Conrad Veidt – Master of Horror and The Man You Loved to Hate

The face you loved to hate so well in film, was in fact another person altogether.

I remember his career backwards, like in some character in an avant-garde film, since I generally saw his last roles first.  As a kid, I remember him first as the sneering Nazi officer Major Strasser in Casablanca.  Conrad Veidt was a strident anti-Nazi took pains to get roles to show how vile the Nazis were to a pre-war audience.  I also remember him as Jaffar, the evil vizier in The Thief of Bagdad with those powerful hypnotic eyes.

From there my remembrance jumps to Veidt as the somnolent puppet of the Doctor in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, although the first few times I saw the movie, I didn’t know him.  Well that is somewhat out of backwards sequence, but who said memory was linear or for that matter, of time but made up of associations.  Heaven knows free association has led me down some interesting path.  Much of my blog posts are an amalgamation of memory, associations, and serendipity.

From here I had to find some biographical data on Conrad Veidt, because I only knew his as a series of characters, not as a person.  I was pleased to find that he personally was the antithesis of nearly every role he ever played.  Not only was he actually good guy, but a man who tried to reverse the flow of history in his own way. 

 

He was blacklisted in prewar Nazi Germany due to his politics and for being married to a Jew, his third wife Llona.  They fled Germany in 1933 to escape persecution and became a British citizen in 1939.  He loaned his considerable fortune to the British Government and donated large amounts of his film salaries to help with the British war effort during WWII

As an interesting near-miss, he was in the running for playing the dreaded Count in Dracula, but lost the role to Bella Lugosi in 1931.  Of interest to most of my blog readers is that Veidt  played in horror films and psychological thrillers over the years before he became a much more subtle monster in Casablanca. 

Not bad for a guy who just fell into acting.  He died of a heart attack in 1943, not living long enough to see the end of Hitler’s regime, but did his own part in resistance.  Check out the links below for information about his films.  Conrad Veidt is not well known in the United States as an actor in early horror and science fiction film and I hope that I can change that perceptive of an actor that is largely forgotten. 

                                                                                     CoastConFan

Here is a partial list of Conrad Veidt’s works

Around the World in Eighty Days (1919)  A silent film I have never seen.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) as Chesare

The Head of Janus (Der Januskopf) (1920) A film based on Dr Jeckl and Mr Hyde

The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände) (1924)  Transplanted hands kill

Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett) (1924)

The Man Who Laughs (1928)  He was a sort of proto-Joker character

King of the Damned (1935) Movie about Devil’s Island

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)  he played Jaffar

Casablanca (1942)  You remember him as Maj Strasser

Some of Conrad Veight’s masterworks are available on YouTube: 

 Cabinet of Dr Caligari http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLI

 The Thief of Bagdad  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WXrYUOCApk

 The Man Who Laughs (part 1/11)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsLQcOV2YeU

 Waxworks (part 1/9) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNTuHjq64RA

 Hands of Orlac  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGff-jovycQ

 

Links of interest about Conrad Veidt

 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0891998/bio 

 http://badassdigest.com/2013/07/09/meet-conrad-veidt-badass/

 http://garbolaughs.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/the-good-german-the-life-and-legacy-of-conrad-veidt/

 http://www.examiner.com/article/so-good-at-playing-bad-tcm-explores-career-of-german-actor-conrad-veidt-aug-23

The Logical Vampire – A brief overview on removing these pests

I like vampire movies, but you know … you have to wonder sometimes.

There are several theories about vampires, depending on the culture you reference.  Vampirism is associated with the rising dead, that is to say, the undead such as ghouls and zombies.   They are a type of living dead or animated corpses – not as a dull a conversationalist as let’s, say a zombie, but still they are of the dead.

 The classic western culture vampire of literature is fairly modern, dating to only the 1820s although the folk stories go back farther, they don’t enter into mainstream literature.  It’s no accident that vampire stories became common in Western Europe in the Romantic Era and remained highly popular for 150 years given a great boost by the Victorians with their love of romanticism and exoticism.  Vampirism as a cultural, folk, and literature phenomena is pretty well documented, so I won’t belabor the reader with a rehash.

With modern western, gothic vampires. I will be dealing here with the typical evil spirit type, which can coalesce into different forms such as a human, a bat, and a wolf.  They drink blood to sustain themselves and are pretty much invulnerable to most physical attacks, except in a few circumstances.  Sounds tough doesn’t it, but in the right circumstances you can win.

