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.

How I Came To Love Godzilla vs Megaguirus

By Joe Gibson

 

“Japan creates an artificial black hole device to trap Godzilla forever, but a test of the device creates new foes for Godzilla, car-sized dragonflies called meganula and their queen, Megaguirus.” - IMDB storyline description for Godzilla vs Megaguirus (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0255198/). 

 

My Story With Godzilla vs Megaguirus

 

Today, December 16, is the 24th anniversary of the theatrical release of Godzilla vs Megaguirus.

 

This is not a strict traditional review where I will argue a reasoned assessment of this film’s flaws and merits, though that could occur at a later date. This is a celebration of Godzilla vs Megaguirus because I honestly passionately enjoy this film, which is a surprise to me given my history with it that I will also detail here. While I am attempting to explain enough to make this accessible to someone with no or at least very little knowledge about Godzilla vs Megaguirus, I am hoping you have your own evaluations of the film’s stupidities and strengths in mind as you see my evolving thought process on how I came to love it.

 

I initially viewed the Millennium series (that's the 6 movies made between 1999 and 2004 as a response to the Tristar 1998 abomination) as wholly unnecessary additions that only served to undermine Godzilla's legacy. Naturally there were some exceptions to that. I have always respected Shusuke Kaneko's (of the Heisei Gamera trilogy) 2001 film Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah Giant Monsters All Out Attack, and Godzilla 2000 (1999) is an all around fun monster mash (read Doug Gibson's review here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2021/12/godzilla-2000-review.html).

 

But largely, I saw it as an experimental era and a failed experiment, and Godzilla vs Megaguirus was the most obvious failed experimental step because of the later adaptations to its formula. It is no secret that Masaaki Tezuka got three directorial attempts in this six installment series (debatably two more chances than he should have gotten), and many people have articulated better than I can just the sheer amount of observable ways that Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla 2002 is a far more polished version of Godzilla vs Megaguirus 2000 in terms of basic plot and characters. But you must recall I hated the larger Tezuka driven Millennium series until recently (the only exceptions being Shusuke Kaneko of GMK and Takao Okawara, who directed G2K as well as Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II 1993 that we have also discussed on this blog here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/11/part-three-godzilla-vs-mechagodzilla-ii.html).

 

Gaining appreciation for Tezuka’s 2002 masterpiece proved tantamount to admitting my issues with his half of the series were overblown. And truly they were. While Tokyo SOS 2003 suffers from a split focus between being a sequel to Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and being one to the original Mothra, the premise of Kiryu (a Mechagodzilla made from the original Godzilla’s bones) is executed for excellent pathos in both. More interestingly, Vs Megaguirus and Against Mechagodzilla each contributed a strong lead trying to overcome a past mistake in a fight with Godzilla that cost them their teammates, a plot point so very similar to Shikishima’s arc in Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One that it warrants resumed study. But Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla was the elegant film and Megaguirus merely the crude draft, so I would revisit Yumiko Shaku's Akane Yashiro in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla time and time again instead of Misato Tanaka’s Kiriko Tsujimori.

 

But a funny thing happens when you want more of that archetype in a pre Godzilla Minus One world. Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla is a very light and breezy movie clocking in at only an hour and a half. With more ambitious ideas than Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, I think it probably should have exceeded that film’s runtime of 1 hour 47 minutes, especially because there is something very understated about the film’s use of Akane, where the film as it technically ends leaves you off on a cliffhanger in regards to her growth and only resolves her journey and relationship with the other leads in the post credits scene. I should clarify that Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, in my estimation, is still one of the very best films in this entire series, but what holds it back from absolute perfection is a lack of time to truly explore its own brilliance. What further hurts this is that Akane is only in Tokyo SOS long enough to be written out, so, for better or worse, we only get that first film with her. To truly illustrate my point for a moment, let me use Godzilla Minus One as an example. Think about how well the film explores the facets of Shikishima’s trauma in its 2 hours. I cannot think of a single scene of him that movie would be better off without, much less an entire half hour, and I think Against Mechagodzilla needed as much time and space with Akane as Shikishima had in Minus One. 

