Kickstarter Spotlight: ‘Nosferatu’ Starring Doug Jones

Chances are you’ve seen, or at least heard of, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror if you’re a movie fan. The 1922 silent film is one of the first feature horror movies ever made, and the first featuring a vampire—an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.

With his currently running Kickstarter campaign, filmmaker David Lee Fisher hopes to give Nosferatu the “visual remix” treatment, which may sound strange but it is quite interesting. He has an intriguing plan, lead star, and some crew in place, and he’s not seeking all that much money to make it. But they do still have a ways to go before reaching their goal, and time is running out. That’s when we fine folks come in!

Continue reading for info on the project, and to see their Kickstarter video, which shows off the unusual way they will “remix” Nosferatu.

So who would play the iconic main character, Count Orlock? It’s not an easy task to top what Max Schreck brought to the table in 1922, and Willem Dafoe was about as good as you can be as the character in 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire. But when you think of that tall, slender look of Orlock one actor immediately comes to mind: Doug Jones.

Not everyone will know Jones by name, but I assure you, chances are you know who he is. Jones has appeared in many movies and TV shows, usually as characters requiring hours of work in the makeup chair before shooting. He was a clown in Batman Returns. He was Billy Butherson, the corpse with his mouth sewn shut in Hocus Pocus. He was Pencilhead in Mystery Men. He was one of the Gentlemen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was Abe Sapien in Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy movies. He was the Faun AND the Pale Man in del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. He was the Silver Surfer in Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. He was the creepy Ice Cream Man in Legion. You get the idea.

Back in 2005, Fisher first tried this “visual remix” style of filmmaking on the 1920 horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which also starred Jones. It stood out due to the fact that it was made using a unique technique, shot entirely in front of a green screen. New actors perform the roles, but some of the backgrounds and scenery from the original film are superimposed back into the remix. This allowed them to effectively remake the silent film with dialogue and music and such, while also keeping significant pieces of the 1920 original part of the movie.

The video below shows what this process looks like. And with a decade having passed since that project, using these same unorthodox methods for Nosferatu could lead to a very cool looking new take on a classic when it’s all said and done.

If this info and the video below pique your interest, do be sure to head over to the project’s Kickstarter page to learn much more, check out all the reward tiers, and see more videos and some concept comparisons and such.

As of the writing of this spotlight, they’ve raised almost $35,000 of their $60,000 goal. But with only seven short days left to raise the rest, any help from anyone interested in a unique project like this would be helping out big time.

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