OPINION: Van Helsing Has Outlived His Usefulness

 

By Joe Gibson

 

While I like the original book and enjoy most adaptations, there are some things that annoy me about how the franchise has developed over the years. Any given version seldom has all three of Lucy Westenra’s suitors (Arthur Holmwood, Quincey Morris and Dr. Jack Seward), and if it does (Coppola’s film), it has other drastic alterations that prevent it from being faithful to the text. Jonathan Harker is usually present, but he is either dumbed down or incidentally killed off, and the script is usually not smart enough to do so in such a way that doesn’t just also subtract from Mina Murray’s journey. Yet, there is one character that has only grown in focus and importance over the years. Where there is Dracula, there must always be Van Helsing for some reason.

 

Frankly, my problem is not with the character but with his oversaturation in the Dracula story. He is but one character in an ensemble yet leeches the focus away from all the rest to the point that in my cursory research in straight adaptations (excepting prequel, sequel or midquel scenarios like Dracula Untold, Son of Dracula or The Last Voyage of The Demeter), he never sits out whatever final fight occurs with Dracula even while Harker or even Mina die in acts one or two far more commonly. Think about how many times Jonathan Harker dies just to prop up Van Helsing, even while Van Helsing changes into a younger vampire-hunting leading man that Harker otherwise would be. It has been done well, and it has been done poorly, but it gets to a certain point where I wonder why it is done at all and begin to think of alternatives, alternatives that I find more engaging.

 

Let me pitch to you a scenario for a Dracula adaptation where it starts as the book does (so that's Jonathan Harker at Castle Dracula not Renfield, Lucy having three suitors propose back to back, the juxtaposition of Mina and Lucy's sexuality with Lucy getting bitten first, the arrival of Van Helsing, and return of Harker) but crucially, Harker with his capacity for self obfuscation and the suitors in general aren't taking it seriously so Van Helsing dies. It is then that they finally step up to defeat Dracula. As I started this article, Van Helsing overrides these other relationships, and maybe the simplest way to mitigate that problem is to eliminate him. It automatically raises the stakes to get rid of the sagelike mentor whose instruction surely would have prevailed.

 

The thing that I've realized recently is that the other members of this little fellowship altogether are capable of replacing Van Helsing if they align their strengths together. Technically, that shouldn't be surprising since depictions of Van Helsing have warped so as to replace every single one of them, but in this ensemble cast of iconic characters, it gives more of them more payoffs to follow the natural consequences of killing him off in the next adaptation.

 

If any of the characters in the original Dracula actually qualify as vampire slayers, it would be Jonathan Harker and Quincey Morris for being the ones to track down and kill Dracula. In terms of familiarity with vampires, Van Helsing's knowledge is only theoretical, but Harker's knowledge is personal due to his cold open section at the castle. A purist should acknowledge that Harker makes more sense as the vampire hunter on account of track record, but even so, Harker and Quincey are the ones in the party to kill Dracula in actuality, a role given to Van Helsing that they deserve to reclaim.

 

Seward is the doctor conducting his own investigation into Renfield, a case that blends science and supernatural (Van Helsing is also literally a mentor character to Seward, so the application of having to keep the former alive through following his example is a very minor change). Poising Van Helsing as the expendable mentor that Seward has to learn from is a simple change that keeps Seward relevant and memorable in the story. Van Helsing would no longer be around to treat Mina, which means that the scientific trial and error of how Seward studies Renfield and assists in treating Lucy at the beginning of the story would be more relevant for how he would treat Mina at the end of it. (Again without this throughline, it becomes easier to see why Seward is demoted in many adaptations, but I hope you can see how merely reducing Van Helsing increases Seward immensely.)

 

Arthur, interestingly, also has a concrete relationship with Van Helsing that lends itself so easily to a death for the old doctor. First, they are upper-class men (Van Helsing by reputation at least) and notably the most dignified. Arthur directly contrasts the other suitors with this category, since they are an awkward doctor and an American cowboy, while the positive reputation of foreigner Van Helsing directly contrasts the 1897-based xenophobia that exists toward Dracula. However, it also goes deeper than that. In the text, Arthur resembles an adult version of Van Helsing’s deceased son, creating a fatherly fondness for Arthur particularly in this group from Van Helsing. At the same time, one of Arthur’s most important moments in the novel is when his father dies so Arthur takes up the title of Lord Godalming. The motif of taking on the role of a father figure who dies already exists for Arthur, so it should be easy to see how Arthur could step up to be the leader of this fellowship following the death of another father figure. If this all sounds like a lot for a film, it really isn't especially since people already know the general story, but, if adapting these characters in a context that does them justice is too much for a film, then Dracula shouldn't be just films (not that the various miniseries take full advantage of all the members of the fellowship).

