Tag: Klaus Kinski

Venom (1981)

VENOM (1981) ***
I just finished considering Silent Rage, a film that runs Chuck Norris, a Western, Animal House, mad scientists, and a madman killer made indestructible through a cinematic blender.

Thus, I feel safe in saying that Silent Rage prepared me for Venom, a British horror film that has a distinguished multinational cast, kidnapping and hostage negotiation, and only the world’s deadliest snake, the dreaded Black mamba from sub-Saharan Africa. The mamba gets a few closeups, more than Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and Daffy Duck in Duck Amuck, and its own POV. Yeah, we’ll call it the Black Mamba Cam.

That distinguished cast includes kidnappers Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed, Scotland Yard commander and lead negotiator Nicol Williamson, snake expert Sarah Miles, slinky (won’t call her slutty or a snake expert in her own right) nurse Susan George, and lovable crusty old grandfather Sterling Hayden.

Basically, Venom contains three movies within one — the kidnapping inside the house, the hostage negotiation and the behind-the-scenes police maneuvering on the outside, and the deadly snake on the loose. We’ve all seen kidnapping and hostage negotiation plenty before, on TV cop shows and in the movies, but very rarely do the kidnappers have to deal with the world’s deadliest snake. And Lord knows we’ve all seen a bad snake movie or two, like for example the 1972 disaster Stanley, which populated its killer snake scenario with thoroughly unpleasant and despicable characters, a somewhat heavy-handed environmental message, and some of the dopiest music ever heard by man this side of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Venom turned out to be a far more enjoyable motion picture experience than Stanley. For example, the scene in Venom where the boy picks up the mamba by mistake and unknowingly transports the world’s deadliest snake from one side of London to another brought to mind the classic sequence in Sabotage that ends in the death of a young boy named Stevie. The inevitable scenes late in the picture when the mamba strikes Reed and Kinski are both well worth their wait, and the mamba’s strike at George about 30 minutes into the picture lets us know that we’re in for a treat when Reed and Kinski do meet their demise.

Later that day, much later in the day to be precise, though, I watched Murders in the Zoo from 1933 and imagine my delightful little surprise when a mamba figured prominently in that older film’s plot. The gruesome hits in Murders in the Zoo just keep on coming down the home stretch, especially when a boa constrictor consumes the dastardly big-game hunter, bastardly zoologist, and insanely jealous husband played by Lionel Atwill.

Venom and Murders in the Zoo both find perfect ways to deal with snakes in the grass.

Nosferatu (1979)

NOSFERATU

NOSFERATU (1979) ***1/2

German director Werner Herzog’s NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE has often been described as a “slow burn” horror film and every critic seems to want to sound a fire alarm that it’s not the average “creature feature” with cheap thrills every few minutes and that it will disappoint most horror movie fans.

The former is certainly true and I cannot speak for the latter except to say this horror movie fan liked it. I’ll be honest, I did not much enjoy it the first time watching it a good 20 years before my return viewing. I remember having a more neutral reaction that first time. Not sure why.

Looking up “slow burn,” I find that it means “a filmmaking style, usually in narrative productions, wherein plot, action, and scenes develop slowly, methodically toward a (usually) explosive boiling point.”

NOSFERATU definitely fits methodical and perhaps only slow to viewers raised on Attention Deficit Cinema. I’d rather say that Herzog’s remake and F.W. Murnau’s original 1922 masterpiece subtitled A SYMPHONY OF HORROR both move at their own leisurely pace. They play more like fever dreams than the average horror movie.

NOSFERATU does not fit the back end of that slow burn definition, because there’s not an explosive boiling point. Certainly not anything resembling the stereotypical big bang grand finale to a standard Hammer Dracula picture.

Herzog marches to the beat of his own drum. That’s for sure and thank God for that, just as we should be thankful for every great director. I consider his AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD to be the best film I have seen from 1972 and I would put it on a list of the greatest films ever made. LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY and GRIZZLY MAN are on my top 10 lists for 1997 and 2005, respectively. Les Blank’s documentary BURDEN OF DREAMS, which chronicles Herzog’s great adventure making FITZCARRALDO, also makes my top 10 list for 1982. Ramin Bahrani’s 18-minute PLASTIC BAG, a top 10 entry for 2010, utilizes Herzog as its narrator.

I know that NOSFERATU was my first time watching a Herzog movie and I believe I had not yet seen the Murnau original. To be sure, I was more equipped watching NOSFERATU for a second time.

More than anything else, images stand out. Brilliant images are the heart of both the 1922 and 1979 films and both Murnau’s and Herzog’s filmography.

Musophobes should not watch NOSFERATU, because rats take over the screen at crucial points late in the picture. The rats are the source of some legendary stories: Herzog said the rats were better behaved during the shoot than star Klaus Kinski and since real grey rats proved to be unavailable, white rats were given a grey makeover, for example.

The rats call to mind the monkeys from AGUIRRE.

Of course, there’s every time Dracula (Kinski) is on the screen. Since copyright was not a concern for Herzog like it had been in 1922 for the first NOSFERATU, Herzog returned names like Dracula, Jonathan Harker, and Lucy to his version. Dracula’s look echoes Max Schreck’s iconic Count Orlok and both vampires are radically different from the classic bloodsuckers played by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, as well as just about every other vampire in cinematic history. Herzog and Murnau both show how it is more of a curse to be a vampire and make it far less of a power trip. Herzog’s Dracula and Count Orlok are not suave and debonair, and their striking physical appearances echo vampire folklore. We also have far more complex reactions to the vampires played by Schreck and Kinski, since we feel more empathy for them.

Around her mid-20s at the time she made NOSFERATU, French actress Isabelle Adjani already had a strong claim on the title of most beautiful woman in the world. NOSFERATU did nothing to refute that.

Thinking about the various Jonathan Harkers over time, Bruno Ganz’s performance ranks better than David Manners in the 1931 DRACULA and Keanu Reeves in the 1992 DRACULA. He certainly goes through a wider emotional range than either Manners or Reeves, who are both “mannered” in their performances.

Ultimately, NOSFERATU leaves one with feelings different from how we normally react to a vampire picture. There’s not the standard euphoria that we experience, for example, when Lee’s Dracula spectacularly bites the dust. Instead, we are more pensive and melancholic than excited and thrilled.