October Movie Reviews: Nosferatu 1922

For my first of the October Reviews I want to start with a classic.

Now I have been huge Dracula fan for as long as I can recall, but the one thing about the mythos I hate is the desire to make Dracula a misunderstood or even worse a tragic hero. Now I get the desire to make him suave and sexy and even a desire to connect the mythical Dracula to the historical Vlad,  but lets get serious here.  This is Dracula, not Twilight.  He is a monster.  He killed Lucy, her mother, tried to kill Johnathan and Mina and pretty much everyone else in the book.

That being said you can see the evolution on the thoughts of the character by viewing him through the eyes of the popular films.

Nosferatu (1922)

The first major cinematic release.  If you have not seen this movie then put it on your Halloween must see list. This movie is silent, black and white and an absolutely a classic.  There are issues with the script, mostly due to the insistance of the Stoker estate.  So Dracula became Count Orlock; and Orlock is a monster.  He is rat-like, bald and devoid of anything that could be considered "sexy".  This is a good thing, I think.  The cinematography in this movie is fantastic.  The special effects are state of the art for the time and any time you see Dracula's shadow move without him you have this movie to thank.

The characters outside of Dracula/Orlock are not as good, of course some of that over acting was due to the medium and style of the time.  Like most of the movies there are characters are missing, though not as many as future movies.
The movie though remains a classic, not because of it's age, but because it is still quite good.

There is something very, well, German, about this film.  It's has enough angst to knock the perm right out of Edward Cullen's hair, but yet not overwrought.  Or at least a different overwrought.  This can be seen in the later re-interpretations Nosferatu (1979) and Shadow of the Vampire (2000).

Horror Movie Challenge

I am thinking of participating in the October Horror Movie Challenge from Krell Laboratories.

Thanks to Darius Whiteplume over at Adventures in Nerdliness for pointing this out.  I had already planned to go through all my "Dracula" movies in October anyway so I might as well get in on this action!

Here are the ones I am thinking of watching for starters.  Most I have seen, some I have not seen in years and a couple are completely new.

1. Nosferatu (1922) (F. W. Murnau/Max Shreck)

From the "Dracula Legacy Collection DVD"
2. Dracula (1931) (Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi)
3. Dracula (1931) - Spanish Version (George Melford/Carlos Villarías)
4. Dracula's Daughter (1936) (Lambert Hillyer/Gloria Holden)
5. Son of Dracula (1943) (Robert Siodmak/Lon Chaney, Jr.)
6. House of Dracula (1946) (Erle C. Kenton/John Carradine)

Then I want to get into the Hammer films.
7. Dracula, aka The Horror of Dracula (1958) (Terence Fisher/Christopher Lee & Peter Cushing)
8. Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) (Freddie Francis/Christopher Lee)
9. Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) (Peter Sasdy/Christopher Lee)
10. Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) (Alan Gibson/Christopher Lee)
11. The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) (Christopher Lee/Christopher Lee & Peter Cushing) have not seen this one since it was out.

Then onto the "modern" re-tellings
12. Count Dracula (1970) (Jesus Franco/Christopher Lee) Though not a Hammer film, and if I can find it.
13. Dracula (1973) (Dan Curtis/Jack Palance) Yes. Jack Plance as Dracula. I have this on tape somewhere.
14. Count Dracula (1977) (Philip Saville/Louis Jourdan) started it once, but never finished it. Louis Jourdan was good.
15. Dracula (1979) (John Badham/Frank Langella)
16. Nosferatu the Vampyre (Werner Herzog/Klaus Kinski) have wanted to see this one for years and can never seem to catch it.
17. Dracula (1992) (Francis Ford Coppola/Gary Oldman)

Need 13 more films (which I can EASILY find).

I need a Dracula Chess set

“So be it that he has gone elsewhere. Good! It has given us opportunity to cry `check' in some ways in this chess game, which we play for the stake of human souls.”
 -Van Helsing in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

So I have started to re-read Dracula again.  Something I like to do every so often. Inevitably I get back to something I have always wanted, a Dracula themed chess set.
What I want is the Franklin Mint to come out with one so I can agonize about it for years and finally find one on eBay.  But to my knowledge they never have made one.  The closest I have seen is a Scooby-Doo chess set.  So I want something nice, a show-off piece.

