A man is sent to the Carpathian Mountains where he is to meet a client, an investor looking for property. Once there, he realizes something is not quite right with his host. As he further investigates lead him to believe that this Count Dracula must be [Cue Dramatic Music and Lightning Crash] Klaus Kinski? Yep it sure is because when I want to kick back with a classic vampire flick, well, let’s be honest. My first choice is Bela Lugosi, but right after that is today’s creepy gem. Now I know many folks love the Hammer films with Christopher Lee, and personally I prefer Jess Franco’s 1970 Count Dracula with Lee. There is even a few people I know who like Gary Oldman or Frank Langella, and I have a place in my heart for both of those (Keanu’s accent and Langella’s hair withstanding.) Once in a blue moon, I might even throw on F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu, but my second choice for a Dracula tale will always be the strange, atmospheric retelling of Murnau’s film, Werner Herzog‘s Nosferatu: Phanton der Nacht or Nosferatu the Vampire (1979).
Let’s get back to the action already in progress, so Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is stuck in the Carpathian Mountains with Count Dracula, and he’s sold him a run down property conveniently adjacent to his own. It doesn’t take long before the Count has loaded up his coffins full of soil, and embarks on the long voyage to his new home. He brings along a few friends with him, rats diseased with the plague. When he arrives in his new home, the German port city of Wismar, death begins to spread immediately, and the Count sets his sights on Harker’s beautiful wife Lucy (Isabella Adjani). Eventually, Harker makes his way home though he no longer remembers his wife. Lucy tries fruitlessly to warn the townsfolk of the Count, but no one, not even Dr. Van Helsing (Walter Ladenghast), would believe her. With no other choice, Lucy takes matters into her own hands and sacrifices herself to defeat the vampire.
It would be an impossible task to measure Herzog’s film against Murnau’s innovative early horror. They both share a mastery of the visual style of film, tell their stories economically making the most of atmosphere to horrify, and share a singularly strange leading man. (Talk about the impossible, try comparing Kinski and Schreck.) Essentially they are the same film except one of them has the added bonuses of color and sound, but outside of those obvious similarities, the two films could not be more different. Now, I’m not here to talk about Murnau, and I think the vast majority of horror fans have at least some experience with his Nosferatu (if not get thee to Internet Archive pronto) so I’m not too worried about spoiler as the plots are near identical. The real differences come from the cast, and the director who is making each film. If there is one thing that is true about Wener Herzog, it is that he is a man of singular vision.
This was the second of five collaborations between Herzog and leading man Klaus Kinski, and this is a perfect example of why their partnership worked (on screen at least). In Herzog’s film, the vampire is not merely the source of plague, death and evil (Though the film certainly exploit’s the literal translation of Nosferatu, “plague carrier”). This Count Dracula is a tragic figure who you can genuinely have pathos for even as he’s destroying a whole town with his very presence. I really think it is Kinski’s performance and his sad, sad looking eyes that make the character and really gives a different tone to the film. Herzog also exploited the fact that in the end Mernau’s film deviated from the book casting Harker’s wife as the heroine of the tale. Isabella Adjani is both a stunning woman and gives an incredible performance in her role. There are a number of other smaller performances I quite enjoy especially Roland Topor as Renfield. (You can read more about my thoughts on Topor and all the Renfield’s here.) I should have probably said, but there were two versions of the film made simultaneously in German and English, and while both are very good, for this review I watched the German version.
One of the themes that I have never seen explored in Herzog’s Nosferatu is the battle between science and superstition. The townsfolk won’t hear of a menace like a vampire in their city and so forth. This theme comes up repeatedly in the film, and it often strikes me that Herzog may not have just been talking about the death of folklore. By the late ‘70’s Star Wars had already hit, and movies would never be the same again. Herzog, a man who loves the artistry of film deeply, didn’t rush headlong into the future, but instead reached for the past. He saw that science had changed filmmaking, and that at once it was a scary thing and not. After all, when Murnau made his film, it was science and art changing the way we perceive the world too. So along with his story there is a message, accept change and remember the past... or it could kill you. Is that not exactly what as moviegoers we want when a film we hold dear is remade?
