7 Days of Halloween: Nosferatu

The first time I saw "Nosferatu," the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," was in high school, and regrettably, it was a DVD of the 1998 "remastering" with an introduction from David Carradine and a soundtrack provided by the metal band Type-O Negative. However, this newest version, released in 2006, is a fine compilation of various surviving German and Czech copies of F.W. Murnau's adaptation, the most famous "Dracula" you might not have heard of. And if you do find yourself hunting for "Nosferatu" this Halloween, go for the 2006 version and listen to James Bernard's score instead of Type-O Negative.

Taking place in 1838, Nosferatu is, as we're told, a word that sounds "like the deathbird calling your name at midnight." The story is meant to be a retelling of a supposed "Great Death" in Wisborg. We meet Hutter, a young lawyer played by Gustav von Vangenheim. (While the overacting universal in virtually all films of the Silent Era is certainly prevalent here, Von Vangenheim is probably the worst offender in this movie.) Hutter is madly in love with his young wife, Ellen (Greta Shroeder), but he must be separated from her for awhile as he attends to a trip into the "land of phantoms" to secure a building purchase of a mysterious count named Orlok (Max Schreck). His trip there will provide the modern-day viewer with views of beautiful German architecture, nature, and a trip down film history lane, as he or she will see an example of pre-color coloring using chemical reactions to create a blue hue for nighttime and sepia for indoors.

Hutter on his travels laughs off the locals' warnings about werewolves in the forests, vampires, and "bad feelings." He journeys on until he reaches Orlok's estate. Here there's another technological antique: Murnau used fast-motion, which was probably quite the novelty in 1922, to show us the entrance of Orlok's hearse. (Francis Ford Coppola understood the neat effect but made it more appealing to an audience in 1992; for the same scene in his adaptation, he simply used slow-motion.) Hutter may be a pretty forgettable character, but Schreck's portrayal of Orlok is probably almost as iconic in cinema as Bela Lugolsi's Dracula. If you don't believe, observe the character of Petyr in the recent comedy-horror mockumentary "What We Do in the Shadows." Instead of the sensual eroticism of Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or Frank Langella, Orlok is a frightening figure of long fingers and ghoulish, exaggerated features: grotesque, large ears and obvious animal-like front teeth. Upon first seeing a picture of Hutter's wife, he remarks how nice her neck looks.

The cinematography of "Nosferatu" by Gunther Krampf and Fritz Arno Wagner may not be as oft-mentioned as that of other Expressionism landmarks like "Metropolis" or "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," but it still influences filmmakers today, as is evidenced by last year's Australian horror film, "The Babadook." "Nosferatu" certainly is not terrifying by today's standards nearly a century later, but it does possess the required traits of spooky tales of wonder: coffins filled with rats, ghostly quiet sea shots, and the fear of disease. Orlok soon makes his way to Wisborg and begins feasting. Unlike the vampire of Stoker's novel, those the vampire bites do not turn into vampires themselves; they simply die (even though we never get an explanation as to why Hutter, who initially thinks he's been bitten by mosquitoes, doesn't).

After the epidemic scenes in the ship, basically right after Orlok rises from the coffin, the movie starts to bore in Act IV and especially so in Act V, where, unlike the previous acts, not much happens. Orlok basically goes on the hunt for Ellen; here we see the famous shadow up the stairs moment. He finds her and is about to feed. What happens next basically concludes the film in an anticlimactic ending, where the only conclusion one could have is that you better hope that vampires aren't fans of wearing watches. Still, "Nosferatu" is pretty much required viewing for film buffs and historians.