Film Atlas (Ukraine): The Man with a Movie Camera

Country: Ukraine

Title: The Man with a Movie Camera / Chelovek s Kinoapparatom (1929)

In many ways the title couldn’t be plainer: this is the work of a man with a camera, nothing more. And it’s far more camera than man. It isn’t a story. It isn’t a character study. The film is a catalogue of footage shot largely in Odessa by VUFKU (a Ukranian film studio then part of the Soviet Union) but beyond that it defies genre and classification. It begins with a trick photography scene of a tiny cameraman climbing on top of a gargantuan camera. It will bookend with a similar shot of a giant cameraman filming over a dwarfed city. 

After a series of onscreen warnings the cameraman sets out, running loose in Soviet metropolises capturing images of traffic and trains, workers and wakers, births and beaches, mensch and machines, sports and spectacles all cut into delirious montages, spiraling arcs, canted angles and layered double exposures. Images stop, speed up, slow down, run backwards or, precociously experimenting with stop motion, to move by themselves. A famous sequence juxtaposes a woman rubbing sleep from her eyes with window blinds opening and a camera lens focusing. No deeper meaning is needed than the appreciation of parallels, movements and masses. Throughout it all we not only see what the camera captures, but also how. The cameraman, lying on his back as a cart goes over or teetering on the rear of a moving vehicle, is not a aloof observer but a joyful participant.

The real Man with a Movie Camera is director Dziga Vertov. The woman with the editor’s scissors is his wife Elizaveta Svilova. The two assembled one of the most iconic experimental films ever made: a celebration of a city, a people, an era and, most of all, a technology that was already shaping contemporary culture. The wealth of inventive techniques that Vertov employs remains impressive today and his genius for combining them and applying them for surrealistic, impressionistic, ironic or visceral effects makes for a giddy rather than gimmicky experience. In the years since its release the film has transcended the prescripts of Soviet propaganda better than even the masterpieces of Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzhenko (a Ukranian whose poetic odes to the plight of peasants were close runners-up for this list) and still holds the power to invigorate, astound, amuse and confuse.

My Favorites:

Man with a Movie Camera

Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors
The Tribe (2014)

The Eve Of Ivan Kupalo

Earth (1930)

Major Directors:
Alexander Dovzhenko, Yuri Ilyenko

Film Atlas (Germany): Metropolis

Country: Germany

Film: Metropolis (1927)

Freder is the idealistic son of Joh Fredersen, tyrannical master of Metropolis, a futuristic city of lofty skyscrapers connected by elevated trains. But it harbors an unpleasant secret:  Metropolis is built and powered by a city beneath the city, where enslaved masses toil away under brutally hazardous conditions in cavernous mechanical dens. One day while Freder is frolicking in his garden paradise, he spies Maria, a woman from the world below, who is treating children to an unauthorized field trip. He is smitten, but after pursuing her down the elevator shafts he witnesses an explosion and experiences a nightmare vision of the working class as human sacrifices. He fails to convince his father to alleviate their burden and so returns, swapping places with a hapless drone, to seek his beloved. He infiltrates an underground church where he hears Maria preaching the parable of the Tower of Babylon and praying for a messiah-like 'heart' who will serve to mediate between the 'head' (the masters) and the 'hand' (the workers) in time to avert an approaching apocalyptic class war.

Joh catches a whiff of these revolutionary rumors and consults former-romantic-rival-turned-mad-scientist Rotwang. The latter has recently completed a robot to replace Hel, Joh's late wife and Rotwang's stolen love. Joh and Rotwang also secretly witness Maria's Babylon sermon and scheme to manipulate events to their own ends. Joh demands Rotwang transform the robot into Maria's likeness so that she can sow confusion, lust and violence as a pretext for reciprocal genocide, but the vengeful Rotwang plans to double-cross Joh and destroy him, his son and the whole city using his unholy creation. Disasters ensue, with Freder and Maria uniting to right the wrongs of the previous generation.