 

From the simple alteration of killing Van Helsing, Harker, Seward, Arthur, and Quincey Morris can all take on new life, and it really baffles me that I have not seen an adaptation do this yet (if one exists, please direct me to it). It would be so efficient within the existing framework of adapting the novel that I kind of think it should be obvious, but there is a reason off the top of my head for reticence to commit to something like this: Van Helsing is an exciting foil to Dracula.

 

 As I hope to have demonstrated, dialing back Van Helsing’s screentime in this way would only benefit the other characters, but the next challenge is that aforementioned rivalry. While it absolutely does raise the stakes to kill off the character who would have the easiest time defeating Dracula, the Dracula and Van Helsing rivalry has been iconic since at least the 1931 film (for all my talk of prioritizing other characters, I love a good “your will is strong, Van Helsing” moment). All that said, for one thing, it’s not technically in the book as strongly as it is in the 1931 film onward if at all, and I would also argue that there are several characters more suited for that archenemy role than Van Helsing.

 

As I already detailed, Harker and Quincey are the vampire slayers of this story. Harker is the obvious choice for archenemy, being the vehicle for our introduction to Dracula as well as the vehicle for the vampire’s death in the book, while also being Dracula’s persistent romantic rival. Despite this, many adaptations still diminish Harker’s role to favor Van Helsing, but the presence of Hutter in the Nosferatu films means that some form of Harker is one of the main universal constants of this story. Still, maybe Harker is too commonly killed off to justify setting him up as Dracula’s opposite; in that case, Quincey has so much potential.

 

Despite very few adaptations remembering Quincey, he has the most franchise potential as a vampire-slaying cowboy from yesteryear (if Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter can be a real movie, why not explore Quincey Morris fighting vampires in Texas?) or perhaps a modern cowboy cop as Rebecca Quincy (child of Morris Quincy) is in Renfield 2023. Another idea off the top of my head would circumvent the immortality problem of Dracula, where, in any given continuity, Dracula gets killed by methods that should work but then returns to life for the next movie. Since the deaths of Dracula and Quincey are so intertwined in the original novel, why wouldn’t whatever revives Dracula also revive Quincey? In the event of that story, Dracula and Quincey are on a level playing field while avoiding the “power creep” that occurs from the modern conception of Van Helsing being an accomplished vampire hunter that still somehow struggles against a vampire. 

 

(Power creep is essentially when the skills and weaponry necessary early on in the story become superfluous later on because of increasing improvement and innovation, and  having a character that specializes in taking down vampires struggling for a whole film to take down a vampire can very easily make all or much of the story redundant and unnecessary. It does not necessarily have to play out that way, but there is no arms race necessary in the battle between vampire and normal laypeople as this story is in the book or the faithful adaptations.)

 

Just because the release of Nosferatu 2024 has reminded me of it, The Last Voyage of the Demeter features a character, Black doctor Clemens, who gradually comes to put together what is happening on the ship and organizes the most tenable resistance to the Count he can. Clemens is implicitly the closest thing to the Van Helsing in that film’s continuity, and the film is so much more interesting for making a new character that we slowly learn about while he grows more dynamic in the fight to stay alive (he does not seek out the vampire but does seek out the ship and helps the victims on board for reasons we learn over the runtime). However, I do not want to spoil too much of that film and character since its low box office (like Renfield 2023) and lack of significant success on streaming (unlike Renfield 2023) means that most of you reading have not seen it, so let us proceed to the most tenable option.

 

As the Nosferatu films demonstrate, the most substantive stakes and therefore most cogent dichotomy often are found in the battle between Mina/Ellen and Dracula/Orlok. Outside of Renfield, Mina is the clearest demonstration of what Dracula’s will can do to a person, with the strength in Mina’s character coming from how she resists the changes (this is more present in the book than the 1931 film), and Ellen is the one that manages to kill Nosferatu. One aspect I very much like about the Mina Dracula rivalry in its various forms is that Mina is both the best equipped (an entire fellowship of men fighting for her as well as a connection to Dracula she can sometimes exploit) and worst equipped (often a physically weak sexually repressed woman slowly falling victim to his curse) person to defeat him, and that is where the best drama comes from (a fight that can go either way based on the characters' strengths and weaknesses is more compelling than a fight with a foregone conclusion). The advantage to selecting Mina as the counterbalance to Dracula in a story is that she is relevant throughout the whole story, whereas Van Helsing usually has to be summoned to help.

