Nosferatu (1922)
Classic Horror Movies

Nosferatu (1922) and a Lot of Dracula

Nosferatu. Does this word not sound like the midnight call of the Bird of Death? – Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu (1922)

In this conversation, John and Katherine discuss the origins and influence of vampires in literature and film, focusing on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the unauthorized adaptation Nosferatu (1922). They explore the plot and themes of Dracula, including the fear of sickness and the codification of vampire rules. They then delve into the production and legal battles surrounding Nosferatu, highlighting the occult influences and the actions taken by Florence Balcombe, Bram Stoker’s widow, to protect the rights to Dracula. Despite attempts to destroy the film, Nosferatu (1922) has endured and become a cultural icon. This conversation explores various themes related to the cultural impact and consumption of vampire movies, as well as the legal battles and copyright issues surrounding the film Nosferatu (1922). The discussion delves into the concept of public art and the rights of creators, as well as the influence of popular folklore and the role of travel narratives in shaping cultural perceptions. The conversation also touches on the physicality of Max Schreck’s performance in ‘Nosferatu’ and the enduring legacy of vampire movies in popular culture.

Transcript – Nosferatu (1922) with Katherine

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Okay.

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Today we’re going to talk about vampires, Dracula, and a whole bit.

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And that’s why I’ve got Katherine with me.

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Hello, Katherine. Hi.

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Good to be here.

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I heard you got a lot of information for us.

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I do, I’ve definitely

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read some academic stuff about vampires.

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In the past, I’ve consumed a lot of vampire content, as you can imagine.

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growing up, big horror fan.

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So this is very much in my wheelhouse.

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Well, why don’t you just,

take off and let’s get going.

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Okay, so Dracula is about.

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Wait.

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I thought we were talking about Nosferatu.

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This isn’t about Dracula, right?

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Or is it?

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So let’s start from the beginning.

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We’ll start with Bram Stoker,

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who wrote his novel Dracula in 1897.

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It’s an epistolary novel.

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You know that word?

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I do not know that word.

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I love this word.

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It’s such a pedantic thing to say,

but I love it because it just means

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that it’s told in letters and diary entries and things like that.

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It’s somewhat similar to Frankenstein, too.

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It was kind of, a thing that people were doing there, for a while. But

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basically what is told

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in the story is just as important as what’s not told in this story.

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It’s the shadow of the vampire.

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which will come back in 2000.

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Yes, yes.

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so we have our narrator, Jonathan.

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Jonathan is a London lawyer.

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He has a fiancée.

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Fiancée’s name is Mina.

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and Jonathan is hired

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to go to Transylvania and help.

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the guy basically purchase land in London

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and, like, get his estate in order and bring him back to London.

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Right.

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Of course, this is mostly just a ploy

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for Dracula to get to London, right?

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This is all familiar so far, so.

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I’ve read most of this novel.

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I have not ever finished it,

but I read most of it.

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so Jonathan is, like,

kind of this silly, oblivious dude.

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He shows up in the Carpathian mountains and he’s talking to these like,

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Slavic people

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and doesn’t really speak their language,

and they’re like, trying to warn him.

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They’re giving him all these talismans.

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They’re doing all these things to try to prevent,

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you know, him from dying,

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from being killed by Dracula because they know what he really is.

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They know what he does.

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but he’s just like, oh,

these nice people, they’re so friendly.

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They’re giving me all these things.

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They love me, blah, blah, blah.

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So he works for Dracula.

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He gets, their affairs in order,

gets them all back to London.

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Meanwhile, his fiancée, Mina starts

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hanging out with this girl, Lucy.

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And Lucy starts to get sick

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and they bring in this doctor.

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You might have heard of him.

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His last name is Van Helsing.

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To see really old and they’re like super thick glasses.

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Yeah, that’s exactly the guy I picked up on Dracula with me.

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Exactly.

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He’s an academic.

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he’s a smart guy, right?

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So he comes in and he figures out the whole situation, yada, yada, yada.

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They formulate a plan.

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They kill Dracula.

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They cut his head off and stake him at the same time.

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That’s the end.

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So the book was super popular,

very well liked.

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Obviously, it’s still a big part of

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our likes were zeitgeist, right?

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This novel really codified the way we think of vampires.

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They codified the rules of vampires.

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The like, how they act, what they do,

their routines, all that kind of stuff.

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It all is traced back to this novel,

right?

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Okay.

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And I did want to talk to you about that later, about, the powers

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that this Orlock had compared to the powers that Dracula had.

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Okay.

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You may know a little bit more about that than me, so I’ll let you go.

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That.

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now, obviously

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with a novel like this, there is a lot of thematic stuff

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You know, the anti-Semitism.

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You could talk about race and racism.

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You could talk about

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sickness, the fear of being sick.

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Right?

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This girl Lucy, she gets sick.

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She gets like a wasted disease.

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What is that similar to?

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Yeah.

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Well, that’s, What is it similar to?

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tuberculosis? Oh, tuberculosis. Okay.

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Oh. You know,

I was going to say that the,

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They’ll use that pretty well in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012).

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Because his mother had the wasting disease.

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She died of a wasting disease.

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So I didn’t know this.

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I just looked this up.

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But apparently during the 1800s.

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So, like,

basically kind of that whole century,

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that was like one of the big peaks of tuberculosis, specifically in Europe.

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Apparently,

a quarter of the adult population

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was killed by tuberculosis in Europe during the 19th century.

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So you get the press that the Black Plague gets no.

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The Black Plague was pretty awful.

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But there’s something romantic in the capital

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R Romantic sense about tuberculosis,

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because it’s not really pus

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and disgusting the way that the bubonic plague was.

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what happens when you have

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tuberculosis?

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You get pale, you get.

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Then you get tired.

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Hollows, sunken eyes.

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You’re coughing up a little bit of blood.

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You have red lips, you know, it’s.

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You see what I’m saying?

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Yeah. It’s very vampire.

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Very vampire.

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Willowy thin vampire people.

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So you can see that connection.

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Unless you deal with,

unless you go with, Sookie Stackhouse,

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and then you’re the kind of vampire you stay the way you were bitten.

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So, like, if you’re fat and lazy, you stay fat and lazy as a vampire.

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Yeah.

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See, but they are playing on those rules

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that we learned from Dracula, right?