Light-years ahead of its time, Fritz Lang's titanic Metropolis is possibly the defining film of the silent era, a jaw-dropping science-fiction dystopia that both codified the genre and stood as its high-water mark for decades to come. Fusing classical, futurism and art deco production designs with groundbreaking special effects courtesy of the brilliant Eugen Schufftan, Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou  meticulously yet luxuriantly constructed an entire civilization from scratch. The stunning results of their imagination, innovation and dedication still hold up to this day: everything from the details of costume and carpet to the spectacles of flood and fire. Lang, given an unprecedented budget, experimented to a degree his previous epics had not allowed and developed a bold, futuristic aesthetic designed around exquisitely overlaid multiple exposures, spinning kaleidoscopic lenses and powerful architectural compositions along crisscrossing triumphant angles. If anything is susceptible to accusations of datedness it would be the symbolism-heavy Biblical parallels (I'm unfazed by the film's ethical and economic simplifications) and the overly-expansive jerky performances (interestingly, the talented Brigitte Helm portrays the robot, in its earliest cinematic appearance, as contrastingly sinuous), but it all fits into the remarkably cohesive vision of an imbalanced world in crisis. It was both apropos of the Weimar Republic's recent past and prophetic of its coming war.

Metropolis was extensively cut immediately after its Berlin premier and over the years various attempts were made to find and restore the lost footage. However, it was not until 2008 that a tenacious archivist unearthed decaying reels stored in Buenos Aires that a nearly complete version (148 minutes, 25 longer than previous) could be made available. So even if you've seen Metropolis before then, it's worth checking out again!

My Favorites:

Metropolis (1927)

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

M (1931)

The Lives of Others

Run, Lola, Run

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler
Stations of the Cross

Wings of Desire

The Boat / Das Boot

Veronica Voss

Spies (1928)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Heart of Glass

Nosferatu (1922)

The Joyless Street

Liebelei (1933)

Marianne and Juliane

The Marriage of Maria Braun

The Love of Jeanne Ney

The American Friend

The Tin Drum

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

Madchen in Uniform

The Oyster Princess

The Diary of a Lost Girl

Die Nibelungen

The Wondeful Lies of Nina Petrovna

The Threepenny Opera (1931)

Pandora’s Box

Faust (1926)

Lessons of Darkness

The Marquise of O

Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis

Goodbye, Lenin!

The Last Laugh (1924)

Downfall

The Lost Honor of Katerina Blum

Alice in the Cities

The Doll (1919)

Major Directors:
Werner Rainer Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Alexander Kluge, Fritz Lang, Paul Leni, F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, Wolfgang Petersen, Edgar Reitz, Volker Schlondorff, Tom Tykwer, Wim Wenders

Review of The Lost World (1925)

When I was young I tried reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” (1912), about the discovery of an Amazon region where dinosaur still reign, and I don’t think I ever finished it. I had much better luck with Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, which I sometimes read aloud to my brother as a form of speech therapy (sadly, I never acquired a British accent). But back in the turn of the century everyone and their literary agent, from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Henry Rider Haggard, was trying to get a lost world story to market.

Now nearly 100 years later, the subgenre is making a bit of a comeback, albeit with far less serious treatments. “Land of the Lost” (2009), the latest in the uninspired “Will Ferrell plays the fool” franchise appears to have already sealed in its fate as an artistic and financial disaster. What that means for the knock-off created by The Asylum, “The Land That Time Forgot” (2009), which comes out next month is easy to guess. The Asylum, an unscrupulous studio that makes no-budget films that ride on the coattails of blockbusters with similar titles(amongst them “The Transmorphers,” “The Day the Earth Stopped” and “The Da Vinci Treasure”), deserves a post of their own, but it will have to wait.

The subgenre’s only real success since “Jurassic Park” (1993) may be Pixar’s delightfully self-aware “Up,” which has the sideways wisdom to update The Lost World while dropping the dinosaur angle at the crux of the original. It manages to be satiric and yet still whimsical, heartfelt and original. Amongst the clever nods to Doyle’s story in “Up” is an image of ‘Paradise Falls,’ a sheer Venezuelan plateau taken right out of the 1925 adaptation of “The Lost World.” It’s that film, which might be considered the grandfather of lost world cinema that I’m going to review today.

