It is officially the spooky season, and there's nothing quite like the horror of a 100-year-old vampire movie.
"Nosferatu" is considered the most important horror film of the silent era. A group of musicians called the Invincible Czars tours the country providing a live score for "Nosferatu" screenings, including one next Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Normal Theater.
“If you're coming to our show, you should know it's not going to be a stuffy, ‘be quiet and watch this important film’ kind of experience,” said Josh Robins, founder of the Czars. “It is an important film. There are moments of it that are certainly laughable to us now, because it's so old. But there's plenty of humor in the movie that was funny back then, and was meant to be funny. And we hope that people will come and have a good time. And there's some audience participation. We hope people know that it's that it's meant to be fun. It's meant for modern-day horror fans, and not just academic film buffs.”
In this interview with WGLT’s Ryan Denham, Robins explains how their score elevates the horror, tension, humor, excitement and love in the film.
WGLT: I've never been to a silent film live soundtrack show before myself. What is it like?
Robins: It's kind of like a movie and concert all in one. We don't improvise. Not much. It’s not like complete free improv. There are moments of improvisation, but basically, it’s the same kind of skeleton of score.
We try to be tastefully modern. We're not beating anybody over the head with rock music. We're also not like a museum piece where we're trying to stay true to what it would have sounded like (back then). Short of being an orchestra, it's hard to be authentic to the original experience.
You’ve refined the “Nosferatu” score over the years. Can you talk about how it's evolved?
Our original draft was created in about six months back in 2015. And then we went out on our very first tour that October. And even on that very first run, we were already making changes at the shows. Sound effects. Moments in the film that we hadn't noticed in our initial writing that wound up coming into it.
Like, there's a heartbeat sound. It's hard to imagine our soundtrack now without the heartbeat, but it wasn't there initially. After playing a few shows, we thought, Oh, we could use that kind of sound. So we incorporated that. And a lot of sound effects got added.
We pretty much played it the same way from 2015 until about 2019. And then when the pandemic hit, we realized ... we seem to be the only band that's doing full-blown national tours with this movie. But we seem to be the only ones touring, going the distance that we do, and maybe we should do something special. So we spent that time … basically the last 14 months prior to our tour … just refining the score, making changes.
What's your favorite sort of beat in the live show, where the music and the movie are just perfectly in sync?
The part that really comes to mind is, it's a pretty innocuous part of the movie. It's a part where the ship that the vampire, Count Orlok, has commandeered comes to port in the city of Wisborg. And the people of the town are searching the ship. It's kind of mysterious. This empty ship has just come in. There's not a living soul on board. And the music right there really suits the scene. It's mysterious, kind of quiet. It's the kind of moment that maybe audiences would forget that we're even there. It just kind of suits the film so well.
Where do you guys usually set up for a show?
Ideally, we like to be under the screen, in front of the audience, facing them. But that's rare. Most nights we are under the screen in front of the audience, but we're not facing them. But most nights we're just watching the movie with the audience, and we have our backs to them, unfortunately. Because that's the best way for us to see the movie and to really be in sync with it.
Have the Czars ever scored a movie the “traditional” way?
We want to do more of that, yes. We have done it. Mostly it's been short films, student films, low budget films around Austin. We like performing live. Low to no budget movies don't exactly … they're fun to do, but they can be time consuming. And when they're not paying that much, it’s hard to justify those (hours) when we could be out on the road doing the live thing.
You’re probably familiar with Robert Eggers, the filmmaker who's doing a new ‘Nosferatu.’ You guys have to raise your hand for that, right?
We'd love to do that. I mean, I imagine Robert Eggers will probably get his usual guy, Mark Korven, who's fantastic. At the beginning of our tour, I was putting on social media, ‘If anybody knows Robert Eggers, please let them let him know that he's on our guest list every single night.’