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Everything just builds on, this, like, set of rules.

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Because really, if you go back and look at vampires like folkloric

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vampires, you’re looking at like 1500s.

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You know, before we really understood

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the decay and decomposition

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process of the human body.

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Vampires had a lot more in common with zombies.

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Oh, zombies. Yeah. Oh, yes.

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Yes. So like,

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they were not necessarily,

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these beautiful night walker type people, they were very like,

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not much going on up here and like just mindlessly

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eating consuming.

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They did that with the,

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the older vampires in, interview with the original Interview

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With A Vampire (1994)

and the Anne Rice book.

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Because Anne Rice did her research.

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so, anyway,

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a lot of these things,

we could talk a lot

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about these themes, but I think we could move on into Nosferatu.

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so we didn’t see a Dracula.

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adaptation to film until 1931.

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So how does this relate to Nosferatu (1922)?

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Well,

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Nosferatu is kind of

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kind of a crazy situation in general.

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Right?

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You want to start with the production

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company that created Nosferatu?

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the production company was called Prana.

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And Prana is like this Hindu concept,

I believe.

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I don’t know too much about it,

but one of the guys, one of the two guys

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who started the company in 1921

was this man named Alvin Growl.

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And Alvin was a theosophy.

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Theosophy.

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This the he belonged to Theosophy,

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which was a occult religion

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that was started by Madame Helena Blavatsky.

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And I don’t know if you know much about any of that.

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I do not.

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so the thing in the same vein as,

like Alistair

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Crowley, Edgar Casey,

like those kinds of people,

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you know, people who were like, trying to kind of break

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from Western religion and started looking more at like eastern things.

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And they were looking more into, like

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mystical stuff, spiritualism.

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This is all kind of coinciding with spiritualism.

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Occult is and it’s all kind of you get where I’m going with this.

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Yeah.

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So this guy, decided

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that he wanted to open up a production

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company studio hat would make a occult film.

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So, their first foray into occult films was going to be a vampire movie.

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Now, did they

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get the rights to Dracula?

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And I think they tried. Maybe just money.

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They didn’t.

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They tried all.

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They didn’t at this point?

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Bram Stoker had passed away already. Right.

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So the person who was in charge of the rights was

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his wife, and her name was.

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Mrs. Bram Stoker.

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Stoker.

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No, her name was Florence Balcombe.

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Oh, okay.

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So we’ll get we’ll talk a little bit more about her later.

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but she had no idea about this movie until after it had already premiered.

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Okay.

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So anyway, instead of paying the money to get the rights to the real Dracula,

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they basically just hired a guy to

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make a few changes.

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So we already kind of talked about Dracula’s what do you want?

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You watched this Nosferatu movie more recently than I have to.

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Do you want to run us through a little bit about the plot

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and see what the similarities are?

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Well, it’s very similar.

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I mean, he, the, Hutter is a lawyer or,

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a realty agent. Oh, yeah.

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And he goes over there and he gets called to Transylvania,

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Walchia, as they used to call it,

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back in the day.

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And, makes the transactions Dracula bites or.

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I’m sorry.

00:11:28,208 –> 00:11:29,375

Count Orlok.

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Yeah, a few times.

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And, leaves him locked in the castle when he leaves,

00:11:34,625 –> 00:11:37,625

you know, and, but he breaks out,

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follows, and they have a great chase.

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You know, Dracula is on the boat.

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It’s not called the Demiter Orlock Oh.

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I’m boy. Okay, so they have a big chase.

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Orlok is on the boat, and,

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Hutter is escaped and is following him,

and they’re in pursuit.

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So while that one story is going on, the other stories going on, he is,

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of course, seen the picture of his wife.

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And her name is.

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I wrote it down to Ellen.

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Ellen you seen Ellen And, white.

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Is this crazy for her?

And it just happens.

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They get a they sell him the house.

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It’s right across the street.

00:12:15,250 –> 00:12:18,833

the, Hutter’s boss is the,

00:12:18,833 –> 00:12:21,916

head broker, and he goes crazy and gets in the mental hospital.

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So what I thought I was talking about a while ago, the Orlock’s he’s already

00:12:27,000 –> 00:12:31,666

reaching all the way to England and controlling Helen and England.

00:12:32,666 –> 00:12:33,958

It’s actually Germany.

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Germany? Yes.

00:12:35,083 –> 00:12:39,041

Wisburg Wisburg, So good catch.

00:12:39,250 –> 00:12:40,583

So it’s actually. Yeah.

00:12:40,583 –> 00:12:44,291

So he’s already reaching ahead and projecting much more,

00:12:44,875 –> 00:12:48,666

telepathic control than Dracula did in the movie, you know?

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So anyway, he goes there and Ellen is reading the book.

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You know, about that Hutter brings back

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about dealing with vampires and

00:13:01,125 –> 00:13:04,125

she figures out a way to kill him by making him

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him miss the crowing of the cock in the morning.

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That’s why she sacrifices herself for the.

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Good, because he’s so,

so distracted by her beauty or whatever.

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And then she’s freely giving red blood.

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Yeah.

00:13:18,750 –> 00:13:22,375

And, really, she looked kind of creepy through the whole movie with big eyes

00:13:22,375 –> 00:13:23,250

and always walking.

00:13:23,250 –> 00:13:25,541

Around in silent era movie.

00:13:25,541 –> 00:13:26,958

Yeah, but, I mean. It was worse.

00:13:26,958 –> 00:13:28,750

It was worse than that.

00:13:28,750 –> 00:13:32,208

She looked like, something scared her right away, and she walked around.

00:13:32,208 –> 00:13:35,375

And a lot of people in this movie walked around in Nightclothes.

00:13:35,375 –> 00:13:36,833

She was wearing a nightgown.

00:13:36,833 –> 00:13:42,291

the Helsing character was, wearing a robe a lot of the time.

00:13:42,291 –> 00:13:45,125

There were a lot of pajama scenes in this movie, too.

00:13:45,125 –> 00:13:46,541

I thought it was an interesting.

00:13:46,541 –> 00:13:52,291

But the ship, Orlock kills off the crew one by one.

00:13:52,291 –> 00:13:53,041

And of course, it.