“The Lost World” (1925) begins with journalist Edward Malone being told by his girlfriend that she won’t marry him unless he proves his manliness by facing death. Looking for a dangerous assignment, he agrees to sneak into a conference by the irascible Professor Challenger, a scientist whose reputation lies in tatters after championing the lost journals of Maple White, which depict dinosaurs on an obscure South American tepui. Challenger becomes the laughing stock of London high society, but manages to mount an expedition with Malone, big-game hunter Sir John Raxton and White’s beautiful daughter Paula.

It doesn’t take them long to reach the plateau and they’re soon sighting more dinos than they know what to do with. After crossing unto the plateau by felling a tree over a vast chasm, a brontosaurus destroys their makeshift bridge and leaves them stranded. The scientific inquiry and search-and-rescue mission quickly become secondary issues compared to survival and escape.

Director Harry Hoyt let his special effects team go wild, headed up by Willis O’Brien of later “King Kong” (1933) fame. In the fully restored version of the film his stop-motion battles between various dinosaur combinations threaten to overwhelm the rest of the story. Most of the action with the giant reptiles has little to do with the human characters, who mostly stand by and share our rapt attention rather than running for cover.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s primary villains, a race of violent ape-men, have been consolidated into a single character. This ape-man, who hasn’t any backstory, motive or means of expression, is incongruously bent on murdering the rescue party. Lacking higher cognition or anything to rival the firepower that Raxton possesses, he’s something of an anticlimactic pushover when compared to the potential killing-power of the dinosaurs. The result is that there isn’t much tension or oppositional force to drive the film until the film’s memorable last act, in which Prof. Challenger’s pet specimen breaks free and rampages through London. The idea was so much better than the novel’s ending that it was also tacked onto the adaptation of Michael Crichton’s “The Lost World” in 1997.

Hoyt’s handling of his actors is not nearly as bad as I was expecting for a special-effects driven silent-era film. Lloyd Hughes is fine, if forgettable, as the gung-ho handsome lead and his biggest fault may be that he’s chained to such a predictable character arc that includes an inevitable romance with Bessie Love’s Paula White. Bessie Love makes the best of her role considering that she has no qualifications for being on the trip and serves little purpose but to provide a love interest, a duty made difficult considering that she’s also required to be constantly screaming with fear and crying over the death of her father.

The minor roles are much more interesting. Professor Challenger is no fatherly academic, but the type of guy who chops his own firewood and can handle himself in a fight. His performance is proud, angry and determined, but just short of hacky mad-scientist overtones. Sir. John Raxton is surprisingly sympathetic as the uptight British hunter who shows a good deal of quiet humility and restraint as he comes to accept that Paula prefers Edward. He gets to have a subtle performance amidst all the huff and roaring. There’s also Jocko, an ingenious monkey who actually plays into the plot somewhat cleverly. I also liked that Arthur Conan Doyle has a cameo at the beginning, where he introduces the film.

“The Lost World” may stray into cheesiness at times, but it’s really never bad (well, excepting scenes involving the blackface natives) and is overall a highly entertaining treat for fans of old-timey adventure yarns. Despite the excellent job restoring the film, there were still cuts that made me think there was still footage missing and pieces mismatched and that may explain why the action isn’t as sustained and smooth as it could have been. If you can live with that, and appreciate the fact that the stop-motion and live-action events are necessarily a bit detached from each other, you’ll enjoy the film’s charm and gusto.

Walrus Rating: 7.0

Iceberg Arena: Dogfight

In the years between WWI and WWII, public interest in aviation was at its peak. Incorporating spectacular areal photography into an epic celebration of WWI pilots was a surefire recipe for box-office success. The idea gave birth to two classic aerial war films: the first Oscar-winning film and only silent winner, “Wings,” (1927) and the notorious Howard Hughes pet project “Hell’s Angels” (1930).