So there we have it Number 3 on my list, and I really can’t wait to get into the last two picks on the countdown. I’m sure plenty of you have figured out what they’re going to be, but I won’t spoil the surprise. Instead, I’ll just say that I’m please as hell to have to check out these movies again. Hey, in case you missed it, don’t forget to go back and check out Matt from Chuck Norris Ate My Baby as he counts down his 13 favorite remakes, and look out tomorrow around noon for the last Halloween Overachievers list, this time from my good friend Emily. Until then I’m going to sign off, and have a glass of wine. Who am I kidding? I never drink….awww, you know the rest!
It’s been a couple of weeks since last we checked in with our old friend Klaus Kinski. So tonight, I want to take you on an amazing journey with Klaus, Harvey Keitel, and an alien who came all the way across the Universe to get nearly literally nagged to death. I’m getting ahead of myself though, but this is one I’m really excited to talk about. Not only does it have one of Kinski’s strangest performances, it is also one of the best pieces of trash cinema this here Bugg has laid his eyes on in a while. Now I’m sure some of you know the film, but this was my first viewing, and it will be the first of many, many times. Rarely does a movie go from my hand, to the player, and onto my shortlist of favorite watches, but Star Knight somehow did it.
As the film begins, Boecius (Klaus Kinski), the magician asks the gods to summon an angel to give him “the secret of secrets”, the way to eternal life. The nearby villagers begin to complain they are being attacked by a dragon and are not inclined to listen to the local nobleman Klever (Harvey Keitel) when he tries to quell the unrest. In the castle, the Lord is unhappy with Klever for not being able to control the peons, and he is not inclined to make Klever a knight or let him marry his daughter Princess Alba (Maria Lamor). The Princess is in agreement with that, but she's tired of being locked in the castle. She tries to runaway and disappears in the woods which makes people believe she’s been eaten by the dragon, but she discovers there is no dragon at all. She is taken aboard a strange metal ship piloted by an alien named IX (Miguel Bose) who she quickly falls in love with. When the alien in his metal spacesuit returns the Princess to her grieving father, they all think he’s the answer to their greatest desires. The Lord and Boecius believe he has the answer to eternal life, the Princess thinks she’s found her love, and Klever believes he can become a knight by defeating him.
One of the things that make Star Knight such an enjoyable mess is the schizophrenic nature of the production. From the opening screen that tells of the alchemist’s quest to transmute gold and unlock the sequel to eternal life, it seems like you’re going to be treated to a straightforward fantasy film. Then not ten minutes in you’re introduced to Harvey Keitel as Klever, the Brooklyn accented would be knight. You don’t have to be very clever to realize quite quickly that Klever’s name is supposed to be ironic. It’s not much of a joke, but it lets you in on the fact that they are not completely on the level with this one. As the film progresses, it begins to feel more and more like the bargain basement version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This becomes very evident with the character of The Green Knight. He vows to stop people from crossing a bridge, but he never seems to make it work. For my money his scenes, especially the first time he fails in his duty because he’s taking a whiz, are some of the best in the film.
Now we’re here today to talk about Klaus Kinski, but before I get around to him, I have to spend a few minutes talking about Harvey “Klever” Keitel. This is the same Harvey Keitel that appeared in Taxi Driver and Mean Streets prancing around in a haircut that looked like Price Valiant by way of Eddie Rabbit. It is an incredibly strange experience to watch this actor who has become a genre icon saying things like “forsooth” and call his armor “ah-mah”. The casting of Mr. Keitel has to be one of the reasons that this film transformed from a serious fantasy to an unabashed comedy. There’s just no way to take Keitel seriously as a knight, but for a comedy, his over the top, anachronistic performance is a perfect fit.
Now onto Mr. Kinski. While his performance as Boecius is solid, it’s also rather disturbing. The brooding Kinski is no where to be found, and replacing him was the perpetually smiley little fellow. Sure, in some of his films, I’ve seen him crack a smile here and there, but never have I seen Kinski perform while looking so happy. It was as unnerving as some of his more sinister roles I assure you. All kidding aside, Kinski is very entertaining, and his incredible happiness actually adds to the humorous tone of the film. There’s also one other strange thing about Mr. Kinski, but it's not his doing. The DVD I purchased was from the Westlake Entertainment Group, and on the front, there is clearly a picture of Kinski from Aguirre, Wrath of God. Needless to say Kinski’s healing magician does not wear a conquistador’s helmet anywhere in this film. This is just the first of several problems with the disk, but more on that in a few.