00:13:53,041 –> 00:13:56,041

The captain lashes himself to the wheel

00:13:56,125 –> 00:13:58,916

at the end,

but the rats were still alive.

00:14:00,083 –> 00:14:02,166

And the one thing I thought on the ship.

00:14:02,166 –> 00:14:06,083

So he didn’t feed on the small animals first, like you would think.

00:14:06,416 –> 00:14:09,416

Yeah. Try to keep it up and then

00:14:09,416 –> 00:14:12,791

everywhere the ports they touch,

they think the plague is coming

00:14:12,791 –> 00:14:16,708

out of the Black Sea and all that,

but they call it a stigmata.

00:14:16,708 –> 00:14:19,416

The two marks on the neck, a stigma.

00:14:19,416 –> 00:14:20,583

Yes, exactly.

00:14:20,583 –> 00:14:21,083

And I thought,

00:14:21,083 –> 00:14:24,083

well, that’s really interesting because there’s an inversion there

00:14:24,750 –> 00:14:26,583

between Orlok and Dracula. Right.

00:14:26,583 –> 00:14:31,250

Especially because Orlok has kind of been considered,

00:14:31,250 –> 00:14:35,250

you know, an anti-Semitic caricature.

00:14:36,041 –> 00:14:37,791

You didn’t know that. Okay. No, I did not know that.

00:14:37,791 –> 00:14:40,791

What’s that? Based on?

00:14:41,083 –> 00:14:43,833

Oh, because he’s making him a bad guy.

00:14:43,833 –> 00:14:44,666

Well, yeah.

00:14:44,666 –> 00:14:47,250

Have you. Seen that?

The vampire is always a bad guy.

00:14:48,291 –> 00:14:50,166

There’s all the poisoning of the.

00:14:50,166 –> 00:14:54,500

Well, thing with Jews in history, right?

00:14:54,875 –> 00:14:58,041

Oh, this plague was caused by Jews.

00:14:58,041 –> 00:15:00,583

This thing was caused by Jews. Right.

00:15:00,583 –> 00:15:04,791

So, like, if he’s going from port to port and people are dying

00:15:06,000 –> 00:15:07,208

from this, like, oh, no.

00:15:07,208 –> 00:15:09,583

I didn’t. Rat.

00:15:09,583 –> 00:15:11,083

Yeah. You know.

00:15:11,083 –> 00:15:12,625

Like, I did not know any of that.

00:15:12,625 –> 00:15:14,458

Oh, that’s very interesting.

00:15:14,458 –> 00:15:16,791

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.

00:15:16,791 –> 00:15:20,458

Oh I was just going to say, I mean,

I don’t think it’s necessarily coincidence

00:15:20,458 –> 00:15:24,791

that or like, looks kind of like a rat.

00:15:24,791 –> 00:15:27,791

He has a very pointy

00:15:27,916 –> 00:15:30,791

rat like appearance.

00:15:30,791 –> 00:15:33,666

Which is little pointy fingers. Yeah.

00:15:33,666 –> 00:15:36,833

And the rats were responsible for the Black plague because of the fleas

00:15:36,833 –> 00:15:39,833

on the rat,

because they killed all the cats and dogs

00:15:40,416 –> 00:15:43,416

and made the rats population boom.

00:15:43,750 –> 00:15:46,041

And that’s where you are, in fact.

Or maybe not. So.

00:15:46,041 –> 00:15:46,750

Fun fact.

00:15:46,750 –> 00:15:49,750

But Jews got blamed for the Black Plague, too.

00:15:50,250 –> 00:15:54,000

I didn’t know that I really like the Orlock, like the way he looks.

00:15:54,000 –> 00:15:55,916

Even if you say he looks like a rat.

00:15:55,916 –> 00:15:56,583

It’s different.

00:15:56,583 –> 00:16:01,166

And I like the way they’ve incorporated that, that style of vampire

00:16:01,166 –> 00:16:04,833

into, like, what we do in the shadows, into more modern and dark.

00:16:05,125 –> 00:16:07,583

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s one of the styles.

00:16:07,583 –> 00:16:09,458

Yeah. He’s a Nosferatu guy.

00:16:09,458 –> 00:16:11,291

Yeah, yeah.

00:16:11,291 –> 00:16:14,625

So anyway, it’s very similar to the movie,

you know what I mean?

00:16:14,625 –> 00:16:16,958

You know, it’s very similar to Dracula. It’s.

00:16:16,958 –> 00:16:19,291

They didn’t change very much.

00:16:19,291 –> 00:16:21,375

No, there’s only, like a few more.

00:16:22,500 –> 00:16:25,000

I will say that Nosferatu definitely

00:16:25,000 –> 00:16:29,166

does feel more occult in a lot of ways,

00:16:29,666 –> 00:16:33,208

because, like, there’s all that kind of, like, almost telepathic stuff.

00:16:33,208 –> 00:16:37,708

She’s like dreaming about the about Nosferatu and like,

00:16:37,708 –> 00:16:42,416

all that sort of stuff, but like, it’s really very similar.

00:16:42,625 –> 00:16:44,958

I will say

00:16:44,958 –> 00:16:48,041

that one of the earliest exposures

00:16:48,041 –> 00:16:52,750

that I had to Nosferatu was from a SpongeBob

00:16:52,750 –> 00:16:55,875

SquarePants episode that aired in 2002.

00:16:56,750 –> 00:17:01,000

There’s just a really random bit because it’s like kind of a spooky episode, right?

00:17:01,291 –> 00:17:06,000

And then just like at the end, there’s just this little like joke where like,

00:17:06,083 –> 00:17:08,875

oh no, the lights were flickering and that was so scary.

00:17:08,875 –> 00:17:09,333

Oh no.

00:17:09,333 –> 00:17:12,416

Actually, it turns out it was just Nosferatu over there flipping

00:17:12,416 –> 00:17:15,416

the light switch like, why?

00:17:15,958 –> 00:17:17,125

I have no idea.

00:17:17,125 –> 00:17:21,458

And I mean, it’s so interesting that this movie has, like,

00:17:21,458 –> 00:17:26,250

such a place in the cultural zeitgeist,

being such a blatant rip off.

00:17:26,666 –> 00:17:30,083

I mean, they both have their own places,

but it’s very interesting.

00:17:30,958 –> 00:17:32,125

He brought that back now.

