12/6/2023 0 Comments Graveyard shift episode![]() “So my first experience with Orlok and with that image is as this disjointed non sequitur. And it was always that still of him standing in the doorway,” Lender recalls. “So I could see that This Island Earth existed, but I couldn’t actually see them unless it showed up on TV. “Stuff would appear in this magazine that I couldn’t track down, but I could be aware of it,” Lender says. Kids like Lender didn’t really have much opportunity to see old horror movies, but the magazine, which had a fun, tongue-in-cheek tone, could expose them to these films with articles and pictures. This was before there were hundreds of TV channels, before the internet, and well before there were vast libraries of streamable horror movies. Lender says that when he was a kid, he was a big fan of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. Luckily, another, better idea popped into Lender’s head. This meant his appearance at the end wouldn’t be a callback, just a totally random image. (Lender shared a few Post-It Note sketches of Floorboard Harry with Polygon.) But the “at night” joke already fulfilled the comedy rule of threes, so the fourth bit with Floorboard Harry got cut. Then at the end of the episode, it was going to be Floorboard Harry flipping the light switch. Lender says that in an earlier draft of the episode, after SpongeBob excitedly lists work tasks he can now do at night (flipping patties, swabbing the bathroom, and burning his hand), there was going to be a fourth joke, where he delivered the mail to Floorboard Harry - a previously unseen, unmentioned creature that apparently just lives underneath the Krusty Krab. No further explanation.Ĭount Orlok wasn’t originally supposed to be the culprit. “Nos-fer-a-tu!” SpongeBob and Squidward say, affectionately, as if they hang out with him all the time. Murnau’s 1922 live-action horror classic film - has been turning off the lights as a joke. In the episode’s final seconds, it’s revealed that the titular vampire from Nosferatu - depicted using a slightly altered and crudely animated still from F.W. ![]() ![]() Fortunately, it turns out that all the signs of his impending arrival have a mundane explanation. Squidward entertains himself by frightening SpongeBob with a scary story about a “hash-slinging slasher,” but then the mysterious omens he made up about the killer start actually happening, terrifying them both. The 11-minute installment sees SpongeBob and Squidward working the night shift at the Krusty Krab, to the former’s delight and the latter’s dismay. “Graveyard Shift,” which regularly places in the top 5 in ranked lists of SpongeBob’s best episodes, first aired on Sept. As SpongeBob writer and storyboard director Jay Lender tells Polygon, that random visual gag in the season 2 episode “Graveyard Shift” was probably the first encounter most of its viewers had with the silent classic. SpongeBob helped keep the 1922 film alive (or undead) in the public eye. It’s a great SpongeBob joke, but the non sequitur, which removes the vampire from his original movie and any semblance of context, also illustrates Nosferatu’s role as a pop-culture reference. But just 20 years ago, the same character was revealed as the little scamp scaring SpongeBob SquarePants and Squidward by flicking the lights of the Krusty Krab on and off. A century ago, Nosferatu’s vile villain Count Orlok became an icon when he walked through a doorway, eyes frenzied and claws menacing, to drain his victim’s blood.
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