 

But what’s this? Godzilla vs Megaguirus is 1 hour and 45 minutes? Kiriko Tsujimori, the verifiable template for Akane Yashiro, has some beats of her adventure that Akane never adapted such as climbing on Godzilla’s back? I’ll just watch that scene then. Now, make no mistake, when I learned that the milestone for the first human character to touch Godzilla was wasted on Godzilla vs Megaguirus, I was majorly pissed off, but I couldn’t look away.

 

 

Megaguirus herself is the next relevant factor. If you are unaware, she is the queen of the Meganula, a dragonfly horde that originated in the original Rodan 1956, now mutated to have a reptilian-esque face because part of her origin in the 2000 film involves the use of Godzilla’s DNA and energy. Compared to the dark “battle Mothra” Battra in Godzilla vs Mothra The Battle For Earth 1992 (also directed by Takao Okawara) who had copious amounts of energy beams and earth shattering strength, Megaguirus is quite weak, depending on her great speed and a tail stinger to siphon Godzilla’s energy so that the title fight is even a slight challenge. It was quite easy to use this to support my anti Tezuka bias initially, but, the more I think about these characters, the more inherently interesting this makes Megaguirus.

 

So, there is a lot of utility to making the villains resemble the hero in more than just cosmetic similarity; if they represent two different sides of an idea or concept, similarity strengthens the overt contrast present (such as how I argued Skar King and Kong represent different fatherhood styles in my review of Godzilla x Kong The New Empire here: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/06/part-two-nuanced-deconstruction-of.html). 

 

Contrast of some kind is always necessary. It can also be interesting to see similarity in fighting style too, but, make no mistake, that shifts the conflict from testing character’s ideals to just how good at their fighting style they are compared to essentially a clone. And the problem that emerges in a lot of modern storytelling is that many stories conflate those contrasts. Think about most superhero movies especially consumed back to back. 

 

“Oh, Iron Man is special because he has a robot suit…but Iron Monger also has a robot suit, so they fight normally. The Hulk is special because he has super strength…but so does Abomination so they have a normal fight. Captain America is a super soldier, and so is Red Skull, so outside of their clashing moral outlooks of self sacrifice vs world domination which thankfully are there, it is just a normal fight. Rinse and repeat for the shrinking of Ant-Man and Yellowjacket and reflexes and super durable suits of Black Panther and Killmonger.” 

 

Battra comes dangerously close to this Mirror Match fight for Mothra, only set apart by having copious beams…oh wait, this was the Heisei series, so Mothra also had beams (we can blame special effects director Koichi Kawakita for that). That film mitigates the pitfalls by having Mothra and Battra end up teaming up against Godzilla, but, in a similar way to how a really good purposeful and self aware mirror matchup is exciting, it is equally exciting for Godzilla to have a villain nothing like him, because he cannot just fight with punches and beams if Megaguirus is faster than both of those and actively siphoning his energy. Add to that the automatic characterization the film milks from her maneuvers and reactions in the fight scenes, and Megaguirus won me over a lot sooner than her film did. That said, GMK Mothra also uses a lot of these building blocks just as effectively.

 

The depiction of Godzilla in the Millennium series compared to Showa (1955 to 1975) or Heisei (1984 to 1995) was always a bit of a sore spot for me, since I very much appreciated seeing Godzilla grow and evolve in the Showa and Heisei continuities. Still, the unresolved fierceness of Godzilla in the Millennium series was something interesting to glance at with the spiky edgy design and lack of the linear redemption arc between enjoying continuity. Upon realizing I preferred the Heisei Godzilla’s anti hero persona to even Showa Godzilla, I had to acknowledge that Godzilla 2000 and Godzilla vs Megaguirus both showed the clearest picture of anti hero Godzilla that you get outside of Godzilla vs King Ghidorah 1991: Godzilla will destroy the attacking monster but then turn around and destroy Japan himself. Godzilla vs Megaguirus also shows a dangerous morally ambiguous Godzilla (he attacks as much as he wants to, but it seems to correspond to the use of banned energy) and shows off design improvements. MireGoji (the name for the suit in G2K) and GiraGoji (the vs Megaguirus suit) are very similar, both having the rougher edges and green skin texture, but GiraGoji, whether from filming in more daytime scenes or not, seems to have a more vibrant green that I now very much enjoy. 

