Episode 170 - Nosferatu (1922)


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Feb 23 2025 48 mins   4

This week we're heading to Transylvania to talk Werewolves, The Bubonic Plague, Rats and how to make a film in 1922. It's The OG NOSFERATU!

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The film is available in full for free on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVV7UutK0Xk

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Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (German: Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens) is a 1922 silent German Expressionist vampire film directed by F. W. Murnau from a screenplay by Henrik Galeen. It stars Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife (Greta Schröder) of his estate agent (Gustav von Wangenheim) and brings the plague to their town.

Nosferatu was produced by Prana Film and is an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. Various names and other details were changed from the novel, including Count Dracula being renamed Count Orlok. Although those changes are often represented as a defense against copyright infringement accusations, the original German intertitles acknowledged Dracula as the source. Film historian David Kalat states in his commentary track that since the film was "a low-budget film made by Germans for German audiences... setting it in Germany with German-named characters makes the story more tangible and immediate for German-speaking viewers".

the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre. Critic and historian Kim Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the genre of horror film.