Nosferatu
Now that's kicking it old-school.

There have been a lot of Draculas on film over the years. There was Gary Oldman with his surreal hair, Bela Lugosi with his Hungarian hand movements, Christopher Lee with his blood-dripping fangs. But in the beginning there was Max Schreck.

This early silent adaptation of Bram Stoker's horror classic was actually a rather sneaky one; the director, F. W. Murnau, changed the title to Nosferatu and gave the characters new names, thus avoiding any pesky royalty payments. This eventually got the film into a great deal of legal trouble and almost resulted in it being utterly destroyed, but fortunately a few copies survived. Otherwise, we would have lost a fine piece of film.

Nosferatu generally follows the familiar Dracula plot; a young man, in this case the joyfully idiotic Thomas Hutter, is given the task of selling a house in his town to a somewhat eccentric count. What follows is, of course, a symphony of horror. First, a mysterious ship with a very dead crew shows up in the harbor. Then townspeople begin to die in huge numbers, which everyone puts down to the plague, and no one suspects how to truly end the chaos except for Hutter's hysterical wife Ellen, played by Greta Schroder. Hutter himself is played by Gustav von Wangenheim, who does a fine job of setting the standard for many clueless horror movie protagonists to come.

Aside from that, however, the movie has little in common with later horror movies. It has very few sudden shocks or moments of pure terror. Instead, it is paced slowly and eerily, and gives you a feeling of constant dread instead of mere fright. Furthermore, the lack of sound means that the movie has to depend entirely on images to scare the audience, and some of these images are truly arresting. The sight of Ellen sitting on a beach scattered with off-kilter crosses, while being perfectly nonsensical (what are all those crosses doing there, anyway?), is also really, really creepy.

Still, the highlight of Nosferatu is, without a doubt, the title performance by Schreck. His Count Orlok has none of the glamour or sexiness of later screen vampires; instead, he is a bizarre, ugly monster with a distinctly rat-like appearance who repulses and terrifies anyone who sees him. Schreck's screen presence in the role is amazing. The second he appears, your eyes are glued to his face. The makeup he wears is pretty out-there, but when you're watching the movie, you cease to notice.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the special effects. There are several attempts to use stop-motion in order to make coffin lids and doors open magically, which ends up adding a few laughs to the otherwise somber picture. Still, this was 1922, so I'm willing to cut them some slack. The movie is at its best when it isn't trying to pull off any fancy tricks and puts all its money on the simple image of Schreck's hideous eyes.

Of course, watching any silent movie is a touch disorienting, but this one is definitely worth the try. There is a reason the subtitle is A Symphony of Horror; the whole movie weaves together like a piece of music, and leaves you feeling deeply unsettled without any one moment being truly frightening.

DROOL FACTOR: Nonexistent, I'm afraid.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: There are a fair number of rats running around, if that sort of thing bothers you, and Nosferatu's lackey Knock is pretty gross in general.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Well, she's more than a little out of her mind, and way more dependent on her husband than any woman ought to be, but Ellen does save everybody in the end.

-- Caroline Ziemkiewicz

Nosferatu is currently available on video.

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