 

Though I have argued Van Helsing’s true modern utility is in passing on the torch, I should say that I do very much appreciate his functionality in the original book as well as the Edward Van Sloan and Peter Cushing versions of the character. It is just also true that each of those and the following great adaptations of the character leeched away focus and importance from the remainder of the cast in ways that either are now or someday may prove detrimental to the Dracula IP.

 

Nosferatu 2024 is a near classic, a great homage to its namesake

 

Robert Eggers new version of Nosferatu is a near classic. I thoroughly enjoyed virtually every frame of this gorgeous period piece, with beauty and bleakness, and piety and refinement sharing time with the profane grotesque.

Nosferatu 2024 is not solely the horror film F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu is. Egger’s film is better defined as a very dark romance, with elements of horror. The film captures the spirit and dread of its vintage namesake, something that for a generation Universal has failed to do with their reboots. Atmosphere, expressionism, religious hope and despair encompass this film. The cinematography is superb, the locations, interior settings, costuming, all perfect. Bill  Skarsgard’s Count Orlok is a blend of horror, humanity, evil, ambition and lust. Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe also excel.

Go see the film. Like its predecessor, Nosferatu captures the dread, panic and despair of an entire village and population facing annihilation. This is something that even my beloved Dracula films usually fail to capture. And it underscores the true element of horror – that Deity cannot prevail against the demons. … Unless a young woman perhaps makes a Christ-like sacrifice to save her people.

-- Doug Gibson

To read Joe Gibson's thoughts on this film, follow the link here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/12/nosferatu-symphony-of-misplaced.html

Nosferatu: A Symphony of (Misplaced) Syphilis: A Reaction To 2024's Horror Remake

 

 

By Joe Gibson

Watching Nosferatu 2024 produced intense reactions of shock, disgust, and especially suspense. Because I do not have the film in front of me to revisit annotated, I cannot state any conclusion with a degree of accuracy that reaches my satisfaction; essentially, I will commend the film for its tone, mood, expressionism and all technical aspects while approaching its story considerations with a bit more trepidation. Again, I am not the final say, this is not my final say on the matter, and I could be wrong to varying extents about everything I am going to say…but I will say it.

 

First I should explain the differences between Nosferatu and the traditional Dracula character and how that influenced my expectations going in. I intensely dislike whenever a film tries to graft on romantic pursuit of Mina to Lord Dracula’s aims, because it isn’t in the novel and is made at the very least improbable by the meticulous details of Bram Stoker’s tale (hinting at other motivations). Coppola’s film is the most apt demonstration of my ire: if everything Dracula does is about Mina and her previous life, why does Dracula collect his three wives, feed them with abducted children, and go after Lucy first?

 

It is possible to answer those questions, but it represents changing and warping the original intent (to the point where you might as well rename the vampire too). Dracula’s goal is some vague world domination, and, for whatever reason, he chooses to go about this first by corrupting two Victorian women (this would make a lot more sense to someone with neurosyphilis, which we will get to), but Nosferatu – Nosferatu (that is to say Count Orlok, though the original film and new remake both use the terms interchangeably) has always been different than that.

 

If you rewatch the original Nosferatu, as I did to prepare for the new one, you will see far less evidence of grand aspirations or complicated designs. Orlok is looking to move and reacts to the appearance of Ellen’s visage. There are no three wives, and there is no feeding operation for them wherein he regularly abducts infants; there is just Orlok and Ellen. This lends itself exceedingly well to the romantic reinterpretation as everything in the film leads to the union of predator and prey.

 

But the imagery of the plague ultimately won out as its presiding subtext. Nosferatu brings the plague upon the German town of Wisborg (as I understand it, the bubonic plague was something more tangible around that time that may have even been very recent at the time). Since the focus was the plague, rats were prominent and even Orlok is ratlike in his face and posture.

 

Dracula too represents the slow march of an illness, but it is venereal disease. He is a disgusting character but sexual, his bite and embrace corrupt, the novel spends much of its time analyzing the sexualities of Mina and Lucy, many of Bram Stoker’s influences and contemporaries suffered from syphilis because syphilis was a very prolific and timely thing to comment on from the 18^th century onward, the insanity of Renfield resembles neurosyphilis, much of what we understand as general insanity is just neurosyphilis as we know with studies into the General Paralysis of the Insane, and Bram Stoker is speculated to have himself died of syphilis!

