what if an imaginary world chose to reject the darkness and celebrate all the things Tolkien's own characters would've celebrated as good in the world? It's an experiment I'm only too happy to witness, and one that I feel very grateful to participate in over the coming years. I hope you'll join me, and that a whole new generation will fall in love with Middle-Earth like I did.

The door is open for you, hobbits & harfoots. Speak friend, and enter.