Why didn't the vampire talk?
how did he rent his house or get through life without talking? Did a cat have his tongue or what?
shareHe did talk, remembber the used car sales man had a conversation. I guess he was shy, didn't want to talk on camera.
MovieChat Forums > The Night Stalker (1972) Discussion > Why didn't the vampire talk?
Makes him a more menacing figure.
"The truth 24 times a second."
Totally true! That is why Nightstalker is my favorite vampire movie. Vampires in other movies are way too chatty.
shareYes, being silent definitely made him more menacing. But, it's a little unfortunate in a way as it would've been interesting to hear Skorzeny say something considering Atwater had such a deep, rich voice. He certainly put it to good use as the Vulcan character Surek on "Star Trek".
shareThat makes no sense. Ever hear of Darth Vader?
shareDo you hold conversations with your food before eating it? ^_^
In all seriousness, it made him more menacing to not hear him talk on screen. Realistically he would have had to talk to people to do things like you mentioned, but all of it can happen off screen
Are you really trying to be realistic as you're discussing a vampire?
shareJust finished watching it and felt the same thing. I guess it would have dragged it out to have an exchange of dialog. In the tv series, the creatures were usually mute.
BTW, I though one of the FBI/sheriff turning out to be a "Renfield" type (his daytime helper) would have been a nice twist.
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All DVDs should have ENGLISH as a subtitle option.
WOW! Great idea, if they ever do a remake I'd love that.
shareI always thought that he didn't speak unless he had to. He had no interest in interacting with humans, unless he was eating them, so why speak to them?
Time of your life, huh, kid?
That's true. When my wife orders the lobster she never has polite dinner converstion with it. And really, what would they talk about?
shareStrictly speaking, a vampire shouldn't be able to talk at all. Dead people don't breathe. It's the main thing vampire stories always get wrong. Of course, there wouldn't be any stories about them if they didn't break the rules so this movie at least tried to keep the vampire's chat to a minimum.
KS
As others have said, he did talk to the car salesman. I believe the reason it was not shown was so that the audience would see him as more animalistic, supernatural. If he had spoken, the audience might have seen him as a human who had something terrible and tragic happen to him. This would have taken some of the fear away that the viewers had of him.
I do think they should have let him talk as there was nothing wrong with having sympathy for him in this condition. Even with sympathy, the viewer could appreciate the fact that he was not even trying to get any help from anyone or not cause anyone harm. He was a danger and something had to be done to put a stop to him.
Years later, the same mistake was made with the sequel, which was an episode of The Night Stalker TV series. In this episode, the vampire was shown speaking but we do not ever hear her. i would have at least liked to hear her plead for her life by speaking, and then showing in some way she only wants to live to keep harming others. Then she is killed.
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