00:17:32,125 –> 00:17:34,416

So if I’m understanding correctly,

00:17:34,416 –> 00:17:37,875

when the widow found out she took legal action against this.

00:17:37,875 –> 00:17:40,791

Movie, yes, I can tell you a little bit more about that. Yes.

00:17:40,791 –> 00:17:43,916

So her name, like I said, was Florence Balcombe.

00:17:43,916 –> 00:17:46,291

Both her and Bram Stoker were Irish.

00:17:46,291 –> 00:17:47,916

I didn’t know that until today.

00:17:47,916 –> 00:17:50,250

I thought I always thought he was English.

00:17:51,666 –> 00:17:53,583

And fun fact,

00:17:53,583 –> 00:17:56,583

Florence dated,

00:17:56,750 –> 00:18:00,166

Oscar Wilde before she married Bram Stoker.

00:18:01,000 –> 00:18:04,000

But that’s puts her in a pretty small club.

00:18:04,583 –> 00:18:06,125

yeah, I would say so.

00:18:06,125 –> 00:18:09,208

But, you know, also, fun fact Bram Stoker

00:18:09,208 –> 00:18:13,875

had some homosexuality allegations,

too. So,

00:18:15,208 –> 00:18:18,208

maybe that was just Florence’s type.

00:18:18,458 –> 00:18:20,375

Maybe. Maybe, I don’t know.

00:18:20,375 –> 00:18:27,375

So anyway, the premiere of Nosferatu was actually, like, a big to do in Berlin.

00:18:27,416 –> 00:18:27,875

Apparently.

00:18:27,875 –> 00:18:31,125

It was like,

it was premiered at a really nice theater

00:18:31,458 –> 00:18:36,375

with a whole big thing of an orchestra as silent films were intended.

00:18:36,375 –> 00:18:36,875

Right.

00:18:36,875 –> 00:18:39,750

and so she didn’t

00:18:39,750 –> 00:18:42,750

find out until she basically received an anonymous letter.

00:18:42,958 –> 00:18:48,791

I learned a lot of this from the,

when the Women’s Museum of Ireland.

00:18:48,791 –> 00:18:50,833

So that’s where I got a lot of that information.

00:18:50,833 –> 00:18:53,333

All this stuff about her. And, like, dating Oscar Wilde.

00:18:53,333 –> 00:18:54,833

So I thought that was really cool.

00:18:54,833 –> 00:18:59,958

but anyway, I guess because it was sort of location

00:18:59,958 –> 00:19:03,833

locked up until that point,

it was really just kind of a German film

00:19:04,166 –> 00:19:06,916

premiering in Germany,

and it wasn’t necessarily like

00:19:06,916 –> 00:19:11,666

a big international thing until she found out about it.

00:19:11,666 –> 00:19:15,625

And then she,

she did not have that many means.

00:19:15,625 –> 00:19:17,041

Honestly, at that point.

00:19:17,041 –> 00:19:21,041

So she joined this thing called the Society of Authors, I guess.

00:19:21,041 –> 00:19:23,750

And it’s like a union type situation, right?

00:19:23,750 –> 00:19:28,125

Because when her husband died, she was kind of the executor

00:19:28,125 –> 00:19:31,750

of his literary works and stuff like that. So

00:19:33,041 –> 00:19:34,083

she joined them, and they

00:19:34,083 –> 00:19:37,750

helped her through a three year legal battle.

00:19:38,916 –> 00:19:42,000

So what she won out of that three year legal battle,

00:19:42,958 –> 00:19:45,250

5,000 pounds.

00:19:45,250 –> 00:19:47,916

That’s a pretty good bit of money, though.

00:19:47,916 –> 00:19:51,666

so I did do some calculations, according to the Bank of England,

00:19:51,666 –> 00:19:57,791

that in today’s money would be about

260,000 pounds, which in U.S.

00:19:57,791 –> 00:20:04,541

dollars is 330,000, basically U.S.

00:20:04,541 –> 00:20:07,291

dollars.

So you could buy a house with that.

00:20:07,291 –> 00:20:07,625

Yeah.

00:20:07,625 –> 00:20:11,291

I mean, therefore they’re paying actors,

you know, $20 a week or something back

00:20:11,291 –> 00:20:13,833

then, you know, 20. Yeah. No kidding.

00:20:13,833 –> 00:20:15,416

But, yeah.

00:20:15,416 –> 00:20:18,041

So that wasn’t the only stipulation.

00:20:18,041 –> 00:20:19,333

That’s not the only thing she won.

00:20:19,333 –> 00:20:20,833

Do you know what the other thing she won was?

00:20:20,833 –> 00:20:23,541

Yes, I do, but go ahead. Oh, wow. Okay.

00:20:25,541 –> 00:20:27,791

They had to destroy

00:20:27,791 –> 00:20:30,875

every copy of the movie right now.

00:20:30,875 –> 00:20:31,916

They didn’t they didn’t.

00:20:31,916 –> 00:20:32,791

Did they do that?

00:20:32,791 –> 00:20:34,125

They clearly did not.

00:20:34,125 –> 00:20:39,583

Because here we are in 2024, 102 years later,

00:20:40,250 –> 00:20:43,250

able to see pretty much the entire movie.

00:20:43,416 –> 00:20:44,541

Yeah, yeah.

00:20:44,541 –> 00:20:46,375

Just watched a beautifully restored copy.

00:20:46,375 –> 00:20:48,458

You’re going to had a new soundtrack with it?

00:20:48,458 –> 00:20:50,916

No modern, an updated soundtrack.

00:20:50,916 –> 00:20:52,875

It wasn’t a modern soundtrack, right?

00:20:52,875 –> 00:20:55,166

It was,

but I was thinking about that like this,

00:20:55,166 –> 00:20:58,458

a really good copy, considering that it was all supposed to be destroyed.

00:20:58,458 –> 00:21:03,000

Yeah, well,

so she also apparently had some

00:21:03,000 –> 00:21:08,458

legal battles with, Universal Studios because apparently she had heard

00:21:08,458 –> 00:21:13,500

that they were trying to acquire the rights to it too afterwards.

00:21:13,500 –> 00:21:17,166

So was like even more legal stuff for her with that.

