I had no framework for it. Most vampire movies since the 1930s played up the vampire's romantic, or at least sexual, angle. Bela Lugosi's Dracula seduced victims with physical beauty, magnetism, and charm. Christopher Lee's Dracula overpowered them with a hypnotic quality coupled with a sexually charged animalistic ferocity. But this?
Nosferatu's Count Orlok was animalistic all right... but in a repulsive, rodentlike way. He had long claws for fingernails, pointed ears, a bald head, sunken eyes, and fangs replacing his incisors rather than his canine teeth. He looked like a giant rat — and not surprisingly, rats accompanied his coffin. Here there was no romance, no sexuality. Just an instinct-driven thirst for blood.
This was hardly my first silent movie — or even my first German expressionist one. In fact, I already regarded The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as one of my favorite films. I think the confusion I experienced that night over Nosferatu came from the sheer shock of it. I had loved cinematic vampires since I was a kid, and this movie subverted everything I thought I knew about them. It was a little much to handle at the time.
It did leave an impression though. Once the initial shock wore off, the brilliance of Murnau's "Symphony of Horror" became clearer. For years afterward, I remembered the repulsiveness of the vampire. But most of all, I remembered the shadow his long fingernails cast on the wall as he crept slowly through the house towards his victim. Nearly 65 years later, long ripping nails would become a staple of the hopping Chinese vampire movies.
All in all, Michael Emerson's choice of Max Schreck in Nosferatu is an excellent place to begin any discussion of creepy characters. The role is so legendarily creepy that it inspired the Oscar-nominated movie Shadow of the Vampire to postulate that only an actual vampire could have pulled it off. Ergo, Max Schreck could be nothing other than a real vampire playing the cinematic role of vampire!
Article comments
1 - Cindy Collins Smith
BTW, more creepy characters are on the way. I'm just waiting for a little red envelope to deliver Emerson's next favorite creepy performance to my doorstep.