In the prologue of “Wings,” Jack builds a car, dubbed “The Shooting Star,” with his tomboyish neighbor Mary Preston (Clara Bow), completely oblivious to her affection. Instead, he pursues the much-in-demand Sylvia, unaware that his rich-kid rival David is her real hubby. Awkwardness persists when America joins the war and Jack accidently takes a memento that Sylvia intended for David. Boot camp soon makes best friends out of the former nemeses and they go on to be wingmen in a series of major battles. Jack eventually runs into Mary while he is on leave in Paris, but he’s too drunk to recognize her. The bizarre comedic sequence is a bit out of place, involving animated bubbles (a hallucination which Jack is fixated upon), brief nudity and Mary getting discharged. Called back to duty, Jack shoots down several key dirigibles, but is devastated when David crashes behind enemy lines.

“Hell’s Angels” concerns Roy and Monte Rutledge, two British brothers with opposite personalities. Roy is good-natured and honorable, but terribly naïve and hopelessly in love with Helen (Jean Harlow), who is every bit the “wrong type of woman.” Monte is a fast-living playboy whose cowardice is foreshadowed when he slips out of a duel, leaving his brother to fight in his stead. When WWI breaks out, they become pilots (Roy enthusiastically volunteers, Monte is conned with hilarious ease by a recruiter) and are forced to fight, and unknowingly kill, their former German pal Karl. A nerve-racking, but victorious, campaign culminates in a daring bomb run in a restored German aircraft. The brothers are captured and Roy must make a difficult decision when Monte’s fear finally gets the best of him.

Both films were lavish production, with astounding airborne dogfights, more than two hours of footage and bills running past $2 million (“Hell’s Angels” cost an exorbitant $4 million). “Wings,” though silent, included plenty of innovative camerawork and special effects that made planes appear to burn and smoke as they were shot down. “Hell’s Angels” was reshot halfway through production to include sound (some intertitles remain) and has several scenes in color (using a briefly-vogue dual-color method), including a dazzling blimp crash. Despite their costs, both films made substantial profits.

In addition to their technical ambitions, they share similar plot devices as well. Both films feature a love triangle of two pilots (friends in “Wings,” brothers in “Hell’s Angels”) interested in the same woman. Despite getting less screen-time than the men, an actress holds top-billing in each: first-timer Jean Harlow in “Hell’s Angels” and “It girl” Clara Bow in “Wings.” Both include a “not all Germans are evil” character that aids the Allies despite his nationality. In “Wings” it is a bumbling pilot-turned-mechanic with an American flag tattoo, while in “Hell’s Angels” it is a former classmate of the brothers who gets conscripted into the German Luftwaffe, but misdirects a London bombing to splash harmlessly into a rural lake.

[Partial SPOILER paragraph] There are also some odd coincidences between the two conclusions. Both finales involve flying enemy planes. A main character in each film gets dangerously drunk the night before a final bombing mission and after its success both central protagonists kill their comrade, although under widely different circumstances.

Of the two, “Wings” is probably the worse off for propaganda, presenting the popular all-encompassing image of the Allies pulling together for a common cause be they men or women, wealthy or working class, American or British, etc., etc. All the gung-ho uniform optimism feels awfully one-dimensional, and while it is present in much of “Hell’s Angels,” too, Monte’s less admirable portrayal of a soldier provides a more probing balance of human weaknesses and eroded morale.

“Hell’s Angels” reaches an ideological low (not without its emotional punch) during a scene depicting a German officer ordering his men to jump from a blimp to lighten its load, a command that they unquestioningly obey. Compared to the gentlemanly German ace in “Wings” who risk AA fire to convey a letter to his American counterparts, the villains in “Hell’s Angels” are downright textbook prototypes for the “ve ‘ave veys of making you talk” Nazis from the next generation of war films.

As “love and war” adventures, both of these films are fairly entertaining. The time-worn story unfolds in a manner that must have been as predictable in the Jazz Age as they are now, but the producers clearly relied on the aviation dressing to reinvigorate the routine. The acting is mediocre at best, doggedly fulfilling the necessary formulas while taking backstage to the sweeping action and general heroism.

