AmateurMovieReviews.com

The Story: A hideous vampire takes up residence in a German city and begins a plague that threatens to decimate the populace.

How much slack do you give a movie for innovation and influence? How much outdated technique and laughable acting do you ignore if the monster is good and the film's heart is in the right place? I can give a silent film such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Metropolis very high scores because they hold up magnificently and are still more effective than most modern films.

Nosferatu, on the other hand, despite some of the most effective andfrightening images in film history, demands some soul-searching when it comes to rating it. It is an undeniable classic, but when I watch it with a critical eye it often falls short of its reputation.
The story of Nosferatu will be quite familiar to most horror fans, as it is simply the Dracula story with names changed in a futile attempt to bypass copyright laws - the trickery failed and Bram Stoker's widow ended up suing the filmmakers anyway. Young realtor Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) is sent to a sinister castle in the Carpathian Mountains to sell Count Orlok (Max Schreck) a house in Bremen.

The prologue is unfortunately very sloooooow and hideously, laughably overacted in the worst silent film manner. Perhaps I should warn less patient people right up front not to give up on the movie at this point. Fast forward if you must - you won't miss anything of note and things pick up later. Hutter meets the people in the nearby village, who of course are terrified of Orlok and insist that evil things will happen if he goes. He gets a ride as far as a carriage is willing to take him and is then picked up by a ghostly carriage and met by Orlok (Max Schreck).

Orlok is initially covered by so much clothing that he looks freaky but still somewhat human. However, he is revealed to be a hideous vampire later on. This creature is perhaps the most horrific vampire ever captured on film, with his long claws, bat ears and rat face. Even if the rest of the film were wretched (it isn't), it would be worth seeing for the first view of the vampire Orlok alone. We are treated to some stop-motion creepiness as Orlok loads up his coffin and rat friends for the trip to the city. The stop motion and negative printing effects are often criticized as outdated, but I think they add a wonderfully surreal feel to the film and are among its most effectively spooky moments.

Orlok eventually arrives in the city (aboard an empty ship - someone got hungry on the trip) and the streets gradually become full of hearses as the town begins to be decimated by a mysterious "plague." The Renfield character, named "Knock" here (Alexander Granach), does his loony bug-eating bit in the local asylum and is perhaps the best of a long line of insane Dracula henchmen. Just try not to let a nervous laugh escape as he exclaims "Spiders!" Hutter's wife Ellen (Greta Schroeder, who everyone in the movie thinks is beautiful but to me looks distractingly like a rather ugly, overacting man in drag) has some kind of psychic revelation and figures out a way to end the madness.

There is a lot to celebrate in this film. All the scenes with Orlok or Knock performing their horrific duties are beautifully chilling and still effective nearly 80 years later. The early scene where Orlok (as a hyena-like creature) terrorizes some horses is eerily convincing as well. Many of the minor characters are well done, and the location photography (though deteriorated and somewhat washed out with the years) is often striking.

The primitive special effects scenes are very creepy as well. However... This film has the same major problem as many other horror films of the 1920s and 30s - horrible, horrible lead actors that require immense effort to even look at. Thankfully, they are not always on screen but when they are they almost fatally drag the film down. Another complaint is the lack of camera movement. In some other films you hardly notice this (and in Dr. Caligari or Metropolis it is actually stylistically beneficial), but this movie screams for some tracking shots and it is quite distracting at times. It is one of the most chillingly atmospheric horror movies of all time and still retains an undeniable spellbinding power.

I am against tampering with classic films as a rule (and cheerfully support the death penalty for colorizers), but Nosferatu is a great film that could use some heavy editing and restructuring. Nonetheless, this still is the first of the great vampire movies and as a fitfully frightening, atmospheric classic should be seen once by anyone with any interest at all in the history of horror. Seeing it more than once, however, may seem too much like a homework assignment.