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Gritty, grainy, and gothic, visionary director F.W. Murnau’s silent pseudo-adaptation of Dracula, filmed in a German Expressionistic style, may be the most texturally amazing vampire films ever. It is unofficially the first big-screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic novel, and while the names and locales were changed, Stoker’s widow successfully sued for copyright infringement, seeing the studio bankrupt and the film almost completely ruined. The courts ordered the negatives and all copies in circulation destroyed. Thankfully, some survived.
The plot closely follows the original novel—with Count Orlok as the sub for Dracula and Thomas Hutter as stand-in for Jonathan Harker—centering on…terror of all terrors…a real estate deal (and, of course, vampires). Hutter travels to Transylvania to make a business deal with the creepy Count, there, his wife senses something evil a foot, suspecting her husband’s latest client may be an undead bloodsucking fiend.
Max Schreck, who portrays Orlok, is unbearably creepy; his mannerisms enhance his rodent-like appearance, his gestures exaggerating his elongated fingernails and sharp rat incisors. In fact, he so embodied the creature in the film that, in 2000, the film Shadow of the Vampire actually postulated that Schreck really was a vampire. Furthermore, the Orlok look became quite in vogue as a monstrous counterpoint to the typified aristocratic vamp (characterized by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee) with everything from Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot to Buffy the Vampire Slayer using it. Schreck’s portrayal provides the definitive look.
Similarly, the film itself, in spite of countless on-screen representations of Dracula (okay, last count was 162 according to the Guinness Book of World Records), it still manages to be one of the most haunting. It’s slow to build by today’s movie standards, but the payoff is far greater than most modern fare, with a haunting vibe that will stay with you long after you’ve finished watching.