Yet despite bearing the same flying love triangle mantle, I wouldn’t dismiss these as the silent-film era equivalents of “Pearl Harbor” (2001), nor would I say that their popular acclaim is purely due to patriotic fervor. These early films are highly effective at executing efficient thrills, sometimes ejecting emotional complexity in favor of blazing broad streaks across the sky, but generally landing safely in the bounds of good taste and rousing entertainment. They lack much historical detail, but it helps make historical accuracy a fairly moot point. (Why do filmmakers seem to care more about historical detail the further they get from the event?) As for sincerity, this is no “All Quiet on the Western Front,” but it has plenty of edge over the aforementioned Bruckheimer/Bay collaboration.

Of course, where “Wings” and “Hell’s Angels” really excel is in the production values and presentation. Both include riveting dogfight sequences with footage that balances stunning aerial photography with high-intensity close-ups in the cramped cockpits. The use of cumulous clouds for cover and context provides literal atmosphere and a sense of the majesty, scope and speed of the combat. The highlight of “Hell’s Angles,” a nighttime raid on an escorted bomber blimp almost entirely engulfed in clouds, is probably the best in either film. The imprecise color tinting only adds to the impression of a feverish celestial clash.

On the ground, “Wings” is far the superior filmmaking showcase. Director William Wellman performs a variety of unusual camera gimmicks, including a memorable sequence on a swing and a montage of a gunner bunker getting crushed, along with the camera, by a tank. Ample use of dolly and crane shots help keep the human interest portions from feeling like dry insulation packed between the airborne acrobatics, an occasional complaint with “Hell’s Angels.” Even the partially-animated “bubble” scene, a drunken slapstick sequence of the type I normally groan about, is strangely fascinating in its misconceived ingenuity.

Though neither of these movies is really my type of war movie – I prefer psychologically fraught, grim and gritty anti-war films – they are great examples of packaging mass entertainment and unabashed military propaganda in a single appealing package. I had enough fun simply taking them for what they are that I’ll refrain from conducting a Marxist analysis of their implicit value systems and manipulative societal self-reinforcement. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed them both (I may be biased by working in the aviation industry), but prefer “Wings” for its superior directing over the better character arcs in “Hell’s Angels.”

Winner: Wings

Iceberg Arena: Soviet Sci-fi Showdown

The Cold War produced some of the best science-fiction ever made, delightfully wallowing in paranoia, technological innovation and wild speculation on how rival ideologies might lead to paradise or dystopia. There is so much room to wax analytic about the way culture and politics trickled into American science fiction cinema, but that’s not today’s focus. This Iceberg Arena comes from the other side of the iron curtain, and compares three cult classics of soviet sci-fi: “Aelita: Queen of Mars,” “Solaris” and “Kin-Dza-Dza.”

Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)

This silent sci-fi epic, often labeled the first feature-length treatment of space exploration, preceded Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” (1927) by three years, but remains relatively hidden by the latter film’s shadow. The movie follows Los, a scientist who builds a rocket and flies to Mars. Meanwhile, Aelita has already fallen in love with him via telescope voyeurism (pioneering the classic device of 80’s teen comedies) and the two conspire to lead a worker’s revolution on Mars. However, Aelita *cough*Lenin*cough* betrays her collaborators and makes a bid for dictatorship.

“Aelita” doesn’t particularly stand up modern science or contemporary cinema, but one can still squeeze plenty of entertainment value from the celluloid. The overt propaganda and earnest pseudo-science make the film funny enough to serve as B-movie kitsch. The constructivist sets are impractical art deco indulgences filled with swooping curves and oblique angles and only barely upstaged by the insanely inspired costumes (check out Aelita’s “crown” in the poster art above for the tiniest taste). The sweeping scope, high budget and imaginative vision even make the second half of the film passable as vintage adventure fodder.

