Nosferatu is one of the most unsettling films in horror history; it isn’t “scary” in the way that many modern horror fans seem to crave, but considering that it was the world’s first vampire movie, it is nothing short of remarkable that it is also arguably the best.

F. W. Murnau’s unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was famously almost lost to the world when a judge ordered all copies destroyed after the Stoker estate sued the filmmaker for his blatant disregard for copyright. Fortunately, F. W. Murnau wasn’t the only man with a blatant disregard for copyright in that day, and a number of pirated copies of the film survived.

It’s worth taking note of this story, not only because of its own merits, but because it illustrates the kind of “wild west” setting the world of filmmaking was at the time. The Hays Code had not yet come into effect, copyright laws regarding film were still poorly understood, and there was little sense that this nascent art form could have an impact that might resonate through the years. No one knew what the rules were back then, so filmmakers had to make their own.

That’s the world that Nosferatu came into, a world still reeling from the horrors of the Great War, a world taking its first tentative steps into the age of electricity, and a world still very much steeped in tradition and superstition.

I say all this to put you in the mind of what it must have been like to see Nosferatu for the first time. The odds are good you’ve never seen a feature length film before. You step into a darkened room with an image projected on a white wall. And onto that white screen a flickering image appears, moving pictures, unraveling the story of a man who takes a journey to a strange country and meets a man who is clearly not a man, a supernatural creature with a horrific visage and unnatural powers.

How could you fail to be terrified? How could you not fear the creature of darkness that brings plague and death wherever it alights?

But of course we live in a more enlightened age. Surely that image must have lost some of its power on us. Surely after having seen thousands of films, after becoming jaded by all but the most sophisticated stories, and having all but forgotten the terror demons and vampires once stirred in our hearts, surely Nosferatu must have lost some of its edge.

And yet, even today, it is frightening. Even today, Count Orlok can make your skin crawl.

A large part of that is thanks to Max Schreck’s portrayal of the unearthly Count. The way he moves and the way he looks are simply unsettling. This isn’t a vampire you would fall in love with unless he had you under his spell. This is half a demon, a true monster, a man in league with the devil himself, with the unearthly powers of hell at his call.

And while Nosferatu may not be “scary” in the sense that modern horror fans have come to define the word, it is still profoundly unsettling. That is an act of pure genius, a piece of art that despite almost a hundred years of films, has still not grown stale or cliched.

We don’t have many monsters like Count Orlok anymore. We no longer believe in devils. But there’s still something in our deepest soul that resonates with fear when we see him rise out of that coffin. Our enlightenment does us no good. Our jaded reason abandons us. The ancient terror of the Dead Who Yet Live still holds real sway in our hearts.





Albert lives in Florida where the humidity has driven him halfway to madness, and his children have finished the job. He is the author of The Mulch Pile and A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw .

To hear more of our thoughts on Nosferatu check out Episode 180 of the Human Echoes Podcast.