WEBVTT - Is There a Real Legend About Nosferatu?

0:00:01.960 --> 0:00:04.480
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,

0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:10.760
<v Speaker 1>Hey brain Stuff Lauren vog obam Here. Death was not

0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:14.320
<v Speaker 1>the end for poor Lucy was Stern Wrath, a character

0:00:14.360 --> 0:00:18.400
<v Speaker 1>in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. She fell victim to the

0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:22.239
<v Speaker 1>book's aristocratic villain while stealing her blood. Night after night,

0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:26.960
<v Speaker 1>Count Dracula of Transylvania slowly drained the life out of Lucy,

0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:29.840
<v Speaker 1>but that was only the beginning for the young woman's

0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:34.080
<v Speaker 1>killer also transformed her into an undead vampire like himself.

0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:37.760
<v Speaker 1>A brief reign of terror ensued at the graveyard. Then

0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:42.199
<v Speaker 1>Lucy's living fiancee, Arthur, and his companions, including the vampire

0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:46.360
<v Speaker 1>savvy dr Abraham van Helsing, found her awake near her tomb.

0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:49.880
<v Speaker 1>She was finally destroyed for good after trying to lure

0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:54.440
<v Speaker 1>Arthur into a lover's embrace. Had Arthur accepted her kiss,

0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:57.920
<v Speaker 1>Dr Van Helsing explained in his broken English, the morning

0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.200
<v Speaker 1>suitor would have quote become no farratu as they call

0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:04.160
<v Speaker 1>it in Eastern Europe. The nosferatu do not die like

0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.360
<v Speaker 1>the bee when he stinged once. He's only stronger, and

0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:11.399
<v Speaker 1>being stronger have yet more power to work evil. In

0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:15.920
<v Speaker 1>the novel Dracula, Stoker treats nosferatu as a synonym for vampire.

0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:19.440
<v Speaker 1>Countless horror writers took his lead, using the two terms

0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:23.040
<v Speaker 1>interchangeably over the next hundred plus years, including Treehouse of

0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:28.680
<v Speaker 1>Terror four episode of The Simpsons. Like Van Helsing, Stoker

0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:31.880
<v Speaker 1>seems to have believed that nosferatu was an authentic word

0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.679
<v Speaker 1>of Eastern European origin, but the evidence tells another story.

0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.840
<v Speaker 1>No s farratu is probably a mistranslation of a Romanian

0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:44.240
<v Speaker 1>or Greek term that scholars have yet pinned down. Whatever

0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:48.400
<v Speaker 1>its origins were, horror media gave nos ferratu a new meaning,

0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:51.680
<v Speaker 1>and it became fodder for some of the scariest vampire

0:01:51.720 --> 0:01:56.240
<v Speaker 1>stories ever to rise from the shadows. Nineteenth century travel

0:01:56.240 --> 0:02:00.280
<v Speaker 1>writer Emily Girard was talking vampires well before d Kilo

0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.680
<v Speaker 1>went to print. Born in Scotland in eighteen forty nine,

0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.400
<v Speaker 1>she emerged as a novelist and literary critic, but history

0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:12.440
<v Speaker 1>mostly remembers her nonfiction works on European folklore. Gerard's eighteen

0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:17.839
<v Speaker 1>eighty five essay Transylvanian Superstitions contains the following passage. More

0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:22.200
<v Speaker 1>decidedly evil, however, is the vampire or no sfaratu, in

0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.560
<v Speaker 1>whom every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does

0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.880
<v Speaker 1>in heaven or hell. The problem is no Sfaratu wasn't

0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.200
<v Speaker 1>a real word, not in Romanian and not in any

0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:37.680
<v Speaker 1>known Eastern European language or dialect. Gerard might have bungled

0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:42.160
<v Speaker 1>the Romanian word nasu ferrite, which means unbearable. It's also

0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:46.760
<v Speaker 1>possible that she misinterpreted and misspelled neckara tool, a Romanian