Now I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to talk about the Princess and the alien IX. This poor alien. He traveled all the way across the galaxy only to meet a demanding, bitchy gal like the Princess. Now the Star Knight can only communicate with the Princess with a telepathy that sounds like whale song, but somehow he explains to her that he can’t take off his space suit or he’ll die. Repeatedly she tells him that she can’t love him if he doesn’t take it off. He explains it to her again. She tells him that if he loved her he’d take it off. This goes on time and time again in the film, and if I was a spaceman, I’d be beaming her down to the planet and getting the hell out of there. That or figuring out the telepathic whale song way to say, “Listen, woman, I will die. What part of that don’t you understand?”
Star Knight's actual title is El caballero del dragon, and it was a Spanish production directed by Fernando Colomo who also wrote and produced the film. I would really like to look into this man’s head to figure out what film he was intending to make. More than that, I would like to slap him around for letting some terrible copies of this film hit the market. I want to go back to the aforementioned Westlake Entertainment Group DVD. If you want to see this film, avoid this pressing at all costs, and pick up the DVD issued by Cheezy Flicks instead. The Westlake DVD was maddening to watch as the dialog was completely unsynched, and sometimes it seemed to be as much as four of five seconds off. Add to that a very soft VHS transfer, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
It really says something about Star Knight that I watched it anyway and ended up really enjoying it despite the viewing experience. There is no doubt in my mind that I will end up purchasing the other pressing of Star Knight, and I can’t wait to watch it when the dialog and actors mouths match up. This is one to watch. Just don’t let Mr. Kinski’s grin disturb you too much.
Bugg Rating
Unfortunately the closest thing I could find for a trailer for this one is the opening credits. They won't give you much of idea of what this film is like, but here it is never the less.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to my newest feature, An Evening with Klaus Kinski. For the next two months I’ll be talking about some of my favorite Kinski films, and a few new ones that I haven’t seen yet. When it comes to actors or directors, I love someone with a big personality, and they just don’t get much bigger than Klaus. His performances are always larger than life, and his off screen antics were sometimes even crazier. In the course of tonight’s film alone, Kinski shot off a man’s fingertip, almost killed another with a sword, and cause the director to threaten to shoot him. The film I’m speaking of is Aguirre, Wrath of God, his first with frequent collaborator Werner Herzog. His fevered performance made me a die hard fan, and I hope that my review will encourage a few folks to check out this flick.
The titular Aguirre, played by Klaus Kinski, is part of Fernando Pizarro’s expedition into the rainforests of South American in search of El Dorado, the fabled lost city of gold. When Pizarro finds his group hopelessly lost, he sends out a group of forty men to scout ahead for supplies or information on their quest. He gives leadership of the group to Don Pedro (Ruy Guerra) who is accompanied by his wife Inez (Helena Rojo). Pizarro also dispatches Aguirre, his daughter Flores (Cecilia Rivera), Brother Gaspar (Del Negro), and Guzman (Peter Berling) to join the exploratory force. Almost as soon as they depart, they find themselves beset with troubles from the raging rapids and Indian attacks. Aguirre soon undermines Don Pedro’s authority causing to the leader being shot and his second in command being imprisoned. Aguirre plans to have the easily controlled Guzman installed as the “Emperor of El Dorado”, but soon Guzman is caught up in his part and becomes mad with power. As they continue down the river, things go from really bad to much, much worse, and Aguirre’s quest for fame and power leads all to a bitter end.
Aguirre, Wrath of God may sound like a historical epic, but don’t let that discourage you from the film. While the setting may be the 16th century Amazonian jungle, the film’s real journey is an unsettling decent into madness. In some ways, it could even be considered a horror film exploring the horrors that erupt in men’s minds in a quest for glory and power. Aguirre, Wrath of God made its debut in 1972, the same year Unberto Lenzi delved into the jungles with his film The Man from Deep River and kicked off the Italian cannibal genre. While Aguirre and his companions have a run in with cannibals and quite a few hostile native peoples, Herzog stops short of graphic violence and cannibalistic mayhem choosing to augment his films with creepy imagery. Aguirre is also set apart from its Italian counterparts is the lack of animal violence. In fact, it was quite the opposite as Kinski was bitten by the monkeys that shared one of his climatic scenes. Lenzi and Herzog made two vastly dissimilar films, but both involve western peoples invading the primordial jungles and finding themselves in over their heads.