00:21:18,125 –> 00:21:19,916

Yeah, she when

00:21:19,916 –> 00:21:22,916

they actually got the rights to Dracula (1931) and made that movie

00:21:23,375 –> 00:21:26,416

and then, then when they were going to make Dracula’s

00:21:26,416 –> 00:21:29,416

Daughter (1936), which wasn’t Dracula’s daughter at the time,

00:21:29,458 –> 00:21:32,333

the wife was wanting, you know, creative

00:21:32,333 –> 00:21:35,333

control and more money and everything.

00:21:35,500 –> 00:21:36,916

And so they did the same thing.

00:21:36,916 –> 00:21:40,833

They had somebody write a new story,

about Dracula’s daughter.

00:21:41,708 –> 00:21:44,000

basically fanfiction at that point.

00:21:44,000 –> 00:21:45,875

Yeah.

00:21:45,875 –> 00:21:47,041

Getting away with it.

00:21:47,041 –> 00:21:47,333

All right.

00:21:47,333 –> 00:21:53,166

it really I mean, that is kind of the end of the story part,

00:21:53,583 –> 00:21:56,791

but I do really think that this whole situation

00:21:56,791 –> 00:22:01,875

does bring up a really interesting discussion about copyright,

00:22:02,041 –> 00:22:05,041

public art, public consumption.

00:22:05,166 –> 00:22:07,458

What is the public owed?

00:22:07,458 –> 00:22:10,916

Because clearly, for some reason,

00:22:11,458 –> 00:22:14,041

this movie is pervasive.

00:22:14,041 –> 00:22:15,333

People wanted it.

00:22:15,333 –> 00:22:17,333

They didn’t want it to go away.

00:22:17,333 –> 00:22:18,541

They wanted to restore it.

00:22:18,541 –> 00:22:20,708

They wanted to preserve it.

00:22:20,708 –> 00:22:23,416

They wanted it to be available

00:22:24,541 –> 00:22:25,250

in the future.

00:22:25,250 –> 00:22:26,791

And here it is.

00:22:26,791 –> 00:22:29,291

Surely. Yeah.

00:22:29,291 –> 00:22:32,291

It’s and I just I mean,

00:22:32,541 –> 00:22:34,958

do I think that Florence

00:22:34,958 –> 00:22:37,958

Balcombe was wrong for,

00:22:38,000 –> 00:22:41,625

you know, wanting to be compensated for it.

00:22:41,625 –> 00:22:43,041

Absolutely not.

00:22:43,041 –> 00:22:47,041

But I don’t know that necessarily wanting it to be destroyed

00:22:47,041 –> 00:22:50,041

either was the right answer.

00:22:50,458 –> 00:22:54,041

You know, on a, on like a music infringement case,

00:22:54,708 –> 00:22:56,291

if you infringe on somebody’s music

00:22:56,291 –> 00:22:59,333

copyright, copyright,

you lose 100% of the royalty.

00:23:00,083 –> 00:23:01,875

But the songs still exist.

00:23:01,875 –> 00:23:03,333

Yeah, the song still exists,

00:23:03,333 –> 00:23:07,291

but the one way to keep them from making any more royalties is to destroy it.

00:23:07,666 –> 00:23:11,500

you know, if you look at it as a creator, like, artistic creation.

00:23:11,916 –> 00:23:14,916

You know, that’s one way to stop it forever.

00:23:15,000 –> 00:23:16,500

But it didn’t work out.

00:23:16,500 –> 00:23:20,583

No. I mean, do we still hear ice, ice, baby on the radio?

00:23:22,083 –> 00:23:22,416

You know that.

00:23:22,416 –> 00:23:26,208

But that goes ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding.

00:23:27,291 –> 00:23:29,083

Yeah, of course, of course.

00:23:29,083 –> 00:23:30,291

Hope I don’t get infringer.

00:23:30,291 –> 00:23:32,875

I don’t get a copyright strike.

00:23:32,875 –> 00:23:35,166

I’m saying, dang, you didn’t do it.

00:23:35,166 –> 00:23:38,166

Yeah, no, but I did

00:23:38,500 –> 00:23:43,041

just I mean, it is a really interesting discussion about, like.

00:23:43,500 –> 00:23:47,166

It is a really interesting discussion about art and

00:23:48,666 –> 00:23:50,833

how we consume it.

00:23:50,833 –> 00:23:55,041

And I mean, I think that the, the word consume more consumption

00:23:55,291 –> 00:23:58,666

when it comes to art is so interesting.

00:23:59,375 –> 00:24:01,958

Why do we say consume?

00:24:01,958 –> 00:24:04,416

Why do we ingest it?

00:24:04,416 –> 00:24:07,333

We take it, we chew it up, we spit it out.

00:24:07,333 –> 00:24:12,583

You know, I mean, it is purely like consumption of art is a purely.

00:24:12,875 –> 00:24:15,791

Averistic act.

00:24:15,791 –> 00:24:18,208

It is completely selfish.

00:24:18,208 –> 00:24:18,500

Okay?

00:24:18,500 –> 00:24:21,875

Because when you are supposed to invoke emotion,

00:24:22,833 –> 00:24:25,083

so you have to consume it to

00:24:25,083 –> 00:24:29,708

to get that invocation, get invoked, you know, get that emotion.

00:24:30,041 –> 00:24:30,791

But, I was,

00:24:32,166 –> 00:24:33,250

you just brought up something.

00:24:33,250 –> 00:24:35,375

I know there’s an interesting topic to you.

00:24:35,375 –> 00:24:38,375

I was listening to a podcast on Ephemeral

00:24:39,458 –> 00:24:42,583

the other day,

and it was about the UFO history

00:24:42,916 –> 00:24:46,416

and the couple that were the first ones to get to have the time blank.

00:24:46,416 –> 00:24:49,000

And we picked up Betty. And Barney Hill.

00:24:49,000 –> 00:24:50,083

Yeah, I couldn’t remember.

00:24:50,083 –> 00:24:54,125

They invented the grays,

the shape of the grays, the,

00:24:54,416 –> 00:24:57,583

the probing, you know, the whole bit.

00:24:57,583 –> 00:24:58,791

But now. Oh, yes.

00:24:58,791 –> 00:25:01,083

Belongs to everybody, you know, everybody.