 

Sorry, that was quite a lot. Basically, syphilitic imagery is inextricable from Dracula, yet was extracted for Nosferatu to favor the plague, and that is really important for how we approach the fixation on the leading lady (my current thoughts are that while either one can be intimate or looming large, Dracula is more readily a sexual vehicle due to his literary DNA). So imagine my surprise when Robert Egger’s new Nosferatu focused more on syphilis than the plague. (There are many ways it brings in other stuff from the novel and warps it such as Willem Dafoe’s twisted Van Helsing type and Harding’s scene in the sepulchre mimicking Arthur and Lucy, but those serve the tone without the detriment I see to the story in transfixing back on syphilis.)

 

Syphilis comes in stages: a chancre upon the tongue or other areas of infection, a rash across the body and then the gummatous lesions. However, the most important motif would be sexual regret because that is how it transmits. The art and poetry focus on the moment surrounding the sexual encounter where the lovely woman decayed into a corpse, thus also dooming the protagonist to the same fate. I shall share here a poem and art piece to prove this point.

 

Here is Charles Baudelaire’s The Metamorphoses of the Vampire (https://fleursdumal.org/poem/186)

Then the woman with the strawberry mouth,
Squirming like a snake upon the coals,
Kneading her breasts against the iron of her corset,
Let flow these words scented with musk:
— "I have wet lips, and I know the art
Of losing old conscience in the depths of a bed.
I dry all tears on my triumphing breasts
And I make old men laugh with the laughter of children.
For those who see me naked, without any covering,
I am the moon and the sun and the sky and the stars!
I am so dexterous in voluptuous love, my dear, my wise one,
When I strangle a man in my dreadful arms,
Or abandon my breast to his biting,
So shy and lascivious, so frail and vigorous,
That on these cushions that swoon with passion
The powerless angels damn their souls for me!"

When she had sucked the pith from my bones
And, drooping, I turned towards her
To give her the kiss of love, I saw only
An old leather bottle with sticky sides and full of pus!
I shut both eyes in cold dismay
And when I opened them both to clear reality,
By my side, instead of that powerful puppet
Which seemed to have taken some lease of blood,
There shook vaguely the remains of a skeleton,
Which itself gave the cry of a weathercock
Or of a sign-board, at the end of a rod of iron,
Which the wind swings in winter nights.

 

Consider the very framing for Nosferatu’s existence in this new movie: that Ellen’s yearning and lustful encounter brought a corpse to bed with her that infects her and damns her soul. Some syphilitic imagery is more overt than others: Dracula is a bit more veiled than Baudelaire, but, in this franchise, having sexual intercourse with a decaying corpse that slumps into leathery puppet with skeleton legs as Ellen concludes this film is necessarily syphilitic. Even so, this hits the finer details of this poem such as biting the breast rather than neck or wrist, Knock, the old man that laughs like a child and literally seeing the syphilitic carrier naked multiple times with Orlok’s full frontal. (I chose this poem primarily because it is the one easiest for me to call to mind due to learning about it and syphilis in my WSU Honors Blood class taught by Professors Justin Rhees and Cynthia Jones. I am not insinuating that the film intended to borrow from this, but we should not rule it out either since it was notable enough to warrant exploration in that class.)

 

From that lens, the nudity, shocking though it may be is by no means surprisingly except insofar as this is meant to still be about the plague, and this guides me into my burgeoning issue with the script (pending confirmation that I did not miss something to tie it together). Because the plague isn’t the plague but explicitly tied to Nosferatu’s magic syphilis, I asked myself a question I could not answer on the ride home from viewing this: how does one become a vampire?

 

In the original film, that would be wholly irrelevant; Orlok’s bites do not transform, and there is no evidence of other vampires in the region or the world (outside of the book’s diegetic exposition that might as well just be about the same vampire we are watching). In the Werner Herzog film as I understand it, the bites do transform the human, but this new film is erring far closer to the original where vampirized Hutter is really not a prospect. However, there is another vampire that is unearthed and staked, so Nosferatu is creating more.

 

At several points in the film, Willem Dafoe’s mad doctor explains that this is not really the plague but Nosferatu’s doing, and he also connects the plague affliction Harding succumbs to with the death from bites of Harding’s family as being the same thing that needs the fire to cleanse it. (If I misconstrued this, please clarify what I missed.) This seems to mean one of two things: either when Nosferatu’s shadow hand went over the city, he mass infected everyone or at least as many people in the city to the same degree as biting them (in which case Willem Dafoe needs to burn the entire town down to remain internally consistent) or while Harding was in a deep sleep so as to not stop Nosferatu from killing his children, Orlok gave him the same sex dreams he was giving Ellen so as to progress his infection (because I do not remember him biting Harding and sex visions are the only other way we see him work his curse). Neither option is preferable for the storytelling suffice it to say.