 

It took the MireGoji similarities in Godzilla’s Evolved form in Godzilla x Kong for me to reevaluate these suits, but, after that, it was only a short time for me to realize I really enjoy both suits, and GiraGoji may be my favorite Godzilla design of all time (though any Heisei Godzilla suit and Minus One Godzilla also have claim to that title). At this point, I still thought it a tragedy all these enjoyable aspects were relegated to this film in particular. I attempted to revisit the film, but that was the dub. (Some dubs are worse than others. Because the English speakers in the Japanese cuts of the Heisei series are even worse than the dub actors, those films, for instance, are far better in dub than subtitled, and most Showa dubs are not so terrible. Godzilla vs Megaguirus has an abysmal dub that is the kind of thing I can really only appreciate if I have the original recording in my mind.)

 

Still with a hunger for this movie but unwilling to admit it after failing to sit through the dub, I listened to the soundtrack, which is honestly amazing. I have defended Tom Holkenborg’s Godzilla vs Kong and Godzilla x Kong scores for their semi memorable leitmotifs, but this film honestly blows it away, and that’s not an unpopular opinion. Of the Godzilla film composers obviously Akira Ifukabe is the biggest name with his contributions lasting through the end of the Heisei series, but, for the Tezuka films, Michiru Oshima composed, and her incredibly memorable Godzilla motif in Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla originated in Godzilla vs Megaguirus as it turns out. Moreover, this soundtrack represents Megaguirus through the use of very shrill and ugly string instruments that build suspense but also weave in and out of tracks with the other motifs very well (this makes almost every scene set in Shibuya or about the Meganula nearly perfect). Regardless of your opinions on Masaaki Tezuka, this film did have one certifiable genius working on it, and since the music is another way to enjoy a film, if I am enjoying pretty much every aspect of this film already, there is no reason not to rewatch it, so let’s just run through what’s left to speak of about the plot (with a couple tangents on my thoughts on the quality of some plot points because I can’t help myself).

 

The Film’s Plot

 

The film begins with a news broadcast exposition to ground us in this new continuity, where there was no Oxygen Destroyer in 1954 so Godzilla kept attacking at his own pace (again two months after the 54 film, then the first nuclear plant in 1966, and for plasma energy in 1996), and his design was canonically always the green with purple spikes body and red beam in this continuity. When Godzilla attacks, soldiers including Kiriko Tsujimori fight against him with bazookas, and her Commanding Officer dies saving her from rubble after they accomplish very little.

 

The next time we see Tsujimori is in 2001 as part of the G Graspers (the military side of the operation) where she is recruiting whimsical inventor Kudo into the latest project to destroy Godzilla: a black hole gun spearheaded by Professor Yoshizawa, who serves a mentor role to Kudo. Mr. Sugiura is the other major character of this plotline, someone who is responsible for the current situation in more ways than one. Tsujimori and Kudo have a flirtatious banter (though she is more focused on defeating Godzilla), Tsujimori and Yoshizawa are both haunted by the deaths of comrades, and Tsujimori is compassionate to her team of G Graspers (getting them to safety to risk only her own life on two occasions) with Yoshizawa as a maternal influence on the cast to mediate the disagreements and arguments that do occur (especially between Tsujimori and Kudo)..

 

A subplot that weaves in and quickly out of this story is about young boy that just so happens to live near the facility of the first Dimension Tide test and have an interest in insects, so when DT causes a dimensional space anomaly that lets through a Meganula that lays an egg, he takes that back to Shibuya but then dumps it in the sewer, allowing that side of the plot to continue. The film establishes his loneliness and also guilt over the whole situation to where I buy his actions even if they do rest on some contrived set up (personally, if I were writing it, I would have combined him with the Doctor that exposits on the Meganulon/Meganula species later on and possibly both of those with Yoshizawa just for peak editorial efficiency). The boy’s other contribution is his conversations with Tsujimori that humanize her and somewhat clarify her drive to defeat Godzilla: that her CO told her that when you are scared, you should fight and not run.