00:25:01,083 –> 00:25:03,458

Grays now when they lose the.

00:25:03,458 –> 00:25:06,625

Their story, their story

00:25:07,041 –> 00:25:10,041

again, it is like the blueprint.

00:25:10,083 –> 00:25:13,625

It is the cultural that is the cultural zeitgeist.

00:25:13,625 –> 00:25:18,750

They that thing happened and everything since has been some derivation

00:25:19,458 –> 00:25:22,000

of their situation

00:25:22,000 –> 00:25:25,250

where people may be talking about aliens before that. Yes,

00:25:26,291 –> 00:25:29,708

but that is what has stuck in the cultural.

00:25:30,041 –> 00:25:32,166

Yeah. So everybody’s collective conscious.

00:25:32,166 –> 00:25:35,375

So how much, you know, when you talk about, people making deals

00:25:35,375 –> 00:25:38,500

with the devils at the crossroads,

how much of that do you own?

00:25:38,500 –> 00:25:40,208

How much of it belongs to somebody else?

00:25:40,208 –> 00:25:42,708

How much of it is cultural tradition?

00:25:42,708 –> 00:25:43,166

Yeah.

00:25:43,166 –> 00:25:46,166

You know, the

00:25:46,333 –> 00:25:48,500

really interesting concept.

00:25:48,500 –> 00:25:51,250

yeah. Well, I don’t know

00:25:51,250 –> 00:25:54,666

if you saw the Demeter,

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023).

00:25:54,916 –> 00:25:56,291

I had wanted to.

00:25:56,291 –> 00:25:59,750

I don’t really watch a lot of new movies.

00:25:59,750 –> 00:26:02,750

I don’t really get to the movie theater much.

00:26:02,875 –> 00:26:05,875

That’s odd that you don’t watch a lot of new movies.

00:26:06,041 –> 00:26:07,875

Where’s that come from?

00:26:07,875 –> 00:26:09,041

What do you mean?

00:26:09,041 –> 00:26:11,416

Or do you know anybody else that doesn’t watch

00:26:11,416 –> 00:26:14,458

a lot of new movies and, likes to bank on the old stuff?

00:26:14,833 –> 00:26:16,541

Yeah, I think I do.

00:26:18,041 –> 00:26:19,333

voyage of the Demeter just

00:26:19,333 –> 00:26:24,583

took a part of the Dracula story,

and it just confined it to the ship.

00:26:24,875 –> 00:26:27,458

Now Dracula started feeding on the smaller things.

00:26:27,458 –> 00:26:33,041

The, rats and then the goats and the dog and building his power up.

00:26:33,041 –> 00:26:34,708

He was weak because he.

00:26:34,708 –> 00:26:36,458

I guess because he left his home.

00:26:36,458 –> 00:26:39,458

And then he was all in there with the dumbest,

00:26:39,750 –> 00:26:42,375

the actual, just dumbest people in the world, you know, the.

00:26:42,375 –> 00:26:45,833

Most horror movie caricatured people ever.

00:26:46,500 –> 00:26:49,250

By the end of the movie, I was rooting for them to be killed.

00:26:49,250 –> 00:26:50,958

You know? Get him, get him.

00:26:50,958 –> 00:26:53,916

That’s the beauty, the joy of a horror film.

00:26:53,916 –> 00:26:56,458

So you understood you.

00:26:56,458 –> 00:26:57,750

You got it.

00:26:57,750 –> 00:26:58,125

Yeah.

00:26:58,125 –> 00:27:02,166

So anyway, it wasn’t a very good movie,

but I like I liked the concept.

00:27:02,416 –> 00:27:02,666

Yeah.

00:27:02,666 –> 00:27:05,916

How they pulled out a part of it and could have made a great story.

00:27:06,291 –> 00:27:07,083

Yeah. You know.

00:27:08,083 –> 00:27:11,166

Perhaps,

maybe if Dracula’s killed 20 people

00:27:11,166 –> 00:27:13,125

on your boat and every living things.

00:27:13,125 –> 00:27:14,958

And you’re just down to 1 or 2.

00:27:14,958 –> 00:27:16,833

How about you burn the boat and let it sink?

00:27:16,833 –> 00:27:18,416

You know.

00:27:18,416 –> 00:27:20,416

Your in the middle of the ocean, where are you going to go?

00:27:20,416 –> 00:27:24,166

Oh, were going to be Dracula food in another night or two.

00:27:24,666 –> 00:27:27,666

Unless you’re either Dracula food or your shark food.

00:27:29,166 –> 00:27:30,291

Yeah, that’s right.

00:27:30,291 –> 00:27:33,041

Which one’s better?

00:27:33,041 –> 00:27:34,750

Well,

I don’t know about being Dracula food

00:27:34,750 –> 00:27:37,750

because you end up being a Dracula.

00:27:37,875 –> 00:27:40,875

yeah, but at least you wouldn’t be dead.

00:27:41,333 –> 00:27:44,333

Well,

that’s another thing in that, in that,

00:27:45,458 –> 00:27:50,041

In the Nosferatu when he drained Ellen.

00:27:50,916 –> 00:27:54,166

And it was very good how, Willem Dafoe did it, where he just fell

00:27:54,166 –> 00:27:57,583

asleep, you know, and he wouldn’t wake up when he was feeding, but

00:27:58,791 –> 00:28:02,208

she woke up and then died right after it.

00:28:02,666 –> 00:28:05,958

so did he, drainer her and kill her.

00:28:05,958 –> 00:28:11,708

Or did she die because he died and was free from the lineage curse?

00:28:11,791 –> 00:28:14,916

Oh, very good question. Yeah, I don’t know.

00:28:14,958 –> 00:28:17,208

She doesn’t really answer it because. Right.

00:28:17,208 –> 00:28:20,791

I mean, if you’re being drained so much to death, you would assume

00:28:20,791 –> 00:28:24,333

that you wouldn’t be awake in the last little bit of it.

00:28:24,333 –> 00:28:27,375

You would just start passing out and pretty much be white.

00:28:27,666 –> 00:28:32,083

Because this guy was not, Count Orlok was not about making vampires.

00:28:32,083 –> 00:28:33,083

That was nice.

00:28:33,083 –> 00:28:36,083

He was. To death. He.

00:28:36,583 –> 00:28:36,958

Yeah.