0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:50.480
<v Speaker 1>term for devil, Or maybe Girard was thinking of the

0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:55.560
<v Speaker 1>Greek word nasophos, defined as a plague carrier. A nineteenth

0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:59.880
<v Speaker 1>century travel piece Torturing Spirits in Romanian popular belief makes

0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.400
<v Speaker 1>a similar mistake. The text mentions the nosferat, whom the

0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:08.200
<v Speaker 1>author calls the most dangerous torturing spirit of Romanian folklore,

0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.240
<v Speaker 1>but there's no proof that he was ever exposed to

0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:13.840
<v Speaker 1>this concept out in the field. The author may have

0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:18.600
<v Speaker 1>borrowed the word nos farat from Gerard's writings. Bram Stoker

0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.560
<v Speaker 1>seemingly did. Most horror historians credit Gerard's essay and her

0:03:22.560 --> 0:03:26.640
<v Speaker 1>eight book The Land Beyond the Forest, Facts, Figures and

0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.200
<v Speaker 1>Fancies from Transylvania with introducing Stoker to the term nos

0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:33.640
<v Speaker 1>farrat to, but the word only makes two appearances in

0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:36.800
<v Speaker 1>the Dracula novel, and it didn't really go mainstream until

0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:42.520
<v Speaker 1>one of Germany's strangest motion picture companies came along, Prana Film.

0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.720
<v Speaker 1>This young German based studio was drawn to all things

0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:50.080
<v Speaker 1>occult and supernatural. Early in the nineteen twenties, Prana resolved

0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.480
<v Speaker 1>to put Dracula on the silver screen. What followed was

0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:57.480
<v Speaker 1>a true classic of the horror genre and a legal disaster.

0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.360
<v Speaker 1>Always spoke by email with Jonathan Bailey, a horror fan

0:04:01.480 --> 0:04:04.480
<v Speaker 1>who has written about this surprisingly long history of copyright

0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:08.320
<v Speaker 1>issues in monster cinema on his website Plagiarism Today. He

0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.200
<v Speaker 1>said Prana Film wanted to do an expressionistic retelling of

0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:14.880
<v Speaker 1>the story of Dracula. That was very much the intent

0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.919
<v Speaker 1>from day one. However, the estate of Bram Stoker meaning

0:04:18.920 --> 0:04:22.200
<v Speaker 1>his widow Florence Stoker, didn't want to sell them the rights.

0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.400
<v Speaker 1>Rather than abandoned the idea, they changed the name and

0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.360
<v Speaker 1>a few other elements to make it an original work.

0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:33.080
<v Speaker 1>Calling most of the revisions that Prana Film made superficial

0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.279
<v Speaker 1>would be generous. The vampire in Prana's script is still

0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.680
<v Speaker 1>an aristocrat with a spooky castle who travels across the

0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.920
<v Speaker 1>sea and raises hell in a new city. But here

0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.920
<v Speaker 1>he goes by Count Orlock rather than Count Dracula. To

0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.240
<v Speaker 1>cover its tracks further, Prana Film discarded the book's title.

0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:55.400
<v Speaker 1>They've chosen replacement No s Ferrat, a symphony of horror

0:04:55.839 --> 0:05:00.440
<v Speaker 1>known frequently today. Just as Nos Ferrato Germany had already

0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.120
<v Speaker 1>signed into an international agreement protecting the copyright of literary

0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:08.200
<v Speaker 1>and artistic works. By keeping bram Stoker's basic plot more

0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:10.960
<v Speaker 1>or less intact, the team at Prana was running a

0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:13.480
<v Speaker 1>foul of the law, whether they realized it or not.

0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.400
<v Speaker 1>Bailey explained the film was a very new medium at

0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.200
<v Speaker 1>the time, especially commercially. Whenever a new technology comes along

0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:24.480
<v Speaker 1>for creativity, copyright is usually one of the last things

0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:28.400
<v Speaker 1>to get serious thought. Even if filmmakers understood the basics

0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.919
<v Speaker 1>of copyright law, they likely didn't grasp the nuances of it.

