‘Nosferatu’ Director Robert Eggers Thanks ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’ for Teaching Kids About Classic Horror
Sooner or later, folk horror master Robert Eggers will just have to make a movie about the most frightening figure from ancient legend — look out for The Hash Slinging Slasher next summer.
During the Golden Age of animated comedy, writers on cartoon shows aimed at children seized the opportunity to teach impressionable minds about the beauty of history, literature and classic folktales while telling fart jokes that made parents turn up their noses. Just as all the Harvard nerds of The Simpsons’ writers’ room filled each episode featuring Mr. Burns with cultural tidbits from bygone eras, kids’ shows like SpongeBob SquarePants and Muppet Babies made sure that new generations of elementary school students wouldn’t graduate second grade without at least a cursory knowledge of German Expressionist silent films.
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As such, when Eggers’ remake of the 102-year-old Gothic horror film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror premieres this Christmas, many of his audience members’ first experience with the vampire classic will have come from a running gag in SpongeBob SquarePants, and Eggers thanks Satan for such an introduction:
As SpongeBob fans in their late-20s-to-early-30s will remember, Nosferatu made a surprise appearance at the end of the Season Two episode “Graveyard Shift” when we learn that the mysterious hooded figure whom SpongeBob (and later Squidward) believed to be a mythical murderer named the Hash Slinging Slasher wasn’t responsible for the Krusty Krab’s flickering lights in the middle of the night. No, that was just the playful vampire Count Orlok from the original Nosferatu, portrayed by Max Schreck, who smiled like a scamp when the jig is up.
Of course, Nosferatu isn’t the only creature from classic ghost stories to make an appearance on SpongeBob. For instance, the Flying Dutchman, so named for the ghost ship that haunted the nightmares of sailors since the 17th century, is a central character in several SpongeBob episodes – though, when SpongeBob and Patrick join his crew, the infantile ignorami end up haunting the undead captain, instead.
Who knows which SpongeBob SquarePants guest star will become the subject of Eggers’ next horror film? I’d reckon the brilliant director of The Witch and The Lighthouse would knock a movie about the Alaskan Bull Worm out of the park, provided he could secure the rights to the Tremors franchise.