Vampires do have vulnerabilities such as being destroyed by the light of day and they must sleep during the day in their native soil far away from light.  Secrecy is an important part of being a vampire.  The first part of the secret is that vampires exist at all; the second part is finding their vulnerabilities and then the physical location of their lair and resting place.  Really, once you identify vampire activity, know how and when to kill them, you pretty much got the problem licked.  Knowledge is strength, but just hope the vampire doesn’t know you are on to him/her and it tires to nip you in the bud before you begin.  An enraged vampire will backtrack his trail and entrap a vampire killer.

Locals and minions may thwart your inquiries through fear and domination by the vampire as well as getting substantial payback from the vampire for helping its enemies.  It’s kind of  like squealing on the Mafia, you know there is going to be payback, so expect a lot of reluctance and possible misdirection.  Also, since vampires can cloud people’s mind, there might be people who can’t give you information because they just can’t remember.  You know, “These aren’t the droids you are looking for”, gambit.  Trying to get clues from a frightened or mesmerized populace might land you in the middle of a mob who doesn’t want the status quo upset, so even victims might not want your help for fear of making it worse.

Presuming you have a classic gothic vampire, you are pretty safe in the sun, but if you have an ultra-modern vampire, the kind that just glitters, you might have a problem.  Generally though, the sun is your friend.  Also mirrors are useful because a vampire doesn’t throw a reflection and possibly an image in a camera.  Mirrors and photos make pretty good vampire detectors, but the problem is that you are probably standing with a vampire just a few feet behind you!  This is not a good to be in position at all. 

A note on vampire kits:  if you approach assembling a vampire killing kit in scope of a very specialized exorcism and eradication kits, then you might get something like the kits seen on the web.  In such a situation, the components would be highly charged religious items such as relics or items that have been deeply and powerfully consecrated as well as mundane tools.   Getting your hands on special religious items might be a campaign on its own.  Keep in mind that in Dracula, Bram Stoker's book, Van Helsing, assembled his kit on the spot and tossed it all into a hand bag for transport to the site.  He didn’t have a pre-made kit available. 

 

Religiously charged items will repel vampires such as a cross, a blessed host & etc.  They will stop and turn vampires, provided you have the right culture or religion.  You have to wonder, however, if the vampire was from another religion, how effective some holy implements would be in that case.  It’s like the old joke, “Oy vey, have you got the wrong vampire”* shtick.  This could get very dicey if you don’t know the religious affiliation of a vampire.  Even worse, how do you kill/turn an atheist vampire -- with a copy or Darwin or Nietzsche?  Hopefully I haven’t offended anybody, I’m just thinking out loud, so to speak.

Ok, so you found the vampire’s lair, evaded traps, got away from minions and now stand in the center of the maze.  The vampire is asleep/dormant in his/her coffin, lying native soil, powerless – it’s time to stake him out.  Various lore suggests the best possible wood and these vary, but frankly anything that pierces the heart and remains there will work.  This is classic vampire staking at it’s finest.  So you hammer in the stake and maybe get some shrieking action and flailing as the body disintegrates.  So maybe it doesn’t turn into a foul wisp and you have a more corporeal vampire than you expected.  That probably means you have to cut off the head, move it to the feet and stuff garlic in its mouth.  A few crosses strewn about and some other holy items and you probably have it beat.

But I don’t understand why the intrepid vampire hunters just don’t finish the job on one of these corporeal jobs and just drag the staked stiff out into the sunlight for a bit of the old ultraviolet to do its job and fry that baby up!  Nah, by this time the credits are rolling and that vampire looks kind of heavy, so never mind.  Amateurs for sure; no doubt a movie sequel is going to be spawned due to this sloppy inaction.  Maybe I am being too logical after all.

The other possibility is to lure the vampire out into the sun either by keeping him up after bedtime or making an opening in a room to let in sunlight.  That scenario requires a lot of luck, timing and a really, really mad vampire who looses track of time.  In that case, give me a sleeping vampire every time.

So game on, my intrepid adventurers whether it be RPGs or LARPs and smite those blood suckers … do it logically, but just pay no attention to physical mass conversions during morphs and energy transfer and other things like physics.  Thinking too hard gets in the way of the fun and too much logic can rain on your parade.

