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After a recent Los Angeles screening of Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, no less a horror authority than Guillermo del Toro was on hand for a Q&A with the director. As part of their conversation, which io9’s Germain Lussier was in the audience to witness, Eggers confirmed something about his updated take on the vampire: Count Orlok doesn’t feed from his victim’s jugular vein; instead, he goes through the stomach.
In Eggers’ words, “[Count Orlok is] going through the navel rather than the heart. Also, obviously, the vampire is drinking from people’s breasts, which is not easy with a breast bone, but because of, like, ‘old hag,’ a lot of the older lore has the vampire—if they are feeding at all and not just smothering you—feeding from your heart blood.”
Though it’s unclear what “older lore” Eggers is referring to precisely, the director is obviously keen to draw a correlation between European vampire mythology and the various supernatural creatures associated with sleep paralysis throughout world folklore, which are commonly depicted as monsters sitting on the chests of their prey. Eggers’ suggestion that a blood-sucking vampire may be responsible is oddly unique, if not biologically impractical.
Admitting Orlok must navigate around the the breast bone in order to reach the heart, Eggers submits vampires must enter through the relatively vulnerable abdomen before, somehow, feeding upwards and into their victim’s hearts. It’s a bit like that old joke stating “the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his fourth and fifth rib,” but without seeing how Orlok feeds for ourselves, we’re a little puzzled how a centuries-old vampire is able to effectively get his fill without completely disemboweling his victims. Which, maybe he does? It certainly sounds like a far cry from the scrape-and-suck variety of vampire we’re used to, evoking instead the Italian zombie gorefests of the 1970s.
Though Focus Features is carefully not revealing Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok in its marketing before the film releases this Christmas, comments from Eggers and Del Toro may allow us to forensically construct an idea of what he looks like.
During their conversation, Eggers reveals his vampire is “red-faced,” stating “we have scenes where his face is actually red, it’s like fire lit so you can’t really see it, but we have blood pooling under his flesh in certain places to try to reference that.” Naturally, this makes us think of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s perpetually blood-stained vampire, the Master, who was dismissed as having “fruit punch mouth” by the title hero in her first season finale.
According to del Toro, Orlok resembles “an obscenely reanimated corpse,” continuing, “I think this is probably one of two films” he’s seem a vampire depicted in such a light, the other being The Vourdalak released earlier this year. Lastly, it’s confirmed Count Orlok has a mustache, reflecting the one Vlad Tepes himself sported. Though Count Dracula had one in Bram Stoker’s original novel, only John Carradine ever portrayed the character with one onscreen (unless you count William Marshall as Prince Mamuwalde in Blacula, which we do).
So, taking this all together, we have an emaciated, gore-soaked revenant with a mustache for Count Orlok 2024, who apparently fully disembowels his victims by reaching upwards and into their stomachs. By the sounds of things, Eggers may have taken his inspiration for the character from Joe D’Amato’s infamous “video nasty” Anthropophagus, starring George Eastman as a mustachioed, corpse-like revenant named Klaus who disembowels his victims gutturally. Borrow from the best, right?
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