 

Some Meganulon hatch from the egg and begin to prey on citizens of Shibuya as they gradually flood the town to help them mature into Meganula (winged versions) and grow their queen Megaguirus that they feed with Godzilla’s nuclear energy absorbed through their stingers. This subplot occurs over a variety of scenes that all effectively use the soundtrack to enhance the often wordless scenes of the Meganula, and the first of these scenes, a very tense horror scene of a Meganulon slaughtering people is so brilliant and suspenseful in the original Japanese audio. A comparison in Western media that seems apt is the scene in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 where it briefly becomes an Evil Dead film about Doctor Octopus’ tentacles wreaking havoc on doctors and nurses: abrupt but memorably shows off directorial talent for horror.

 

The G Graspers track Godzilla over the course of the film, and the Meganula seeking out Godzilla intersects these plotlines, leading to an ocean confrontation between Tsujimori, her team and Godzilla while taking samples of a Meganula carcass. This is the scene where Tsujimori climbs on Godzilla’s back, and it is a testament to her tenacity and leadership as she sends her teammate back to the ship and survives the struggle, even placing a tracker in Godzilla’s skin. From there, it builds up to its final action set pieces with a skirmish between Godzilla and the horde of Meganula interrupting the first Dimension Tide attempt on Godzilla on an abandoned island, and Tsujimori and Sugiura becoming more desperate to use Dimension Tide on Godzilla as soon as possible compared to the more cautious Kudo and Yoshizawa.

 

Because I find it a little weird that this subplot was resolved after the title fight and not before, I’ll wrap it up here. Sugiura acts strange throughout the movie, and, with the emphasis the film places on Godzilla’s 1966 and 1996 attacks being energy related (nuclear then plasma), there is an implication something could be stirring Godzilla now. It turns out that Sugiura has known that the Science and technology Bureau has still been using plasma energy to some degree and that attracts Godzilla. (In any eventual full review of this film, the areas I foresee the most weakness in the script are here and the little boy from earlier. These clearly do not detract from my enjoyment of the film but are necessary considerations when speaking on quality.)

 

And finally, to bring this back around to my earlier point about the intrigue of Megaguirus as a villain, Godzilla has to use his wits to turn the tides of the fight: crouching at just the right moment to use his dorsal fins to slice her, pretending not to see where she is so he can wrap his tail around her, and getting into a tussle so he can bury her stinger in the ground and belly flop on her (yeah, if you were unaware, that level of creative Showa era buffoonery happens in this fight, and it’s justified on a storytelling level). Ultimately, he bites her tail off, and the first atomic breath he lands on her sets her on fire because their fight was testing different aspects of him than how strong his fists and beam are.

 

Conclusion 

 

 

Like I said, this is not a traditional review of mine where I focus on using the film evidence to come to a conclusion about its quality, but here is why today's approach is also important sometimes. Because we are not objective creatures, our subjective sense of liking or not liking a film proves important in our motivation surrounding how thoroughly we investigate a film’s plot points and with what degree of enthusiasm. We all do this subconsciously, but here is a conscious example pertaining to this film. 

 

One of the most common criticisms I have seen for Godzilla vs Megaguirus is that, at the beginning of the movie, Tsujimori and her squad are going after Godzilla using bazookas and not tanks or maser tanks or anything more than big guns. I suspect that the people that do not appreciate any aspect of this film or otherwise do not have any respect for it will stop there; the film does comment on that somewhat. The opening fight takes place in 1996, and while the presentation makes it a little hard to tell, it seems like Tsujimori is not yet in the G Graspers. In any case, 1996 is the year that the Science and Technology Bureau opened their Institute and the year that made major progress in the fight against Godzilla. The following five years' worth of development leads to a G Graspers unit well equipped with SGSs (Search Godzilla System), as well as branded rafts, The Griffon Jet and advanced equipped suits. There is clearly supposed to be a contrast between the 1996 and 2001 efforts against Godzilla, and criticizing the film for that is missing the point of what it’s trying to say. That said, the ultimate plan against Godzilla is the Black Hole Gun: Dimension Tide, which is a patently awful idea especially when considering they plan to put in space and fire down at the Earth unobstructed at any moment (how did the UN allow this?), so…either the film just is irredeemably stupid or it is trying another more subtle juxtaposition at the heart of its story rather than just in act one (admittedly, both could also be true). 

