DrPhibes1964

Thankfully David Lynch was contractually obligated to deliver a film that ran no more two hours in length. It's actually two hours and one minute. I was eager to see this footage that had long believed lost and thought it might contain some gems. This was excruciating to sit through. Even at just under an hour it feels twice as long. Those gems never materialized and all I could think was how the inclusion of these scenes would have destroyed the film. Sometimes a director needs to be kept on a leash and not allow his impulses run wild. We'd see this in several of his later films. Had this footage been included the tone of the film would have radically different and some of ambiguities would have lost. In one scene Jeffrey is at college and watches as a male student is on the verge of assaulting a female student and only when they hear someone calling for them from the party on the next floor does Jeffrey stop it. This ruins a key line later in the film. Sandy says to Jeffrey: I don't know whether you're a detective or a pervert. That earlier scene has already answered this question. We already understand his penchant for voyeurism from his time trapped in the closet in Dorothy Vallen's apartment and witnesses her treatment by Frank Booth. The scene at the college becomes redundant. There is a very long sequence at the nightclub while Sandy and Jeffrey wait for Dorothy. It's a talent contest. It feels like something that would have been more at home in the second season of Twin Peaks. It's good that this footage has been found and people can watch it, but I doubt that it'll inspire anyone to want to see a director's cut with all these scenes reinstated. I doubt that I'll ever watch this again.

At several points while watching this I had to restrain myself laughing out laugh. It's silly from beginning to end. I was expecting some new take on the story but it became just a compendium of all the cliches of the genre. From the hype surrounding the portrayal of Count Orlock I was under the impression that it was going to be a radically different interpretation. The fact that he gets so little screen time and keeps mostly to the shadows seems to suggest that this was just a PR stunt to lure people into a film that the general population would avoid. It's not really that radical as one is lead to believe and resembles the description of Dracula of the Bram Stoker novel. I remember little about the film now. Even as I was exiting the theatre the film was already evaporating from my mind. It's forgettable. The original F. W. Murnau version is still by far the best of the three. The Werner Herzog remake has some good moments but I still wonder if it's a satire of the Murnau film. The performances are over the top and oftentimes comes across as more comical than scary. Of this third (and hopefully last) version of Nosferatu I don't have much to offer in ways of a conventional review. It's really bad but if you want a laugh this might offer a few. The CGI effects are particularly poor. I cannot recall a single scene that sticks out. It has nothing new to offer.