00:28:36,958 –> 00:28:39,666

So consumption

00:28:39,666 –> 00:28:43,291

to that, Max Schreck, who played

00:28:43,875 –> 00:28:48,166

Count Orlock now, persistent rumor.

00:28:48,291 –> 00:28:49,958

And he was really a vampire.

00:28:49,958 –> 00:28:52,041

The guy went to the place.

00:28:52,041 –> 00:28:54,625

Film, you know, filmed a real vampire in,

00:28:55,791 –> 00:28:56,875

in Carpathians or

00:28:56,875 –> 00:28:59,875

mountains or whatever,

and then killed him at the end.

00:28:59,875 –> 00:29:02,875

Now, of course, you know,

Max Schreck was in

00:29:03,166 –> 00:29:06,916

tons of other German movies, you know,

which would have been kind of hard to do.

00:29:07,541 –> 00:29:09,375

Yeah, he.

00:29:09,375 –> 00:29:11,125

He has a Wikipedia page.

00:29:11,125 –> 00:29:14,083

So I think it was more than just one time.

00:29:14,083 –> 00:29:15,375

One movie.

00:29:15,375 –> 00:29:20,625

So the, like, up the make ups,

special effects were just.

00:29:20,625 –> 00:29:23,416

Excellent. phenomenal for the time.

00:29:23,416 –> 00:29:26,875

I mean he didn’t look like a guy in a plastic mask.

00:29:26,875 –> 00:29:28,333

No running around.

00:29:28,333 –> 00:29:30,666

You look, you know, he looked really creepy.

00:29:30,666 –> 00:29:32,750

He looks like a real Dracula.

00:29:32,750 –> 00:29:35,708

You look like a real Dracula, so much you could be convinced.

00:29:35,708 –> 00:29:39,166

And of course, they did that in Shadow of the Vampire (2000).

00:29:39,166 –> 00:29:40,875

I think we’ve talked about that before.

00:29:40,875 –> 00:29:44,666

Yes, it’s on the it’s on the blog and you can see it or listen to it,

00:29:45,666 –> 00:29:47,750

but,

how do you how do you feel about that,

00:29:47,750 –> 00:29:51,750

that little rumor and,

making of The Shadow and all that?

00:29:52,250 –> 00:29:55,791

It is a very fun, apocryphal story.

00:29:55,791 –> 00:29:59,416

Like,

of course, there’s no veracity to it, but

00:30:00,208 –> 00:30:03,208

it is a fun thing to think about.

00:30:03,541 –> 00:30:04,416

Yeah.

00:30:04,416 –> 00:30:06,958

And, there’s two guys,

00:30:06,958 –> 00:30:09,666

Willem Dafoe and, Malkovich.

00:30:09,666 –> 00:30:10,833

John Malkovich.

00:30:10,833 –> 00:30:11,666

Yeah, I was going losing

00:30:11,666 –> 00:30:15,208

John Malkovich, John Malkovich,

Willem Dafoe, and John Malkovich.

00:30:15,583 –> 00:30:20,541

They’re just so great in those two roles,

pairing off of each other.

00:30:20,666 –> 00:30:23,666

I mean, Willem Dafoe really

00:30:24,583 –> 00:30:27,833

nails that’s that Orlock like character.

00:30:27,833 –> 00:30:28,750

And I know you love the bit

00:30:28,750 –> 00:30:31,791

where he describes the bad and he because he stays in character.

00:30:31,791 –> 00:30:35,041

All these the other actors think he stays in character all the time

00:30:35,541 –> 00:30:37,916

when he snatches a bat out of the air and he.

00:30:37,916 –> 00:30:40,291

When he’s really just a weird freak.

00:30:40,291 –> 00:30:41,125

Yeah.

00:30:41,125 –> 00:30:45,416

So that, you know, Max Schreck and it was early on,

00:30:45,416 –> 00:30:48,416

you know, silent films, but his physical,

00:30:49,000 –> 00:30:53,041

the stiffness, you know, the way he turned and was very erect

00:30:53,041 –> 00:30:56,166

and everything was very deliberate, fantastic.

00:30:56,166 –> 00:31:00,083

You know, just a good use of,

like a, like a dead body,

00:31:00,083 –> 00:31:04,208

you know, he’s not just running around like, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

00:31:04,708 –> 00:31:06,041

I don’t know. Fairbanks.

00:31:06,041 –> 00:31:07,416

Anyway, he’s not running around like that.

00:31:07,416 –> 00:31:08,666

He’s just very stiff.

00:31:08,666 –> 00:31:11,583

And he really sets the tone for this.

00:31:11,583 –> 00:31:13,000

But it wasn’t really.

00:31:13,000 –> 00:31:17,875

I mean, Dracula was a little stiffer in 32, you know, with the come here.

00:31:17,875 –> 00:31:20,166

The downward hand and the upward hand.

00:31:20,166 –> 00:31:21,666

That was his two moves. You know, it’s.

00:31:21,666 –> 00:31:26,291

Very like regal, very aristocratic.

00:31:26,666 –> 00:31:27,208

Yeah.

00:31:27,208 –> 00:31:30,208

But I’m talking about just some physical movements, you know,

00:31:30,250 –> 00:31:31,750

you know, great arm swings.

00:31:31,750 –> 00:31:33,875

You know, it was very common.

00:31:33,875 –> 00:31:35,791

Is. Yeah.

00:31:35,791 –> 00:31:39,625

So was this movie before or after Doctor Caligari?

00:31:41,125 –> 00:31:44,000

I think Caligari was in the teens, right?

00:31:44,000 –> 00:31:45,208

look that up real quick.

00:31:45,208 –> 00:31:46,500

Yeah.

00:31:46,500 –> 00:31:50,000

1920 so Caligari is right,

00:31:50,791 –> 00:31:53,791

just like before that also German,

00:31:54,750 –> 00:31:55,125

right?

00:31:55,125 –> 00:31:57,583

So, Catherine, what do you have?

00:31:57,583 –> 00:31:59,541

have any,

00:31:59,541 –> 00:32:02,541

final thoughts or you have more that you want to go over on your sheet?

00:32:03,791 –> 00:32:08,125

I think it’s like the general gist of what I was getting at.

00:32:08,125 –> 00:32:09,000

I mean.

