Nosferatu

Front Row at the Movies by Shirrel Rhoades

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Roger Eggers’ new “Nosferatu” is a remake of W.F. Murnau’s 1922 same-named film, which was based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror novel “Dracula.”

Properly titled “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” (an ironic title for a silent film), the original film starred Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire. However, he was commonly referred to as Nosferatu, which means “the offensive one.”

Orlok was a deliberate rip-off of Dracula.

Bram Stoker’s heirs sued over the unauthorized adaptation, and the court ruled in their favor, ordering all copies of the film destroyed. As it happened, some managed to survive – and “Nosferatu” came to be considered a masterpiece of German expressionism and a “template for the horror genre.”

A long-time fan of horror, Robert Eggers directed a stage version of “Nosferatu” in high school when he was 17. Later, he was hired to direct a professional version of the play. He credits this experience with inspiring him to go into filmmaking. “It changed my life and cemented the fact that I wanted to be a director,” he says.

Eggers’ cinematic debut was “The Witch” (2015), definitely a horror film. He’d planned for his second film to be this remake of “Nosferatu,” but got sidetracked with “The Lighthouse” (2019) and “The Northman” (2022).

This new version of “Nosferatu” echoes its original source: Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel about a bloodsucking Transylvanian nobleman. Readers will recognize the thinly disguised characters.

In Eggers’ remake, Bill Skarsgård takes on the title role as Nosferatu/Count Orlok, obviously based on Stoker’s Count Dracula.
Nicholas Hoult plays Thomas Hutter, an estate agent based on Stoker’s Jonathan Harker.

Lily-Rose Depp (yes, Johnny Depp’s daughter) plays Harker’s wife Ellen, destined to become Count Orlok’s obsession. This was Mina Harker in the “Dracula” novel.

Simon McBurney is cast as Herr Knock, Harker’s employer. He was the character known as Renfield in Stoker’s version.

Willem Dafoe gives us Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, an unconventional scientist who understands the psychic connection between Count Orlok and Ellen. You’ll recognize him as Van Helsing.

There are others, but you get the idea.

The plot’s similarity is close enough to the novel that Stoker’s estate won its lawsuit.

But, of course, the magic is in the telling.

Aside from several of the cast members having worked with Robert Eggers before (Skarsgård in “The Northman,” Dafoe in “The Lighthouse”), Willem Dafoe previously starred as Count Orlok in “The Shadow of a Vampire,” Nicholas Hoult starred as the title character in “Renfield,” and Skarsgård once played a character called Young Nosferatu in a film when he was 16 or 17.

Eggers says, “I love the 1930s Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Bride of Frankenstein films from Universal Studios – they are the most iconic monster movies in cinema history. Even if you haven’t seen them, the reason Frankenstein’s Monster has a flat head in every Halloween costume is because of Boris Karloff. Dracula wears a tuxedo because of Bela Lugosi. They are ingrained in the public imagination.

“Universal films aren’t about the jump scare, they’re about atmosphere. To probe the dark within us in a real way, to go back to those childhood instincts with a more adult approach, that’s my intention. How do you create the post-expressionist atmosphere of the Universal horror movies in a more grounded, realistic way and make the monsters believable?”

You’ve seen the famous vampire played on screen by Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, Nicholas Cage, John Carradine, Klaus Kinski, Gary Oldman, George Hamilton, and a host of other fanged actors.

“Casting Skarsgård as the hideously ancient, mustached, layered-with-prosthetics Count Orlok was about keeping the demon sexy,” says Eggers. “It was important to have a young, beautiful person underneath that. There is something seductive in this powerful figure.”

Eggers filmed “Nosferatu” in the Czech Republic and Romania to get the mood right. And he added 5,000 trained rats to the cast.

“I was always interested in dark stuff,” he says.

Email Shirrel: srhoades@aol.com