IMDb plot summary: Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new residence and real estate agent Hutter's wife. Silent classic based on the story "Dracula."
Directed by F.W. Murnau. Stars Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, and Greta Schröder.
Not in a million years did I expect this movie to scare me as much as it did. I've seen a couple other classic monster movies and have not been impressed. But Nosferatu is *terrifying*. The creature itself has a very unsettling, non-human way of moving, as well as a very creepy physical appearance. There are, of course, several moments that are awkwardly dated, but overall, this was a surprisingly effective scare, even today. 4 stars.
Best Part: I LOVED the way the vampire looked and moved. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like that before. The rigidity was somehow so much scarier than making a monster slinky and fluid.
Worst Part: I don't think I would have had a clue what was going on if I hadn't already read the book. There's a lot of plot that gets lost, and important characters show up out of nowhere.
Flickchart: #408, below Contagion and above The Exorcist.
3 comments:
It really is visually very disturbing, partly because of the makeup but also because of the stark photography. The film looks like a vintage documentary of some kind.
Also, you really should have made this a double-feature, following it with Shadow of the Vampire.
I have a whole bunch of digital copies of movies on my laptop that I watch in random order so I never know what I'm getting next... The movie that my media player chose to follow this one up? Dracula. Heh. Though I haven't finished that one up yet. I am very interested in watching Shadow of the Vampire, though.
I missed a screening of Dracula this past Saturday night at a local theater. It was part of a double feature, along with Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein. Curiously, those are the only two films in which Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula.
The director of Dracula, Tod Browning, was the uncle of a baseball player, Louis Rogers "Pete" Browning, who played for Louisville in the late 19th Century. Legend has it that the very first Louisville Slugger bat was made for Browning after he broke his favorite bat during a game, attracting the attention of a kid in the crowd whose dad owned a furniture making business. The kid volunteered to use the lathe to make Browning a new bat, and thus was born the Louisville Slugger.
Incidentally, if you get the chance to see the Spanish language production of Dracula, do so. It was shot concurrently as the Browning/Lugosi film, using the same sets, but it's a far stronger film.
What makes Shadow of the Vampire so much fun is that it's a fictionalized account of the production of Nosferatu. It's absolutely insane, and Willem Dafoe is hilarious in it.
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