The case for the mustaches of Nosferatu

The allure that emanates from Count Orlok in Nosferatu it goes beyond skin-deep decay. And that was by design director Robert Eggerswho discussed his choices for moving away from the two Max Schreck classics Nosferatu look and modern sexy vampires.

“The most popular contemporary vampire, Edward Cullen from twilightit’s not scary at all,” Eggers said Golden Derby. “So I wanted to go back to folklore because the history of Balkan and early Slavic vampires is written by or about people who believed that vampires existed and were terrified of them. So clearly, there must be something to fear. And these early popular vampires looked like rotting corpses, more like we think of zombies in current cinema. So it was an exciting theory.”

The last person to play a hot rotting corpse, ironically, is also playing Nosferatuthe human love interest – remember Nicholas Hoult in Warm bodies? Here, it’s just Thomas Hutter: a regular man cuckolded by the power of the rotten rice of centuries.

What can we say? That Bill Skarsgård mustache really makes us advocates for Transylvanian Tom Selleck, who completely transformed our expectations of what a vampire should be and sound like. In that same interview, Eggers continued: “Facial hair, not everyone is a fan of it. But it is, in my opinion, essential … if you look at the portraits of Transylvanian nobles, if you find one without mustache or beard, I think he might have had a beard. But, you know, Vlad the Impaler had a mustache. It’s a very common facial hair style Eastern Europe. So I feel that helped him fit into that world and be a part of it more than anything else. It’s historical accuracy, really.

The film is a total gothic horror that approaches its inevitability to succumb to an overly dramatic dead Transylvanian nobleman – who has a penchant for making life hell for everyone around the object of his affection if he it does not succeed. Skarsgård shared with Esquire that the show “took its toll” and that “it was like conjuring pure evil. It took me a while to shake off the demon that had been conjured up in me.

Thank the gods of horror, Bill was a freak and did the work to make himself one of the best character actors on the screen, proving that vampires can still be seductive without the glistening chest or luscious closed d ‘gold of his brother Alexander, who played the vampire Eric in True Blood.

“He played with a sexual fetish about the power of the monster and what that appeal has for you,” Bill Skarsgård said of his take on Orlok. “I hope you’ll be a little bit attracted to it and disgusted by your attraction at the same time.” And on Anne Rice, I swear he and Eggers did it. Gross, Lestat (both of them) look like a cute chibi character compared to Skarsgård. It also seems hypnotically powerful. Seriously, magic? Bill surpasses the tenor intonations of Ralph Ineson in a film that Ralph Ineson is in with a deep operatic voice that shakes the loins. How else can you explain the somatic trances that Lily-Rose Depp performed as Ellen Hutter?

Orlok is really an appetite. Well, if you squint hard enough Skarsgård’s eyes permeate through the disheveled side-swoop on his infectious scabbing face. We understand why Ellen bounced to death on this, the gorgeously grotesque mutually assured destruction of beauty and the beast. A story as old as time indeed.

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