Real estate agent Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania to sell a vacant house in his town of Wisborg, Germany. His client is Count Orlok, a wealthy, tall, jagged, nocturnal recluse. Hutter arrives at Orlok’s castle and his host acts terribly strange. When Hutter cuts his finger during dinner, Orlok springs to suck on the wound. And when Hutter wakes up, he notices two “mosquito bites” on his neck. Right when Hutter begins to discover that Orlok is a vampire, Orlok (slowly, menacingly) springs on him and, well—sucks his blood. Orlok takes off for Wisborg with several coffins containing dirt from the graves of black death victims (his natural home and rejuvenating soil). When he arrives at Wisborg, rats from these coffins begin to spread a plague through town. Meanwhile, Orlok settles into his home and sees Ellen Hutter, Thomas’s wife, across the way. He springs to attack. Will he pounce before sunrise?—tune in to find out!
If you couldn’t already tell, “Nosferatu” is an (unauthorized) retelling of “Dracula”. Orlok is Dracula, Hutter is Harker, Wisborg is London, and Transylvania is—well—Transylvania. And where Universal’s “Dracula” amps up the vampire’s sex appeal and turns the blood-hunt into a conquest of sorts, Orlok is anything but sexy. He’s a twisted animal with blank stares, a menacing posture, and an insatiable need to feed. He’s a proper monster and in some ways, this film is far creepier than most “classic horror”. I loved the “black death dirt” origin story. I also thought it was really neat how, despite being in “black and white”, the film had three hues to communicate time of day—yellow was day/illuminated, blue was night, and red was dawn/dusk. Pretty neat and effective.
One weak point is that there isn’t really a Van Helsing character. While Thomas Hutter has the potential of a hero, Orlok essentially stands uncontested and endangered only by his own animalistic decision making. I suppose I don’t need a happy ending in my horror films, but I would like to see some notion of “fighting to survive” or something. This film is scary only in its revelation of Orlok and his “what havoc will he wreak?” trip to Wisborg. Finally, seeing a film with such overtly anti-immigrant themes (and Orlok’s stereotypical/racist Jewish depiction) was a weird pill to swallow in this 1922 German film. Some believe this was an unintended, unconscious inclusion on the part of Director F.W. Murnau, but it’s still pretty obvious to me.
All and all, a famous, horrific, ok film to start the Halloween season!