The film was a popular success in its day. Director Yakov Protazanov enjoyed the type of mass appeal never really achieved by the more intellectually rigorous Eisenstein and Pudovkin, though history has since reversed their fame. Today, it has a nostalgia value that will endear it to fans of “Flash Gordon,” but it lacks the weight and nuance to stave off obsolescence.

Oh, and like all Soviet films, it is too slow and too long.

Solaris (1975)

Andrei Tarkovsky adapted Stanislaw Lem’s celebrated novel into one of his best known and highest regarded films. It features Kris Kelvin, a psychologists assigned to evaluate the situation on a space-station orbiting the liquid planet Solaris. He finds the spaceport to be in a state of growing disrepair, with the skeleton crew acting reclusive and evasive. Kris soon learns the reason when he wakes up next to his wife, a woman who committed suicide nearly a decade earlier. More than an apparition, the creature appears to be some misguided attempt by the planet to communicate with his mind. Kris struggles feebly to come to grips with a new reality for which humanity is utterly unprepared.

Tarkovsky’s film was one of the first to link the unfathomable mysteries of space with those in the human mind. His film slow-brews a cerebral concoction of emotional intimacy and identity with the frightening potentials of science and technology. The film is equally fascinating rather the viewer is trying to read Kris’s inscrutable face or attempting to unravel the mystery of Solaris’s abstract sentience. Few films before or since have so devastatingly tapped into our fear of the unknown.

However, like all Soviet films, it is too slow and too long (even compared to the other films in this Iceberg Arena). The extended prologue and the ending twist are both muddled meditations that stretch out intolerably. Fans of the director’s work should have very little problem, since his pacing is no slower than usual, but newcomers should consider themselves warned. In many ways, Soderbergh’s underrated remake is a more cohesive, balanced and digestible work. Personally, I prefer Tarkovsky’s other cult sci-fi film, “Stalker” (1975), but I chose not to include it in this contest because it would have made the competition unfair.

Kin-Dza-Dza (1986)

“Kin-Dza-Dza” is a cult film that mixes absurdist and satiric comedy with harsh-environment themed science-fiction. A construction foreman (Vladimir) is on his way to buy noodles for dinner when he is stopped by a college student (Gedevan) who is seeking help for a raving hobo. The tramp claims to be an interstellar traveler trying to use a small piece of junk to teleport to his homeworld. While condescendingly playing along, the two terrestrials find themselves transported to the desert wasteland planet of Pluk.

Playing like a Soviet “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (closer to the low-fi charm of the book, not the glossy movie), the film has fun jerking its fish-out-of-water protagonists through a series of weird adventures. Much of the humor comes from the oddly-conceived alien society found on Pluk: the indigenous race of mercenary telepaths has a ridiculously strict class structure and, fortunately for the humans, a currency based around matchsticks. They have about a dozen native words (including one for nose-bells), but their language mostly consists of “koo” which tends to serve all purposes.

The unique sense of oddball humor is probably more interesting for most viewers than the actual genre trappings and will make or break the experience. Director Georgi Daneliya borrows somewhat haphazardly from any sci-fi concept that crosses his mind and creates a messy, low-continuity plot that moves in unpredictable bursts, but manages to maintain a consistent voice and goofy appeal.

The film has never been released in the US and there are no plans to do so, perhaps because the film, like all Soviet films, it is too slow and too long. A very decent fansub can be found on Google video here.

Winner: Solaris

“Solaris,” along with its American equivalent, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” are cerebral exercises that exceed their literary antecedents, defying the maxim that “the book is always better.” “2001” makes a decent litmus test for whether you will like the Soviet classic and should give you a sense of its art-house tone.

Ponderous intellectual and emotional studies are, I reluctantly acknowledge, not for all tastes. If you tend to like your science-fiction distilled into unpretentious old-school adventures, go with “Aelita.” If you’re the type who’d have more fun mocking “Dune” than analyzing its literary and scientific qualities, than try out “Kin-Dza-Dza.”

Vampire Week Part 7

Rank: 5
Title: Martin
Director: George A. Romero
Country: USA
Year: 1977
Review:
See full review here.