 

Because I like this movie, I have more patience around the proposition that maybe there is something deeper there. Tsujimori herself demonstrates an interesting mix of traits that make her both the best person to fight against Godzilla (general badassery and the compassion for others) and the worst (an unanswered recklessness where she advocates stronger for Dimension Tide than the actual scientists working on it to the point of siding with the twist villain briefly). Indeed, her great hero moment at the end of this film is looking at her CO’s dog-tags reminded on how he said to fight not run but saved her by making them run away from Godzilla. Not only that, but she is wearing the G Grasper uniform using the G Grasper tech that only exists because of villain Sugiura (who has been luring Godzilla) to save people from Godzilla by firing Dimension Tide at Godzilla IN A CITY. (Indeed, only the first attempt of Dimensio Tide on Godzilla took place on the uninhabited Ogasawara islands.) The similar contradictions in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II indicated some deeper themes, according to my analysis, so perhaps the same will be true here. If I find nothing, I find nothing (and any review will reflect that), but it is because I like this movie that I’ll look more into what themes it could have before doing a dedicated review of it here.

 

Today, it is the film’s anniversary, and, over my part in its first two dozen years, I have held a variety of viewpoints on it. I will take this time to remember it fondly and invite you all to do the same, but if you have any thoughts positive or negative on this film, you can share them as a comment below. Here at Plan9Crunch, Godzilla is not our main focus, but you can check out a good assortment of content from us about the franchise if you care to do so.

 

Links to other Plan9Crunch Godzilla articles and videos:

 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2023/06/review-godzilla-versus-kong-2021-remake.html

 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2014/03/godzilla-is-on-this-authors-mind.html

 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2021/12/godzilla-2000-review.html

 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2010/02/godzilla-versus-monster-zero.html

 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/06/a-nuanced-deconstruction-of-godzilla-x.html

 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/06/part-two-nuanced-deconstruction-of.html

 

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2024/07/part-three-nuanced-deconstruction-of.html

https://youtu.be/yV6i2xX0pf4?si=Nu9RWsP5k6CbT68H

 

https://youtu.be/1HMV1hMPgzs?si=1Iip-2qfPxDe6G_B

 

https://youtu.be/pSosxtg51oM?si=CoDIwTko6C5N5DCY

https://youtu.be/AI_FMxtTlIk?si=EA51lODIQp2LUVr1

Renfield: An Analysis (1897, 1931, 2023)

By Joe Gibson

The following essay is an excerpt from a cross-disciplinary research paper comparing the redemption of Renfield from the trajectory of the original book Dracula to the 1931 film to Renfield’s own 2023 film with the history and efficacy of blood transfusion itself. The scientific and historical connections to blood transfusion were ill thought out and obligatory, so here are the cult film analysis sections that should stand up to scrutiny a little more. We here at Plan9Crunch have analyzed Dracula 1931 a fair bit already (links at the bottom of this post) and will likely find new things to talk about in the future, but I hope you enjoy these research paper excerpts.

On page 72 of the Barnes and Noble edition of Dracula by Bram Stoker, it reads, pertaining to Renfield’s fly indulgence, “...he argued quietly that it was very good and very wholesome; that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him.” 

At several points of Renfield 2023 but notably the denouement, Dracula’s whole blood is administered to heal substantive damage and even death with no negative side effects. Indeed, “the blood is the life” in Renfield, as he stated it was in Dracula 1897. In most adaptations and the original story itself, Renfield was deluded; Dracula’s blood would only corrupt the user into something unrecognizable (see the personality changes of Mina, Renfield, and Olgaren in Dracula, Dracula 1931 and The Last Voyage of the Demeter 2023 respectively). This redemption of Dracula’s blood necessarily translates to redemption of Renfield (and his psychology) and not Dracula (because Renfield highlights Dracula’s abusive tendencies).

The history of R.M. Renfield (via bullet points since the admittedly profuse publications featuring this character either do little to change him or are too obscure to be relevant to Renfield 2023’s character study). Broadly, the loose inspiration for [Renfield] starts in antiquity regarded positively, then the concept itself [Renfield] emerges regarded less positively as the modern era approaches and each gets refined to such a degree to show efficacy.