Werner Herzog first came up with the idea for the film when he read half a page about Lope de Aguirre in a friend's book. From there, the film was written in at a fevered pace while Herzog was on the road with his football team, but his first draft was destroyed when a team mate puked on it. Herzog hurled the pages out the window of the bus they were traveling in, and unable to recall what he had written, he began again. The finished product had little to nothing to do with historical fact. As the film begins, it purports to be the recollection of Brother Gaspar from his journals. While the historical Gaspar was part of an expedition with Pizarro, Aguirre, Don Pedro, and others were part of a later group searching for El Dorado. Instead of an ill fated attempt to form a new country in El Dorado, the real Aguirre devised a scheme to oust the government of Peru instead. Herzog’s film was a pastiche of historical events, but he was not looking to make a document. Instead the director wanted to talk about modern issues of fame, power, and corruption through the lens of the past.
When Herzog set out to make this film, his first choice for the role of Aguirre was an actor who stayed with his family as a boarder, Klaus Kinski. After reading the script, Kinski was thrilled by the script, but the mercurial actor had his own ideas on how to play the part. Kinski wanted to portray Aguirre as a raving madman, but Herzog favored a more subdued, threatening performance. In order to get what he wanted, Herzog deliberately would irritate Kinski before a scene was shot working him into a furor. When Klaus’ had calmed down, the cameras would finally roll. Herzog got what he wanted, and the film is better for it. Kinski’s Aguirre is a man full of menace that lingers just beneath his placid laconic demeanor. This performance is essential for the film, and Kinski was rarely better than in this first collaboration with Herzog.
As I mentioned earlier, the production was not without its problems, and they mostly stemmed from conflict between Kinski and everyone around Kinski. When he got irritated by noise on the set from a group of card players, he fired a gun into the hut the game was going on in and shot off one of the player’s fingertips. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, while filming a scene where Aguirre is driving his men, he hit one of the other actors over the head with his sword. If it was not for the small protection of the actor’s conquistador helmet, Kinski would have killed the man. The ultimate confrontation on the set came when the actor tried to leave the film. The story goes that Herzog followed Kinski, and brandishing a gun, Herzog declared that he would sooner shoot Kinski and them himself than let the actor leave. Kinski returned to the set.
While Klaus demands your attention as his limps across the screen, he did not have a monopoly on great performances on this film. Peter Berling’s Guzman provides some much needed comic relief, Ruy Guerra brings Don Pedro the essence of stoic nobility, and Del Negro’s Brother Gaspar is the guide though this world. Yet the other great performance comes from one of the most understated characters and characters. I was truly enchanted by Helena Rojo as Don Pedro’s long suffering wife Inez. Not only does she possess a unique natural beauty, she also gives a subtle performance that relies on pure acting more than dialog. I could read her worry, her fear, and her anger in every frame of film she appeared. Looking over her catalog of films, I don’t recognize any of the credit’s the Mexican actress has to her name, but I will surely be on the prowl for anything starring this beautiful and skilled actress.
One of the most astounding things about Aguirre, Wrath of God is that Werner Herzog did not plan a single shot in the film. Instead, shooting with a 35mm camera he liberated from film school, Herzog and cinematographer Thomas Mauch set up each shot on the fly. To have captured the stunning panoramas and intimately framed close up that the film contains is nothing short of a miracle. Mauch and Herzog would collaborate on ten films during their career, and Aguirre was the fifth of these. These two must have had an extremely good working relationship and a skilled eye for their work. The film is beautiful, but it also creates an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere in the wide open expanses of the jungle’s river basin. This is also a great score to the film by German electronic musician Popol Vuh who would score several more Herzog films. The score reminds me a bit of the works of Claudio Simonetti, and while it would seem counterintuitive to have such a modern sounding score, it adds to the nightmarish quality of the film.
If you can get past the period garb, and those peaked conquistador helmets are silly as hell, then you get rewarded by a film that plays out like an alternate universe version of Apocalypse Now. In fact, Coppola has stated that he got quite a bit of inspiration from Herzog’s film when he made his own decent into jungle madness. I really can’t recommend this film highly enough. If you’re unfamiliar with Herzog or Kinski, this is a great place to start, and I think lovers of genre film will film plenty to like here. In weeks to come, my further selections from Kinski’s catalog will mostly not be as high minded or artistically driven as this film, but, as you can tell, I had a few things to say about Aguirre. I hope you all enjoyed it, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday for another Evening with Klaus Kinski.
Bugg Rating
Here's the trailer, and it seems to be dubbed into English. I've only watched the film in the original German with subtitles before. I always enjoy watching Spanish conquerers speaking German.