Rank: 4
Title: Blade
Director: Stephen Norrington

Country: USA

Year: 1998
Review:
Wesley Snipes had been acting for more than a decade and had even built a slight reputation as a trained martial arts action hero, but it wasn’t until “Blade” (1998) that he became a household name. Adapted from the comic by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, “Blade” is one of the best examples of pure-action vampire filmmaking.

The central character’s history as a dhampir (half-vampire/half-human) daywalker (immunity to UV) is setup in the prologue and positions him as an ideal vampire hunter. His mixture of martial arts (hand-to-hand and armed with the inevitable blade) and Woo-style bullet ballet certainly helps, too. Wesley Snipe’s icy-cool urban hunter overturned the ignominy of dubious blaxploitation crossovers like “Blacula” (1972) and developed a popular African American action hero unlike any seen before (outside the original comic). His well-armed, all-black costumes complete with hip sunglasses modernized the tradition of dark antiheroes and served as an influence for such films as “The Matrix.”

Blade has his work cut out for him exterminating a city-wide infestation of vampires who significantly influence the political and economic spheres from behind the curtain. The so called “Shadow Council” of elite vampire rulers is teetering on the brink of civil war. Ambitious “youngster” Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff, channeling Kiefer Sutherland from “The Lost Boys”) wishes to explicitly enslave the human race, while the incumbent vampire ruler Elder Dragonetti (Udo Kier) preaches relative restraint. Blade has allies in the form of trusted, crusty weapons expert Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) and the requisite romantic interest, Doctor Karen Jenson (N'Bushe Wright). Jenson is working on a cure for vampirism and has a bite mark to spur her efforts. Meanwhile Blade sets about making the nighttime safe for human muggers and rapists once again.

Director Stephen Norrington knows how ratchet up the coolness, creating a chilling mirrorworld somewhere between a gothic nightmare and a noir dystopia. The film’s second scene (one of the best), sets the tone by following a bewildered hipster into a secret nightclub that raves inside an industrial meat locker. It all seems like a grand party until the sprinkler system starts spraying animal blood and the dancers turn into vampires. Blade busts in and from there on out, the scene is all intense action. The meticulous sense of place, riveting combat and strong central lead carry the film through later scenes that are a little shaky (including a so-so final battle) and lift the narrative over occasional plot holes.

Followed by two sequels that drop to decent and then to bad.

Rank: 3
Title: Mr. Vampire
Director: Ricky Lau

Country: Hong Kong

Year: 1986
Review:
“Mr. Vampire” is considered the seminal example of the “hopping vampire” cycle in Chinese cinema, and it popularized and proliferated Hong Kong action-horror in general. The story rests on the shoulders of two bumbling underlings (a favorite archetype of the nation’s popular cinema) who happen to be acolytes at a Taoist temple. Their elderly master is Kou, a priest blessed with an abundance of mystic trivia, as well as martial art skills. This comes in handy when cheapskate burials result in a wave of angry undead corpses, led by a vampire and joined by a sexy evil spirit with supernatural powers of her own.

Ricky Lau’s refreshing blend of horror, comedy and martial arts is a surefire recipe for mirth-muffins. The fast-paced tale is packed with expert fight sequences and slapstick humor (both showing his skill at split-second timing), always indulging in low-brow revelry, and yet never stooping so low that it sacrifices the characters or narrative. The special effects are so cheese-tastic that they are sure to please 80’s-philes, while the use of canted camera shots, extreme angles and plenty of fog sells the over-the-top style by backing it with genuine talent.

“Mr. Vampire” spawned plenty of sequels and dozens of imitators, including the superior, though sadly vampire-less, “Chinese Ghost Story.” The unusual depiction of hopping vampires is a blend of Western and Buddhist mythologies: in Chinese lore, the dissatisfied dead are possessed by their earth-trapped souls and search for living flesh. Unlike in the Western mythology, they still suffer the indignities of rigor mortis (hence the stiffness and the need to hop without bending the knees). They can even mold and rot! Though not actually the first of the subgenre (the inferior “Encounters of the Spooky Kind” came out in 1981), it is probably the best.