0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.800
<v Speaker 1>After all, their filmmakers not lawyers. This is something that

0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:40.320
<v Speaker 1>remains very true today. On March four, of n two

0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.239
<v Speaker 1>Prana films, nos Feratu, premiered at the Berlin's Logical Gardens

0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:48.159
<v Speaker 1>of All Places, starring Max Trak as the seriously creepy

0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:53.160
<v Speaker 1>count orlock was acclaimed by audiences and most critics. Most critics,

0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:57.279
<v Speaker 1>that is, except for Florence Stoker, working on her behalf.

0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:00.320
<v Speaker 1>A German lawyer hired by the British Incorporated Iet of

0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:05.000
<v Speaker 1>Authors sought compensation from Prana that they had plagiarized Dracula

0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:08.520
<v Speaker 1>was not in doubt. However, the studio had blown a

0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:11.960
<v Speaker 1>large sum of money promoting nos Faratu and went bankrupt

0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:16.200
<v Speaker 1>before the attorney came knocking. So, in accordance with Stoker's wishes,

0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.080
<v Speaker 1>a German court ordered that every copy of the movie

0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:23.400
<v Speaker 1>be destroyed. Try as she might, and she did try,

0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:28.039
<v Speaker 1>Florence Stoker could not slay nos Feratu. An American print

0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:32.600
<v Speaker 1>survived the destruction campaign. Prana Film's masterpiece now resides in

0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.120
<v Speaker 1>the public domain. It's gotten countless DVD releases and is

0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:40.120
<v Speaker 1>free to watch on platforms like YouTube. But nos Ferato

0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:43.120
<v Speaker 1>may have actually helped the franchise that it ripped off.

0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:48.440
<v Speaker 1>In Stoker's widow authorized a new stage play adaptation of Dracula.

0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:51.240
<v Speaker 1>The leading man in the Broadway production was a young

0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:55.080
<v Speaker 1>Hungarian named Bella Legosi. He had reprised the role for

0:06:55.160 --> 0:07:00.919
<v Speaker 1>Universal Pictures classic and legal Dracula movie, though Count Dracula

0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.440
<v Speaker 1>defined Bella Legosi's career would only play the character once

0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.320
<v Speaker 1>more on film, in the Night horror comedy Abbott and

0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:12.960
<v Speaker 1>Costello Meet Frankenstein. As for that haunting Prana flick, it

0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:15.560
<v Speaker 1>got a high profile remake in the form of Werner

0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.680
<v Speaker 1>Hertzog's No Sparatto The Vampire from nineteen seventy nine. Then

0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:24.240
<v Speaker 1>came the novel nos ferratt To spelled n O s

0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.720
<v Speaker 1>or a two by Joe Hill, which is the pen

0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.920
<v Speaker 1>name of Stephen King's son Joseph. A serialized TV adaptation

0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:34.880
<v Speaker 1>ran on AMC for two seasons in twenty nine, and

0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:39.520
<v Speaker 1>so there you have it. No Sparato is a word

0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:42.800
<v Speaker 1>of unknown origin that appeared in a groundbreaking horror novel,

0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:46.560
<v Speaker 1>got implicated in some legal drama, changed movie history and

0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:48.960
<v Speaker 1>inspired a pun from a member of the King family.

0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:58.240
<v Speaker 1>Emily Gerard had no idea what she had started. Today's

0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:00.960
<v Speaker 1>episode was written by Mark Mancini and uced by Tyler Clang.

0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:03.160
<v Speaker 1>For more than this and lots of other topics, visit

0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:05.800
<v Speaker 1>has toufworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I

0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.400
<v Speaker 1>Heart Radio or more podcasts to my Heart Radio visit

0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.040
<v Speaker 1>the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:12.000
<v Speaker 1>to your favorite shows.