                                                                            CoastConFan

    In this same series of blog entries, see also:

The Werewolf Paradigm  http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2011/03/werewolf-paradigm-fun-vs-rationality.html

And the Logical Zombie  http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2011/11/logical-zombie.html

Also my previous post on a custom made Hourglass Vampire Hunting Kit  http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2013/01/hourglass-vampire-hunting-kit.html

The truth about those Vampire Hunting Kits, appropriately named:  Vampire Hunting Kits Debunked, June 17, 2014

http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2014/06/vampire-hunting-kits-debunked-props.html  

    Some additional links of interest on the subject::

Vampire skeletons  http://news.discovery.com/history/vampire-skeletons-120606.html

Check out the extensive bibliography at the end of the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire

Skeptics dictionary about vampires http://www.skepdic.com/vampires.html

An interesting show about vampirism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Dead

    Project Gutenberg free digital download of famous vampire stories:

download Dracula  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345

download Varney the Vampire  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14833

download Carmilla  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10007 

    *movie quote, The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

You want fries with that stake?

Hourglass Vampire Hunting Kit

  A stealthy vampire hunting kit for the secret hunter.            

Last December, I saw an image on The Steampunk Empire, a social site for people sharing an interest in all things steampunk:  literature, props, costume, history, RPGs, and the like.  The item was a novel hidden vampire hunting kit housed and disguised as an operational hourglass.  I emailed the maker, Artimas Ward for information and received a narrative about making the item along with some photos for this blog.  Many thanks to Master Ward and his ingenious workshop.

 
Imagine having a secret vampire hunting kit that can look like a common object but which can be quickly disassembled to stake out a vampire quick and simple.  The shape of this is one is simply unique!  What follows is Mr Ward’s explanation about how this unusual piece came to be with some construction comments.




"I started it with a find at Michael’s Art and Crafts, (I work there and have a lot of creative ideas looking at all the crafts) and saw that the glass hourglass was on final sale, wanting it to make a steam punk timepiece, so I bought it."

"When I got it home I set it aside and was gonna let inspiration find me later, I didn't have to wait long when I got a idea at 4 am, a week later! I had teak bowls and set to work on building my Vampire hour glass, my father has a nice Carpenter shop and I got good advice on setting the glad in and how to set the drilled holes (hardest part) an Setting the two stakes and handle in place, and leather hinges, you seen what I got, now still have to put in the equipment and such to supply it."

"The hourglass kit has all typical vampire hunting equipment, mirror, stakes, hammer, salt, considerate earth, nails, communion wafers, compass, holy water & holy oil, matches, and a cross.  The stakes and handle of the hammer are stored on the sides of the hourglass and the equipment as stored in the ends in compartments."

A Word of Warning

You know the drill:  hunt the vampire in the crypts just like Van Helsing in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  The bonanza of “authentic” vampire hunting kits have hit new highs in sales.  The real truth is that there are no vampire hunting kits much older than 20 years or so, although some components in the better put together kits might date to the middle or late Victorian Era.  Yep they are bogus, despite the hype and nonsense being bandied around the blogosphere.  A few credulous museums purchased kits and now they are claiming they knew they were fake all along.  If you recall in Dracula, Van Helsing threw together some items ad hoc into a grip and drug it down to the tombs.  Even Van Helsing didn’t have an existing kit; one had to be assembled on the spot.  See also Propnomicon's blog posts for more information:   

 

http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2009/08/35000-vampire-hunting-kit.html

 http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2008/11/1809-vampire-hunting-kit.html

 http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2011/04/vampire-hunting-kit.html

 http://propnomicon.blogspot.com/2010/04/deluxe-vampire-hunting-kit.html

                                                                                                                    CoastConFan

UPDATE: 

Vampire Hunting Kits Debunked, June 17, 2014

http://coastconfan.blogspot.com/2014/06/vampire-hunting-kits-debunked-props.html  

See also my blog post:   The Logical Vampire – A brief overviewon removing these pests

FEDORA – the hat of intrigue and danger

You might be surprised about the origin of the fedora hat as well as the hipster icon hat, the trilby.

