Tag Archives: christopher-plummer

Recap:

So there is Donald Pleasance, looking a little lost when worrying about somebody else than Michael Myers. He’s basically a catholic priest, very catholic, drinking the blood of Christ (wine) and eating his body (sammich) while the adults are discussing the important stuff. Then there is Christopher Plummer as the ghostbuster. He vanhelsings across Venice where Nosferatu last was seen. Plummer is always good, especially when he doesn’t sing Edelweiß, and yet he makes me feel the void that Peter Cushing has left behind. Then there is Kinski with a Johnny Winter wig (that’s what you get for not shaving your head, I guess). Most of the time he is just standing there, being himself, getting the chicks. Oh, and then of course there is the star of the movie, Venice, also just standing there and being herself, being just as worn down and ugly as Kinski, but at the same time even more beautiful and enchanting than him.

The 1979 Nosferatu by Kinski and Herzog was such a success that it’s a small surprise that the Italians wanted a piece of the cake. What’s surprising however is how slow this movie is, and not slow in a let’s-pad-the-runtime-with-redundant-dialogue way, it’s more like a we-paid-for-Venice-now-let’s-make-the-most-of-it way. Maybe it’s just because that when they had spent the budget they were far from having finished the script, so they just had to make the most of what they had. So of course the movie was a quirky little flop. But I’m cool with that. I have no idea what I have missed with all that stuff that never was shot. I can only judge what I was actually shown, and that sure was good enough for me. The exterior shots were made in Venice, so you will hardly ever see a movie with more chocolate for the eyes. There’s Kinski in it, and even when he doesn’t even try to deliver a decent performance he is still Kinski, dominating the screen (except for a few occasions when his co-star Venice steals the scene). So, yes, the movie is trash, and it’s stylish, and I like it!