 

Perhaps it is possible that none of these victims were on track to become vampires, but I fail to see why Nosferatu would have singled out that one person from his native land to do anything differently with them. And furthermore, if he did roughly the same thing as in Wisborg to make that vampire (we have no evidence otherwise), why isn’t everyone else there infected? (For what it is worth, much of these townsfolk are implicitly Roma travelers that may not have been there long enough for infection, and the film accounts for how they knew of the disconnected vampire involving some ritual wherein a virgin on horseback could lead them to it, but this also shows us a different method for vampire dispatch where staking works completely including a possible different role for Ellen that Hutter knows about so, pending further analysis, that answer might also weaken the film's integrity.)

 

Another question that comes to mind is how the nuns treated Hutter’s symptoms of Nosferatu’s infection to the point where the doctors and Hutter comment on his better condition than the rest. The nuns implied they could have healed him completely if he had stayed longer, which gives this magic system an opposing dichotomy of powers, but the earnest prayers of German characters do nothing, and even Willem Dafoe the Van Helsing type does not use wafer or Holy water to cleanse the boxes of Earth but fire (even though Holy water had some effect on Ellen during her trances). Again, it is possible I missed something, but, for the stakes to hold, this needed more explanation, and if that explanation was cut just so we could stare at Bill Skarsgard’s prosthetic penis, then I have no words for that except what I have already said.

 

I have no evidence for this supposition, but the sense that I got watching this movie is that after failing to cast him as Orlok or Knock, Eggers just hastily wrote a part for Willem Dafoe to be Willem Dafoe because he sort of takes the role of the expositional book from the original but more strangely paced and confusing. First I should say that I like the idea of bringing a Van Helsing into this story but then warping that warm familiar presence to better serve this expressionist horror tone. (For instance, as I mentioned, Harding’s last scene in the tomb mirrors Arthur discovering and staking Lucy, but whereas we would expect Harding to have to put his vampirized wife to rest and step into a hero role, he seems to commit necrophilia and then die.) Second I will say they did not apply that consistently.

 

Dafoe seems unstable through his introduction, then composed in his pseudo-medical scenes, ultimately leading us to the new climax set piece of Knock’s impalement, where Dafoe reveals he was lucidly manipulating Hutter on a duck hunt because he wanted Ellen to kill Nosferatu and Hutter to kill Knock. Dafoe cackles madly and sets the house on fire but then reappears during the final scene to be a source of authority and comfort for Hutter, even cast in the new day’s bright light to communicate him as truly a good guy. That is not consistent characterization, plotting or theme work; it is just a Willem Dafoe Greatest Hits track where he gets to portray vignettes of the kind of range he can act out across his best roles.

 

This is running a bit longer than I wanted so I will wrap this up with a little bit on Ellen and Hutter. Again, this is not a review but a reaction, so I have no issue vaguely stating the progression, likability and strength of Nicholas Hoult’s acting is Oscar worthy and leaving it at that. I get the sense that for the film to work as intended, Lily Rose Depp’s performance had to be at least as strong, and it would have been except for the marital sex scene where she switches between Ellen and vaguely Nosferatu controlled that makes me unable to tell what the subtleties in her performance are supposed to mean (even the film lacks the faith in her expression because it gives us the clichéd “slows down and back is turned to prime us for a jumpscare” rather than letting it speak for itself). Of course, her performance being that way is contingent upon this being a syphilis story that does not clarify the scope of Orlok’s vampiric powers, so those are the major stumbling blocks I have with accepting this story even if otherwise the craft was exceptional and the film made me feel everything it wanted me to feel.

To read Doug Gibson's thoughts on the film, follow this link: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/12/nosferatu-2024-is-near-classic-great.html

Hail Hail, Day of Days is a traditional Christmas carol you may not have heard

Above is one of my favorite Christmas songs, and I never heard it until a couple of years ago, when I was perusing YouTube for traditional Christmas Carols. It's called Hail Hail, Day of Days, and it was performed more than 110 years ago by the Edison Mixed Quartet. 

It's a great song that is never found on today's radio stations or places like MusicPlus on Xfinity. The above link has more Edison Quartet songs.
It is easily available on online music services, including YouTube. 

Enjoy it this Christmas Day.