UTG’s 31 Days Of Halloween: ‘Nosferatu’

October 23rd, 2013

Kriston McConnell

Of all the holidays celebrated worldwide, no single day is more loved by the UTG staff than Halloween. With the arrival of October, the time has finally come to begin rolling out a plethora of features and special announcements we have prepared in celebration of our favorite day, including the one you’re about to read.

31 Days Of Halloween is a recurring daily feature that will run throughout the month of October. The hope and goal of this column is to supply every UTG reader with a daily horror (or Halloween themed) movie recommendation that is guaranteed to amplify your All Hallows’ Eve festivities. We’ll be watching every film the day it’s featured, and we hope you’ll follow along at home. If you have a suggestion, contact us and we may include your favorite scarefest in an upcoming column!

The thing about silent films, is that you need to pay attention to them. While the music can usually give away when a scary scene is coming up, you need to both watch the action, and listen to the music to really experience the film. Since there’s no dialogue, you need to make sure you read every word on the screen, and watch every action by the characters. In the instance of Nosferatu, you get to enjoy 94 minutes of classic horror cinema in sepia and blue tint coupled with an eerie orchestra.

While this movie is cheesy and outdated to us now, imagine how people felt about it in the ’20s. This must have been terrifying. Someone who’s human by day, and a blood sucking monster by night? People definitely lost sleep over this movie. There have been some adaptations of the film since it was first released, however nothing is quite like the original. It’s cheesy, some parts don’t quite make sense, and to make up for the lack of dialogue the characters use almost humorous, over-the-top gestures.

The 1922 version of Nosferatu almost didn’t make it to 2013. The movie was an unauthorized adaptation of Stoker’s book, Dracula. Hence Count Orlok and Nosferatu instead of Count Dracula and vampire. Stoker brought charges against the creators of the film, and a judge ordered all copies of it be destroyed. Lucky for us they were not all destroyed, and we get to enjoy it over 90 years later. So do yourself a favor and watch this movie, it’s on Netflix instant stream!