So far it doesn't look like anything like this exists.  I have found one ancient blog posting about it, but that is it.
Plus, when it comes right down to it, I am not a chess junkie.  I enjoy the game. I know it's importance in the communities I frequent (education, psychology and gamers), but I don't play very often and when I do play I do it only causally.

But this is something I'd still like to have.
I would make it a traditional chess set (no alternate rules) and I have had the pieces in mind for years.
Black
King - Dracula (obviously)
Queen - Lucy in her vampire or "Bloufer lady" form.
Bishops - Dracula's other brides (yeah missing one)
Knights - his gypsy henchmen
Rooks - Castle Dracula
Pawns - Wolves (with bats maybe)

White
King - Van Helsing (again an obvious choice)
Queen  - Mina Harker
Queen's Bishop - Jonathan Harker
Kin's Bishop - Dr. Seward
Knights -  Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood
Rooks - Seward's Sanitarium
Pawns - Holmwood's dogs.

I like how these fill out honestly.  Though I do need a place for Reinfield.  Maybe as one of the black Knights

I might have enough D&D minis to do this with, at least on Dracula's side of things, but not really for Van Helsing's side.

I guess my search goes on.

.

Dracula: Big Eyes, Small Mouth 3.0

So if I am going to do Buffy, I should at least add one of the greatest vampires ever.
Dracula, in one form or another, has appeared in a number of anime.  So it seems natural to include him here.

This build is roughly based on the vampire build in the BESM 3.0 book and on my own Mutants and Masterminds version.

Dracula BESM 3.0

BODY 15
MIND 10
SOUL 14

HP: 145 ACV: 16
EP: 120 DCV: 14
SSV: 29 Dam: 5/9

Attributes Level Cost Notes
Attack Combat Mastery +3 ( +30)
Combat technique (brutal, critical strike, lethal blow, lighting reflexes) +4 (+8)
Defense Combat Mastery +1 (+10)
Features: Appearance +1 (+1)
Heightened Awareness +1 (+2)
Heightened Senses (hear, smell) +2 (+4)
Mind Control (humans, depletes) +2 (+13)
Mind Shield +3 (+6)
Resistance +1 (+2)
Regeneration +1 (+10)
Special Defense (ageing 2, disease 2, freezing water 2, freezing cold 2, lack of air 2, poison 1) +11 (+22)
Special Movement +2 (+4)
Super Strength +4 (+32)
Tough +1 (+2)
Weapon Fangs +2 (+3)

Skills Level (Cost) (Modern-day Occult setting)
Acrobatics +2 (+4)
Climbing +2 (+4)
Cultural Arts +3 (+9)
Disguise +1 (+2)
Etiquette +3 (+3)
Foreign Culture +3 (+3)
Languages +4 (+8) English, Latin, Romanian, Turkish, German
Occult +3 (+9)
Performing Arts +2 (+2)
Seduction +5 (+10)
Sleight of Hand +3 (+6)
Social Sciences +3 (+6)
Stealth +3 (+6)
Street sense +3 (+6)
Urban Tracking +2 (+4)
Wilderness Survival +1 (+1)
Writing +1 (+1)

Defects (Cost) Notes
Achilles’ Heel (Wooden weapons) (-2)
Bane Sunlight (-2)
Bane Mirrors (-2)

Notes: Can move about in the daylight, but is very weakened. When sleeping or in his crypt he appears to be completely dead. Dracula lies in his coffin with his eyes wide open and can see everything even in his torpor.

Dracula here is a vampire at the top of his game with 145 Health Points, the same I put Buffy at.  With these stats they would go toe to toe for a while.  Same as in Unisystem.  But for an Anime Vampire Lord I am thinking he should be a bit more powerful.  That at least is the one thing consistent in all the Anime version of Dracula I have seen; he is a complete bad ass.