Real horrorshow
If you’re a paid-up fan of cinema horror you probably also qualify for nerd status where its historical development is concerned.
In which case you’ll know a lot rides on two key literary texts: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published anonymously in 1818, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which hit the book stands in 1897.
In terms of cinema horror, there’s a mere 25 year gap between Dracula’s publication and its first outing on the big screen. The filmmaker we have to thank for that is FW Murnau, whose Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie Des Grauens premiered in the Marble Hall at Berlin’s Zoological Garden on March 4, 1922.
Nosferatu, as it’s known, remains one of the most influential films ever made, endlessly riffed on, nodded to and, if you’re arthouse horror director Robert Eggers, judged ripe for re-imagining.
Eggers’ Nosferatu, follow up to his 2022 smash hit The Northman, is essentially a remake of Murnau’s film and features Bill Skarsgård (brother of Alexander, who starred in The Northman) alongside Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Simon McBurney and Eggers regulars Ralph Ineson and Willem Dafoe.
Hoult and Dafoe both have interesting (and in Dafoe’s case relevant) experience of vampire flicks. Hoult played the titular Renfield alongside Nicolas Cage’s Dracula in last year’s comedy curio, set in modern day New Orleans. Dafoe starred in 2000’s Shadow Of The Vampire, a film about the making of Murnau’s Nosferatu. He played that film’s unforgettable lead, the great German silent actor Max Schreck.
Nosferatu is slated for a Christmas release, but the first trailer dropped on Monday amid much excitement. “Looking set to deliver all-out gothic horror on a grand scale,” cooed film magazine Empire.
Following on the heels of Eggers’s take on Nosferatu comes a remake of Frankenstein by horror maestro Guillermo del Toro. But where Eggers shot his work in Prague, the Mexican director is heading to Scotland this summer following principal photography in Toronto. Last year he shared pictures of himself scouting for locations in Glasgow and Edinburgh, so there’s every chance we’ll see the film’s stars in one or other of those places over the coming months.
Among the cast are Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi, who’ll be the best-looking monster ever, and Oscar Isaac as his creator, Victor Frankenstein. Third billing goes to Mia Goth, fast becoming the 21st century’s Scream Queen of choice thanks to her roles in the fabulous X franchise (next instalment, MaXXXine, is released in the US on July 5, by the way).
You can read more on Frankenstein’s Scottish sojourn here as well as my interview with film historian Christopher Frayling, author of Vampire Cinema: The First One Hundred Years.
Frankenstein will air on Netflix but where will you watch Nosferatu? I’m hoping to settle back in a cinema which, appropriately enough, will itself be raised from the dead pretty soon – Edinburgh’s much-loved and much-missed Filmhouse. The galvanising force behind its imminent resurrection is not the electrical sort generated by a comically large switch but the kind which results from tireless campaigning, well-publicised rounds of crowdfunding and sizeable grants of public money. Either way, its return is to be celebrated.
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Other cinemas outwith the world of the multiplex are also suffering in the current climate and some which close may not reopen, however. Following the loss of the Oban Phoenix Cinema earlier this month, you can read Derek McArthur's in-depth analysis of the health of Scotland’s cinema exhibition landscape here.
Weave got news
An unsung hero of Scotland’s visual arts scene is Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios, home to the historic and world-renowned Dovecot tapestry studio.
Its weavers have worked with some of the giants from the world of painting over the years by helping them turn their designs into tapestries. One who has benefitted from their skills and expertise is Turner Prize winner Chris Ofili, the Manchester-born artist best known for his use of resin, glitter and elephant dung.
The Caged Bird’s Song is a huge woven triptych designed by Ofili which Dovecot Studios worked on between 2014 and 2017. It was a commission for The Clothworkers’ Company of London, an artisanal guild founded in 1528, but it has now returned to Scotland on loan for the first time and from Friday it can be seen on display at Dovecot Studios.
You can find more on The Caged Bird’s Song as well as The Herald’s survey of other must-see exhibitions here.
And finally
One of your correspondent’s more memorable assignments for this newspaper was a trip to Brussels to meet a young Scottish woman who had run away to join the circus – Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil, one of the best known contemporary circus companies.
Read more:
Herald Arts | The perils of turning personal trauma into art at the Fringe
She was loving the experience and, though it’s almost a cliché, had found a second family of sorts among the artful tumblers, acrobats and jugglers who were her day-to-day companions and workmates.
Coming in the other direction – from continental Europe to Scotland – is Ukrainian clown La Loka, now a fixture of Zippos Circus with whom she is now undertaking her first tour of red-nosed duty. You can read Donald Erskine’s interview with her here.
Elsewhere Brian Beacom has been catching up with River City actor-turned-theatre director Darren Brownlie ahead of the curtain going up this week on a production at Glasgow’s Òran Mór of Mumbelina – a summer panto, if you will. You can read the interview here.
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