Nosferatu’s Take on Count Orlok Sounds Fascinatingly Disgusting
After the recent Los Angeles screening of Robert Eggers’. Nosferatuhorror franchise under Guillermo del Toro who was on hand for a Q&A with the director. As part of their conversation, io9’s Germain Lussier was in the audience to testify, Eggers confirmed something about his updated take on the vampire: Count Orlok doesn’t feed on his victim’s jugular vein; rather, he walks on his stomach.
In the words of Eggers, “[Count Orlok is] which goes through the navel rather than the heart. And, apparently, the vampire drinks from human breasts, which is not easy with the breastbone, but because, like, ‘the old hag,’ a lot of old lore has the vampire-if it eats at all and doesn’t eat. just to cut you off—to eat the blood from your heart.”
Although it is not clear what “old story” Eggers is referring to precisely, the director clearly intends to draw a connection between European vampire myths and the various supernatural beings associated with sleep paralysis throughout the history of the world, often depicted as monsters that live in the chest. of their booty. Eggers’ suggestion that a blood-sucking vampire might be responsible is strikingly different, if not biologically valid.
Acknowledging Orlok must navigate through the breastbone to reach the heart, Eggers channeling vampires must enter through the vulnerable abdomen before, somehow, eating up and into their victim’s heart. It’s like that old joke that “the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his fourth and fifth ribs,” but without seeing how Orlok feeds himself, we wonder how a centuries-old vampire can manage it so well. he is satisfied without taking out his victims completely. Which, maybe he does? It certainly feels like a far cry from the vampire scrape-and-suck variety we’re used to, evoking the Italian zombie gorefests of the 1970s.
While Focus Features didn’t carefully reveal Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok in its marketing before the film’s release this Christmas, comments from Eggers and Del Toro may allow us to form an official idea of what he looks like.
During their interview, Eggers revealed that his vampire has a “red face,” saying that “we have scenes where his face is really red, it’s like a burning fire so you can’t really see it, but we have blood pooling under his flesh in some way. places to try to point that out.” Naturally, this makes us think about it Buffy the Vampire SlayerThe perpetually blood-stained vampire, Master, is dismissed as having a “fruit punch mouth” by the titular hero at the end of his first season.
According to del Toro, Orlok is like “a corpse reborn in obscenity,” continuing, “I think this is probably one of the two films” he seems to be a vampire portrayed in such light, the other Vourdalak released earlier this year. Finally, it is confirmed that Count Orlok has a moustache, showing the one that Vlad Tepes himself sported. Although Count Dracula had one in Bram Stoker’s first novel, only John Carradine has ever portrayed the character on screen (unless you count William Marshall as Prince Mamuwalde in sing, what we do).
So, putting it all together, we have the thin, mustached revenant of Count Orlok 2024, who apparently fully undresses his victims by reaching up to their stomachs. By the sounds of things, Eggers may have taken his inspiration for the character from Joe D’Amato’s “bad video”. Anthropophagusstarring George Eastman as a mustachioed, corpse-like character named Klaus who disembowels his victims. Borrow from the best, right?
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