‘Nosferatu’ (1922)- this 101 year old film is scarier than anything released today

I saw this classic years ago and thought it was one of the scariest and most brilliantly made films I’ve ever seen. The vampire’s makeup is terrifying!

have you seen the herzog version? It's also very good

Love this and the Herzog version. Worked at a little movie theater where we had a poster of the Herzog version hanging in the lobby. When I left for college the manager let me take the poster with me. I had it framed and it had pride of place on my dorm room wall for several years. The original scared the life out of me.

Is the Herzog version the one from 1979?

Agreed. Odd that one of the greatest horror films ever made was created in 1922. 100 years and they're still hard pressed to surpass it.

It’s boring.

r6 Hahaha. So droll. I guess it had to be said.

I appreciate classic film and watch hardly anything other than TCM, but any of the reductive movies from the Insidious universe are leaps and bounds scarier than this relic.

Nah. Disagree r8. Most horror films aren’t even scary. This one was.

Ok? 100 years of subsequent cinema haven’t produced something scarier. That sounds like a good opinion.

It’s truly terrifying, the struggle to keep my eyelids open.

R10 there are scary movies but they are far and in between. You seem like the type of person who thinks The Nun is scary. It really wasn’t.

LOVE German Expressionism. It is the best form of filmmaking. Period.

There is a scene where you see his shadow walking up the stairs and only his shadow, against the wall. That scene scared the shit out of me as a kid. I couldn’t sleep and my mom was pissed my dad let me watch.

Giuliani was excellent in this.

I preferred the one that starred Barbra Streisand, Nostrilatu.

Episodes of One Step Beyond are scarier than this movie.

[quote] Ok? 100 years of subsequent cinema haven’t produced something scarier. That sounds like a good opinion.

r10 I said they are hard pressed to surpass it. Some do. But few do. This is an epic horror film. Slasher films gross me out but they don't scare me.

The cinematography and direction by F. W. Murnau is fantastic.

The other thing that really stands out about this early version is that the vampire is actually portrayed as a frightening animal-like creature. In recent films, vampires all seem to be sexy hunks with 6-pack abs.

Murnau and the filmmakers understood something about the nature of the vampire that was lost in subsequent decades.

Murnau was a fag.

John Wayne was a fag.

Caligari and Häxan are both much better when it comes to 1920s Euro horror. I remember being strangely aroused by Benjamin Christensen in his devil costume.

Nosferatu's brilliance caused it to be copied and imitated so often that it, in turn, lost much of its power.

I went to his house in Bel Air. He came to the door in a dress.

R23 WTF

Count me in as another fan of German expressionism, especially the films of Murnau.

The way Eisenstein had a profound impact on the use of film editing in movies, Murnau did so with the use of the camera.

I don't know if I'd call Nosferatu scary, but there's a strong sense of menace and dread throughout that makes it compelling to watch, especially when you see it in a movie theater.

A number of years ago, the cavernous old Loews Theater in Jersey City showed the movie with live organ accompaniment, and the line of people waiting on line to get in was so long, the movie's start time had to be delayed by 40 minutes.

I saw the Herzog's German language version of the story - he simultaneously filmed an English-language one - back in the 1980s in NY at the Thalia on a double bill with Dryer's incomparable Vampyr.

What a study in contrasts: Vampyr was other-worldly and dream-like; Nosferatu, while striking-looking, moved at such a glacial pace it became an endurance test to sit through.

To make matters worse, it costarred the awful Isabelle Adjani.

R25 is this the version you’re speaking of? It came out in 1979

Love it and the Herzog remake. I am also a big fan of Vampyr and probably prefer it to both if I’m being honest.

R27 Vampyr? As in the 1932 film?

R28 yes

It's scarier without the cheesy music.

Florence Stoker won a copyright lawsuit against the makers of this film and all copies were suppose to be destroyed. Thankfully a few survived.

R31 thanks for the copy and paste.

R26 - yes. I know it came out in '79, but around 1982 I saw Nosferatu and Vampyr in a (now defunct) NY theater that used to show double bills of older films.

Interestingly, I remember the Herzog film being very well received, while Vampyr had a lot of viewers laughing (to my utter horror).

R31- I believe the original print had to be destroyed, but because the film had already been released, some of those copies enabled the film to live on.

I don't know the specifics - I'm too lazy to look it up - but I think a considerable number of Murnau's films are lost.

[quote] John Wayne was a fag.

[quote] I went to his house in Bel Air. He came to the door in a dress.

[quote] WTF

r24 Repo Man quotes.

The only thing that would have made it scarier is if Beverly Garland had played the lead.

Sit and spin R32 I did not copy and paste that. You are correct R33. From what I have read the original prints were destroyed. There were a few low quality copies floating around and that's how it ultimately survived.

How many of you fans of '𝐍𝐨𝐬𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐮' (1922) have seen the fictional account of the film's making, postulating that F.W. Murnau located and filmed a real, old-world vampire?

'𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞' (2000) casts John Malkovich as Murnau, and Willem Dafoe as the vampire, Max Schreck.

R37 I’m sure many did. Willem was nominated for an Oscar for it.

SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE was excellent!

[quote]Florence Stoker won a copyright lawsuit against the makers of this film and all copies were suppose to be destroyed. Thankfully a few survived.

Why didn't the court just order that a fine be paid? Ordering the destruction of the entire film seems excessive.