13 Days of First-Time Frights: Nosferatu

13 Days of First-Time Frights is a series of reviews for October 2019 where Douglas Laman, in the spirit of Halloween, watches and writes about thirteen horror movies he's never seen before. These reviews will be posted each Tuesday and Thursday as well as the last three Wednesdays of October 2019.

Entry #10: Nosferatu

Remember kids, plagiarism is wrong...except if you're writer Henrik Galeen and director F.W. Murnau and the estate of Bram Stoker has refused you the rights to make your own movie adaptation of Dracula. Then, plagiarism is A-OK because you get movies like Nosferatu. That's actually how this horror classic came to be, upon being told they couldn't have Dracula, Murnau pulled a Bender and decided to "make my own [Dracula]...with blackjack! And hookers!" The result was something clearly derivative of Stoker's original Dracula text, but also had enough of its own visual flourishes to ensure that Nosferatu would etch its own unique place in cinematic history.

In The World Of La Jetee, Time Travel Can't Solve Everything

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #25
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #50 (tied with City Lights and Ugetsu)

And now it's time for the only short film on the Sight & Sound Greatest 50 Films List, La Jetee. This one's a French short film from director Chris Marker, one that uses high-concept notions of time travel to probe into universal human experiences, just like all of the great time travel movies such as Back To The Future, Looper, The Terminator and NOT Hot Tub Time Machine 2. This one's use of time travel hews closer to the likes of the Terminator movies in terms of tone and setting though due to it utilizing time travel in a post-apocalyptic setting where hope has become scarce and time travel is seen as a last hope to help the human race.