How DRACULA Nearly Destroyed NOSFERATU, and More!
In this Issue:
- Horror History: How We Almost Lost Nosferatu
- Image of the Week: Sleeping with the Fishes
- Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
- The States of Horror: Hawaii + Idaho
- Things We Love: A Recovered Nightmare
HORROR HISTORY: HOW WE ALMOST LOST NOSFERATU
As we speak, two remakes of FW Murnau’s 1922 silent masterpiece Nosferatu are in the works, one from The Witch filmmaker Robert Eggers starring Anya Taylor-Joy and another from David Lee Fisher, director of the 2005 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari remake to star Doug Jones. But this isn’t the first time Nosferatuhas been at the center of two competing versions of the same story.
Almost 100 years ago, Dracula author Bram Stoker’s widow Florence Balcombe sued to have all prints ofNosferatu destroyed, and in so doing, nearly deprived horror movie fans of one of its most iconic movie monsters: Max Schreck as the gaunt, rat-like Count Orlak.
After Stoker’s death in 1912, Balcombe, who had once been courted by The Picture of Dorian Grayauthor Oscar Wilde, was in tough straits. In 1922, after the premiere of Nosferatu in Berlin, which had had full orchestral accompaniment and live sound effects, someone anonymously sent Balcombe a program for the lavish event. The program explicitly stated that Nosferatu was “freely adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” a thing for which Balcombe, as Stoker’s executor and financially dependent upon her late husband’s works, was not told about or paid for. Balcombe joined the British Incorporated Society of Authors, sending along the program with her check, and asked them to take legal action against Prana Films, the company that made Nosferatu, and which had been founded by German occultist Albin Grau.
The British Incorporated Society of Authors coordinated with a German attorney on Balcombe’s behalf against Prana films, which was itself on the financial rocks by the end of three years’ worth of legal wrangling. Realizing she wasn’t going to get any money from the film version of Dracula, Balcombe settled for the destruction of all prints of Nosferatu.
But, before the destruction of all the prints in Germany, several copies had been shipped to the United States, where, through a clerical error, Draculawas in the Public Domain. Nosferatu was re-released in 1929 in the States, paving the way for its rise from the dead to be iconic classic it is today.
IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Sleeping with the Fishes
Why settle for a cheap, plastic treasure chest at the bottom of your fish tank when you could have Jason Voorhees floating on a chain?
TINY BITES
CHILD’S PLAY AT 30, A NEW STEPHEN KING SERIES & MORE
Chucky turns 30 this week, and the original creators look back at how Child’s Play was created. (The original title was Blood Buddy.)
The Satanic Temple intends to sue The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for ripping off their statue of the goat god Baphomet.
Did you know Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was promoted as a “love story” until audiences coined a better term for it: “horror movie”?
Jaws on the beach? Blair Witch in the woods? Vicesays horror is scarier when you really go there.
Hundreds of witches paddle boarded down Portland’s Willamette River to help a local charity. (Pictures!)
Stephen King’s biggest fear? Trucks, according to this compilation from his film and TV adaptations.
King’s Joyland is coming soon to TV. (Will there be a scary truck? Probably.)
Showtime is making a sequel to Penny Dreadfulcalled City of Angels, set in 1930s Los Angeles.
How horror became the best forum for melding scares with social commentary, and why, ultimately, horror films matter now more than ever.
Science shows scaring ourselves can make us happier and calm the brain.
Paste ranked the 60 (!) best horror franchises. (We think they’re right about who’s #1.)
Here are 12 movies that explore the unique horror of being a woman. And 9 frightning feminist horror books that subvert sexist tropes in horror fiction.
Almost a decade after its release, critical opinion has come around on teen demon flick Jennifer’s Body.
Have you seen The Hat Man in your dreams? If so,you’re not alone.
THE STATES OF HORROR: HAWAII + IDAHO
This week brings us to Hawaii and Idaho, two states largely lacking in the macabre. And yet…
Hawaii: A Perfect Getaway
Before we get to the movie, a literary recommendation: Horror in Paradise: Grim and Uncanny Tales from Hawaii and the South Seas is an anthology of terror, both folkloric and historic, with even deeper roots in our 50th state than this week’s taut, tropical thriller. And now, our feature attraction: David Twohy’s A Perfect Getaway is an underrated work of Aloha State suspense. Three couples befriend each other on a Hawaiian vacation but, of course, one pair has ulterior motives. Come for the sun and sand, stay for the perpetually awesome Timothy Olyphant.
Idaho: The Being
Before serving up cult favorite Blood Diner, director Jackie Kong unleashed The Being, her debut feature. The film features Martin Landau, on the heels of horror turns in Alone in the Dark and Without Warning, as a chemical engineer who might just know more than he’s letting on about a series of attacks plaguing in a rural Idaho town. Despite featuring three Oscar™-winners (Landau, along with Dorothy Malone and José Ferrer,) this terror tale of mutant menace is best remembered today for its gruesome, misshapen, Alien-inspired monster.
THINGS WE LOVE: A RECOVERED NIGHTMARE
Unseen since 1988, the long-lost music video for D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s “Nightmare on My Street” has resurfaced on YouTube, thanks to a user named “Nancy Thompson.” (Ha!) In the video, young Will Smith encounters a Freddy Krueger-like entity who torments his dreams. New Line, the studio behind the franchise, was not amused and sued the duo’s label for copyright infringement. A judge ordered all copies destroyed, but thankfully one well-worn VHS survived, resurfacing some thirty years later.