00:32:09,000 –> 00:32:13,500

Well, it’s just it’s interesting that both of these things

00:32:13,500 –> 00:32:17,541

obviously Dracula was is hugely influential.

00:32:17,541 –> 00:32:22,458

It is still very much a part of the culture.

00:32:22,458 –> 00:32:25,416

You say Dracula,

everybody knows what you’re talking about.

00:32:25,416 –> 00:32:26,083

You know what I mean?

00:32:26,083 –> 00:32:29,083

It’s become one of those things where it’s like Band-Aid.

00:32:29,208 –> 00:32:30,750

It’s the brand,

00:32:30,750 –> 00:32:35,041

but it means all of the generic things till you can say, oh, Dracula.

00:32:35,333 –> 00:32:37,583

And people know what you mean.

00:32:38,750 –> 00:32:39,541

You know what I mean?

00:32:39,541 –> 00:32:44,375

But it’s so interesting that this German film,

00:32:45,208 –> 00:32:49,291

German silent film that could have been lost to history,

00:32:49,291 –> 00:32:53,708

has also managed to carve out a space in our,

00:32:54,333 –> 00:32:57,125

again, our cultural zeitgeist.

00:32:57,125 –> 00:32:59,083

Why is this become so important?

00:32:59,083 –> 00:33:02,083

And I think, honestly,

it’s the Streisand effect.

00:33:02,208 –> 00:33:06,166

Wanting to snuff it out made it that much more.

00:33:06,625 –> 00:33:08,041

You know, that’s it.

00:33:08,041 –> 00:33:10,291

I go for the folklore

00:33:10,291 –> 00:33:12,125

ritual of inversion.

00:33:12,125 –> 00:33:14,333

You know, vampires bit in three days.

00:33:14,333 –> 00:33:17,916

They they’re they raise and become dead as an inverse to Jesus,

00:33:17,916 –> 00:33:21,291

who was killed and raised and came back alive three days later.

00:33:21,791 –> 00:33:24,458

So I think it’s a very familiar story.

00:33:24,458 –> 00:33:27,875

If you look at the folklore, structural elements of it,

00:33:28,375 –> 00:33:31,416

do you know that I don’t know if he just came up, but,

00:33:31,416 –> 00:33:34,416

Stoker had never been to these location.

00:33:34,458 –> 00:33:37,375

He wrote all although he wrote all the descriptions

00:33:37,375 –> 00:33:40,375

from, like, travel books and stuff. Oh.

00:33:40,541 –> 00:33:43,750

I mean,

those were pretty popular people, really.

00:33:43,750 –> 00:33:47,041

I mean, ever since people started

00:33:47,375 –> 00:33:50,708

leaving Europe and exploring other places,

00:33:51,375 –> 00:33:55,500

traveled, looked like narratives were very, very popular.

00:33:55,500 –> 00:33:58,166

So that is interesting.

00:33:58,166 –> 00:33:58,416

Okay.

00:33:58,416 –> 00:34:00,958

So really, I’m going to put you on the spot right now.

00:34:00,958 –> 00:34:05,541

top three vampire movies or films ever.

00:34:06,500 –> 00:34:08,458

Oh, I mean, obviously The Lost Boys

00:34:08,458 –> 00:34:11,916

(1987)number one, bar none, bar none.

00:34:12,500 –> 00:34:15,500

honestly, I got to go OG Dracula (1932).

00:34:15,500 –> 00:34:17,333

That’s number two.

00:34:17,333 –> 00:34:19,958

Number three.

00:34:19,958 –> 00:34:20,333

Twilight.

00:34:20,333 –> 00:34:21,958

Don’t hate me.

00:34:21,958 –> 00:34:24,958

What, is that a joke?

00:34:25,250 –> 00:34:27,333

Yeah. No, I couldn’t think of a number three. I have no idea.

00:34:27,333 –> 00:34:33,291

Okay, I would for I would probably put, The Lost Boys (1987) is great.

00:34:33,291 –> 00:34:35,166

That’s a strong contender for number one.

00:34:35,166 –> 00:34:35,875

The Lost Boys.

00:34:35,875 –> 00:34:39,458

I’d really like Dracula’s Daughter (1936).

00:34:40,916 –> 00:34:43,041

And then I like the classic Dracula (1932).

00:34:43,041 –> 00:34:43,625

Yeah.

00:34:43,625 –> 00:34:48,291

You know, but Nosferatu (1922), Interview With a Vampire (1994).

00:34:48,291 –> 00:34:51,541

I haven’t seen the new one, but there is a new one coming with a TV show.

00:34:51,541 –> 00:34:53,375

There’s a TV show.

00:34:53,375 –> 00:34:56,083

It’s a lot longer form.

00:34:56,083 –> 00:34:58,208

Yeah, I read the book I did.

00:34:58,208 –> 00:35:01,208

I read the first three books of that series.

00:35:01,666 –> 00:35:04,666

broke down on the third one when they made it an Egyptian curse.

00:35:05,458 –> 00:35:06,291

Yeah. There’s,

00:35:07,583 –> 00:35:10,166

the whole series is very odd.

00:35:10,166 –> 00:35:13,416

I feel like I’ve read a lot more vampire stuff

00:35:13,416 –> 00:35:17,500

than I’ve watched vampire stuff I can’t really even think of.

00:35:17,500 –> 00:35:21,833

Like too many other vampire movies that I’ve seen.

00:35:22,208 –> 00:35:26,916

I like really,

I, I can’t even think of like any other.

00:35:26,916 –> 00:35:31,208

I mean, the only other ones I can think of are, Fright Night (1985) Yeah.

00:35:31,208 –> 00:35:32,375

I guess Fright Night.

00:35:32,375 –> 00:35:34,458

Which is a really good one too.

00:35:34,458 –> 00:35:36,500

That is a fun one.

00:35:36,500 –> 00:35:39,375

well, Katherine, thank you for coming on today.

00:35:39,375 –> 00:35:40,416

I really appreciate it.

00:35:40,416 –> 00:35:43,958

And I appreciate the information Yeah, what you put into it.

00:35:43,958 –> 00:35:46,958

And, I’ll talk to you very soon.

00:35:46,958 –> 00:35:49,125

Okay. Thanks for having me.

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