Renfield’s development is grounded in the context of warping and stretching Christian symbolism and scenarios; quite clearly in the original novel, the way that Bram Stoker intended Renfield was an allusion to John the Baptist. On page 106, Renfield speaks in bride-maid and bride parables similar to Jesus, compounding the idea that Renfield and John the Baptizer both espoused similar philosophies to their lords and then deferred to them (Renfield commits himself to Dracula on page 107). Renfield’s famous line on page 148, “...the blood is the life” works as a direct quotation of Deuteronomy 12:23 (Renfield being the vehicle for most of the novel’s religious imagery). Most tantalizing, John the Baptist is understood to have eaten locusts. (He may not have, but the symbolism and imagery need not correspond to reality in literary use. Similarly, some scholars doubt that Jesus sweating blood was originally part of the Gospel of Luke, but that is obviously a strong image still on the table to use in literature.) Renfield dies from trauma to the head and neck, just like John, but this is warped because the Herod figure (if anyone fits Herod’s role in Renfield’s life, it would be Dr. Jack Seward for his notable observation of Renfield and hasty woman-motivated decision making) does not cause the death; Dracula, the dark Lord, does (Stoker, 1897, 2011). There is stark reversal more so than similarity with the Baptizer.

The audience of Bram Stoker’s Dracula understands Renfield not as a person but as an enigmatic mystical contradiction. Dr. Seward observes Renfield scientifically, where one could read neurosyphilis greatly into the latter’s behavior, but the hints of great strength (for a 59 year old man), prophetic forewarning and religious allegory communicate Renfield as a mystical character. Renfield never gets his own point of view sections to explain himself (and the audience never learns who he was before Dracula), locking his character behind two different veils of interpretation.

By the time of Tod Browning’s Dracula, Renfield had changed somewhat, consolidating Harker’s castle scenes into his own tragic subplot. Harker loses much of his development, Mina’s moments of reflection at her infection reduce, and the suitors of Lucy are all but eliminated to make room for Renfield, a sane man, falling victim to Dracula at the castle, Renfield, an insane man, onboard the Demeter, Renfield interacting with the comic relief orderly and nurse at Seward’s sanitorium, and Renfield surviving until the final confrontation with Dracula where he leads Harker and Van Helsing to Dracula’s resting place (Browning, 1931). The novel is an ensemble, and so is the film, but, whereas Harker, Mina, Seward, and Van Helsing are the major players by amount of journal entries, it is Renfield, Dracula and Van Helsing that enjoy increased relevance and focus for the movie adaptation. That is important for the horror and terror since, in all versions, Renfield is the most clear picture of what Dracula can do to a person, but, now, Renfield was a sane person before, which means Dracula can turn anyone into Renfield, a far scarier thought than one Renfield existing somewhere in isolation. There is still a layer of separation between the viewer and Renfield: the tragic delusion. Renfield is wrong and insane, and the audience, like Seward before them, observes Renfield live and die in delusion.

Seemingly, the biggest reframing Renfield 2023 does is posit “What if Renfield is not only the point of view character but also undeniably correct in his delusion?” That is why Dracula’s Whole Blood carries infallible life giving properties: because Renfield has always believed it does. (Likewise, rather than ambiguous mad strength, eating bugs genuinely gives Renfield and any of Dracula’s other familiars super strength and reflexes.) However, if Renfield is now correct and has the opportunity for growth and change as an audience insert character, the pendulum has swung to necessitate a vehicle or mechanism to explore how the average audience member can become Renfield through Dracula’s interference (and how Renfield’s foil Teddy Lobo can become a Dracula familiar). The answer to that problem is very simply an abusive codependent relationship. This is pretty blatantly the point of the film, especially since Renfield sums himself up as a codependent during the climax, but there are more specific examples as well.