The fedora is a hat that has remained popular off an on for about a century in all its incarnations.  But did you know that this venerable hat, so associated with 1930s adventure, P.I.s., film noir, and glamour was born from a play?  Victorien Sardu wrote a play for the Victorian superstar Sarah Bernhardt in 1882, called Fedora, which was also the name of the main character.  Sarah Bernhardt wore a hat while playing Fedora on stage and due to this, the hat became very popular and was referred to as a fedora.

Actually, the term fedora covers a variety of hat styles such as the homburg, trilby, and a variety of other hats that have no specific name but similar in style.  The hat may have grown from the mid-Victorian slouch hat, which was popular in the American Civil War.  The slouch hat was rather shapeless but could be formed by the owner.  They were considered an informal hat worn by workers.  But somehow this shapeless hat of the proletariat became stylish and the hat we know and love as the fedora.

 

Fedoras are one of those hats that are evocative of the 20^th century and well ensconced in literature and film of the period.  The aura of danger comes from the association with gangsters, real and fictional and the later film noir genre.  The most famous 20^th century film characters wearing fedoras are Indiana Jones and Humphrey Bogart’s many tough guy roles such as Sam Spade, Duke Mantee, and as the bedraggled American adventurer/prospector Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Good guys wore fedoras like Indy and Dick Tracy, but bad guys did too, like Al Capone and other gangsters.  The fedora didn’t make you good or bad, but by your deeds you were known and unlike film westerns, the color of your had didn’t predict your character’s actions.

The trilby hat also has literary and Victorian roots.  It comes from the book Trilby by George du Maurier published in 1894 and was a runaway best seller.  On a side-note, Bram Stoker may have used the hypnotism hook by of the evil mesmerist, Svengali in Trilby, when he wrote Dracula (1897), which was also a best seller.  Trilbies can be made of many different materials from hand woven wool, to snappy straw, now so trendy among hipsters.  The trilby also has associations with the Tyrolean hat, so popular in southern Germany and Austria. 

 

Vintage fedoras and trilbies can get quite pricy although you can get lucky sometimes and get one for a good price.  There are a number of hat makers who still make fedoras such as the classic Stetson, and the internet is full of fedoras for sale.  Always try to get the best possible quality and condition, because a good hat can last you a lifetime. 

If you find one you like but want to tweak the shape, you can reshape and reform a hat into a fedora form by using steam, but be careful not to get burned.  I have reshaped a number of hats to a more likeable form using the teakettle steam technique.  It allows you to direct the steam and work the area without wilting the whole hat.

 

For costuming, a fedora can make a very simple costume pop and a homburg can make a three piece suit look like a high roller.  Make sure you store your hats in a clean, dry area in your house and not in an attic, garage or basement.  Any box can make a hatbox if you don’t have an original one available.  Don’t seal up you hat in a plastic container because of the danger of mold due to condensation inside the box.  Let the hat breath a little and add a mothball or better yet, cedar chips which will keep the insects away from the delicious felt.  Believe it or not, moths are less of a hazard than crickets, who seem to just munch away wildly.  This is true of all felt and wool items, so keep your costumes and gear safe.  A fedora makes a good item for Steampunk, a Call of Cthulhu game or any RPG, as a clue or a prop.

LINKS

As a companion post, see my post:   A Brief History of Trench Coats

For more adventurer hats, see also:   Pith Helmets, Sun Helmets, and Sola Topees
Slouch hats, more adventurer hats, added 28 April 2013:  Slouch Hats, Bush Hats, Big Game Hunters, andExplorers

The play Fedora  was written for Sarah Bernhardt by Victorien Sardu  is available for free download from Google Books by clicking on the link.

The book Trilby by George du Maurier is available for free download from Project Gutenberg by clicking on the link.

The book Dracula by Bram Stoker is available for free download from Project Gutenberg by clicking on the link.

This was my 100^th post since starting the CoastConFan Blog.  I really appreciate the support and interest in this obscure niche blog.  I also appreciate the many bloggers who are so sharing of information and images in their blogs and posts.  I hope to continue blogging for years to come.  Thanks!                 CoastConFan

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UPDATE:  a reader sent in this amusing photo that he thought pretty much summed up the state of hat wearing today.  I must admit I used to wear a vintage (1930s) fedora but had to stop because of the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie that came out in 1981.  I sure hope I didn't look quite that badly.

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UPDATE 2:  I just found a scan of that photo mentioned in  the first update --


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