There are a lot of things that movies can teach you, and some are lessons to live by. Things like don’t piss off mutant rednecks, stay out of creepy houses even if the door is open, and never ever bend down to look into anything. There are occasions where the lesson that the film needs to convey seems more like it should be common knowledge. Never ever move into a place if your landlord is Klaus Kinski.
Crawlspace (1986) starring Klaus Kinski, Talia Balsam, Tane McClure, Kenneth Robert Shippy. Directed by David Schmoeller.
There’s an apartment for rent at Dr. Karl Gunther’s boarding house, but that’s only because Karl (Kinksi) has just dispatched his last tenant, a beautiful young woman who he “really liked”. In fact all the residents of the apartment house are young women, and Karl likes to keep an eye on them, a really close eye. He looks in on the girls by moving around the air duct before retiring to write in his journal where he catalogs the murders he commits and his fascination with death.
At one time, Karl had been a prominent doctor who practiced humane euthanasia, but after discovering about his fathers past as an executioner for Nazi Germany, he begins to find himself following in his father’s footsteps and leaving a path of dead bodies. Now he watches and waits, fashioning an array of deadly toys and traps, ready to kill and ready to die.
The Bugg Picture
I’ve been checking out a lot of Kinski lately for an article I have coming up soon for BthroughZ, and a couple of days ago I had my first viewing of the Herzog classic Aguirre, Wrath of God. So with a few of the notoriously ornery German’s films under my belt, I thought it was high time I watched one of the films that Kinski did for the paycheck. There are quite a few of these, but I had heard stories of the difficulties Puppet Master director David Schoeller had with the actor. In fact he made a short film on the subject called Please Kill Mr. Kinski which can be found on the Tromadance Vol. 1 DVD or just watch it below where I found it on YouTube.
So with the notoriety that the director experienced with this film, I expected the worst going in. What I forgot was that however difficult the actor might be, Klaus Kinski has the ability to bring up the quality of a film with his performance, and he proves it once again here. Karl Gunther turns out to be a very interesting character study and a memorable screen madman. Wisely, the film doesn’t even really bother to bring much characterization to the Doctor’s victims, instead giving Kinski plenty of breathing room to bring the creepy. And bring it he does. Whether he’s torturing the tongue-less girl he keeps in the attic, watching the Soap Opera actress who lives there sing a song, or burning his hand just for kicks, Gunther is full of menace and perversity which nearly seems to emanate from Kinski’s blue eyes. Especially powerful are the scenes that follow his murders when Karl plays Russian roulette. Each time when he escapes self imposed death, he simply says, “So be it.” These scenes illustrate Gunther’s loose connection to the mortal coil, and further go to show how obsessed with the nature of death he has become.
The film itself is another beast apart from Kinki’s presence. Many of the scenes without him tend to drag on, but once the action gets started and the conventional slasher elements kick in, it turns out to be a fun and unpredictable ride. Schmoeller even manages to work in some of the dark humor present in his films The Puppet Master and Netherworld. Crawlspace was of course also brought to you by Charles Band and his pre-Full Moon venture, Empire. So that’ll give you some idea of what we’re dealing with here. This is a difficult star in a movie with the shoestring budget, and while the former enhanced the film, the latter is where it falters badly.
Little of the diabolical Doctors violent sprees get shown, and while he keeps trophies of his kills, they look no better than what you could buy at the local 5 and Dime. So here we are presented with Kinksi as a psycho, deviant doctor, but in essence we have to take his word for it. I would have loved to see the gore meter set up a notch on this one, and if it had happened, you may well have seen something really classic.
As it is, Crawlspace is a middle of the road film. If you’re into watching Kinski do his thing, then that’s exactly what you’ll get, and chances are you’ll enjoy. It adds a special layer to the film knowing how difficult Kinski was with I director so I’ll give a paraphrased example. After several days of already strained shooting, David Schmoeller called cut to one of Klaus’ scenes. The actor doubled over and held his head screaming “Cut! Cut! Cut!” over and over again. So the director, trying to keep his star happy, inquires what is wrong to which Kinski replies, “I’ve made over 200 films and every time always directors calling cut, cut, cut!” Schmoller while barely retaining his composure says, “Well, Klaus, what would you prefer I say.” Kinski rose up and looked at his director, “Say nothing, and I will stop when I am finished.”