The opening, midpoint and denouement of the 2023 film take place in character Mark’s Dependent Relationship Anonymous Addiction Group (DRAAG) within the gym sector of a church, where Renfield explicitly (and the film implicitly though Dracula’s dialogue during pinch point confrontations with Renfield) identifies the relationship between servant and master as similar to the codependent relationship of Caitlyn and her narcissist boyfriend. Beyond the obvious, Caitlyn also, despite herself, finds herself defending ska music as one of her partner’s interests, just as this film indicates Renfield’s life obsession was given to him by Dracula as Renfield is capable of letting go of his bugs after he makes a breakthrough. Most interestingly, a use of double entendre occurs when Teddy Lobo replaces Renfield as Dracula’s familiar; because Dracula is aiming for world domination and Lobo’s gang, led by his mother, has lofty ambitions, the pact between them comes with the romantic image said by Teddy that Dracua should meet his mother (McKay, 2023).

Much of the audience distance from Renfield in the earlier referenced works came from comparison to more sane characters (or a saner Renfield in a cold open), so much of the audience sympathy for Renfield in this film comes from comparison to other characters. Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield only does the Dwight Frye laugh when preparing to kill abusers and drug dealers, and Teddy Lobo serves as a shadow to Renfield (being the weaker element to a criminal enterprise) especially after supplanting him as Dracula’s familiar because of the contrast of “Drug Use and Bug Use.” While Renfield abandons the bugs as part of his new life early into the story and treats “bug use” as part of the curse that puts someone under Dracula’s spell, he consumes the largest amount possible in the climax and puts up the most credible attack against Dracula possible (meaning no correlation between the bugs consumed and being under Dracula’s thrall). Renfield consumes the bugs for strength, and he is ultimately correct, so he can consume that for strength independent of Dracula, but Teddy Lobo, established to be in the cocaine trade, also uses cocaine and takes his bugs via snorting, making him more vulnerable to Dracula’s influence because he is treating it as a hit not the disgusting source of strength it is (McKay, 2023).

As the last vestiges of syphilitic imagery in the 2023 film, the seductive Dracula also takes form as a decaying corpse clinging to Renfield when the title henchman tries to escape Dracula’s destructive influence. There is some symbolism in Renfield that a fair analysis must ignore, because if Dracula’s Whole Blood were syphilitic in this film, it would not have those life-giving qualities (the syphilis subtext is only here because this is a Dracula story). Along those same lines, the narrative of Renfield’s backstory only hazily corresponds to the 1931 film; Renfield was not present to attend high society with Dracula or assist him in procuring any of his successful victims after the boat. The name of the DRAAG leader, Mark, is most likely unimportant on a larger scale, while being a notable Christian name.

The recent data that Whole Blood can efficiently combat preventable deaths raises an interesting implication in that the preventable deaths and collateral damage of the story (Renfield himself, the gang’s foot soldiers, Rebecca’s sister, and the other DRAAG participants) are the ones healed by Dracula’s blood. Dracula’s blood does not save the leaders of any given faction (Dracula himself, Teddy’s mother, the police captain and Rebecca are figureheads whose deaths would necessarily be conclusive, but the film never uses the blood to heal any of them, just the unnecessary preventable ones).

The final image of Renfield is that pitcher of Dracula’s blood on a table in the church next to a bowl of some bread product (likely muffins), and the caricatured nature of that imagery masks it somewhat, but that is a holy sacrament, perhaps a picnic version but a holy sacrament nonetheless. Does this entail some commentary on or against organized religion? Perhaps; if someone at a later date can delve into that interpretation, it may be helpful for overall analysis on the film; but there is another simple implication. Because the film is dealing directly in the redemption of Renfield and his ideology, and Renfield has always been a symbol of warped religious devotion, this sacrament is most simply the ritual necessary to redeem R. M. Renfield in this movie. In that sense, Renfield finally gets to rise above John the Baptist. Renfield first partakes of the bread of DRAAG by attending and opening up to it, then dies opposing Dracula, but gets to live again from the miraculous blood of Dracula, becoming an admittedly haphazard Christ figure. Both were necessary for the redemption of Renfield (but the purpose of this essay is obviously to focus on the blood).

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2016/09/dracula-85-years-later-vampire-is-still.html

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2015/02/tod-brownings-dracula-defense-of-often.html

https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2021/06/dracula-was-count-resigned-to-his.html