Rank: 2
Title: Nosferatu, Symphony of the Night
Director: F.W. Murnau
Country: Germany
Year: 1922
Review:
Despite being one of, the earliest versions of the Dracula legend, “Nosferatu” remains one of the subgenre’s pinnacles, enduring as a paragon of German Expressionism. Since the production company refused to acquire the rights for the source novel, the screenwriters were forced to get a bit creative with the names and the finer points of the plot. However, the changes work to the picture’s benefit, scrapping the cumbersome epistolary structure, streamlining the cast of characters and writing a superior (and thematically more resonant) ending.

The names vary based on the version, but generally Thomas Hutter is the name of the protagonist, a real estate agent who is helping the creepy Count Orlok move to London. After a sea voyage, an encounter with the superstitious locals and a ride aboard a phantom carriage (that races with impossible speed), Hutter finds himself at Orlok’s castle. There the Count becomes obsessed by a picture of Hutter’s fiancée, and after several attempts to drain the man’s life fluids, he levitates his coffins into a wagon then sets sail for Great Britain. Hutter flees the premises, but loses time recovering in a hospital. Orlok arrives on an empty death barge. His coffins disgorge an army of rats and the Black plague sweeps the city, with victims exhibiting a pair of curious neck marks. Hutter races home, but the only path to salvation bears a bitter toll.

Murnau’s assured direction creates a vividly twisted and macabre environment of utter unnatural terror. The careful choice of mise-en-scene, the fast, harsh editing and the then-impressive special effects make for a mesmerizing vision of gothic malevolence. The tinted versions are particularly effective, but Murnau’s lighting and cinematography is still grippingly in pure black and whites since he choreographs every shadow like other directors would dancers.

Much of the credit also goes to Max Schreck, who gives (to my mind) the definitive vampire performance (certainly the best of the silent era). With his long fingernails, rat-like features and bent spine, his physical appearance instills fear, disgust and pity. His stiff, gangly and insidious movements derives an audience reaction with every gesture; every twitch. The Renfield character is also quite disturbing, effected with all the laughing, hopping and bug-eating that only Expressionism can deliver with such relish.

Rank: 1
Title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Director: Jaromil Jireš
Country: Czech Republic

Year: 1970
Review:
Based on the 1935 romantic-surrealist novel of the same title by Czech author Vítězslav Nezval, Jires’s allegorical film shows an immediate intention to plunge deep into the subconscious roots of the vampire mythology. The film follows Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová), a young girl on the cusp of sexual awakening. She is caught somewhere between the naïve fairy tales of childhood and the unsettling changes of maturity while beset by incestuous vampire phantasms.

Though Valerie’s grandmother and a priest who claims to be her father both make oblique seductions, their motives (lust, blood-thirst, draining-youth, repression, etc.) remain unclear. The girl expresses more curiosity and whimsy than fear and, when her own actions fail to keep her safe, resorts to her cousin and a pair of magical earrings. A chain of shifting identities, surreal images and mystical adventures finally culminates in a transcendent spring-rites picnic.

Visually the film upturns every vampire film convention, using soft focus and an abundance of shimmering light to paint an impressionistic dreamscape of pure whites and colorful pastels. The sets cast an ethereal mood characterized by gentle breezes blowing through cobwebs and curtains, yet remain haunted by a disturbing sexual tension. That neither Jireš nor Valerie seems particularly upset by the oddity and danger in the air forces the audience to view the events as something more than horror and the protagonist as no mere victim.

The experimental cinematography and often surprising camera positions are complimented by the keen sound design. The repetition of signature noises (like the gentle ring of bells when Valerie’s earrings work their magic) and renaissance folk music creates added connotations and connections, ultimately weaving a spell over the audience and seducing them into its otherworldly charm. The film pays tribute to our exhilarating, frightful, inevitable passage into adulthood with the warmth and imagination of a child.

Fans of traditional horror, particularly the blood and guts variety, may have trouble getting into “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.” For me it remains a personal favorite and a fitting way to end Film Walrus’s week of vampires.