Nosferatu - ten horrific facts!
A silent movie vampire classic with a dark history
Greetings Gold and Silver Level Templar Knights - a remake of the classic horror movie Nosferatu is about to be released. I’ve just been to see the original 1922 silent movie version which is incredibly watchable despite its age. And it has a very macabre history.
The iconic German silent movie Nosferatu - directed by F. W. Murnau in 1922 - is being remade. But for anybody who has never seen this film - it's a must-see. Based on the novel Dracula, Nosferatu had a huge influence on horror movies over the last century. But of equal interest - is the stories around the movie with some larger-than-life characters involved.
At Halloween this year (2024), I went to see a screening of the 1922 silent movie Nosferatu in a south London cinema - with a live orchestra accompaniment. I'd never sat through the movie before but what a terrific and horrific experience it is. A triumph of the German "expressionist" movement with very early special effects and creepy camerawork. Of course it's dated - it was made over a hundred years ago. But if you can get over its age, see it before the remake.
And it's a horror movie around which there were macabre incidents. Let me list some of them:
Dispute with Bram Stoker's widow
Nosferatu was loosely based on the novel Dracula by the Irish novelist, Bram Stoker. He was dead by the time the movie was being filmed but his widow, Florence, was not. She began a copyright battle with the film studio and one court ordered the destruction of all copies of Nosferatu. Thankfully that did not happen. However, Prana Film did go bankrupt having released only one film.
In the opening credits of the movie, there is an acknowledgement that it's based on Dracula. But the names of all the main characters were changed. Dracula becomes Count Orlock, Mina is renamed Ellen, and Jonathan Harker turns up as Thomas Hutter. The action is moved from 1890s England to Germany in 1838. The vampiric villain goes from the human appearing Dracula to the rodent-like Nosferatu.
The producer and production designer of Nosferatu, Albin Grau, was a member of an occult group - the Fraternitas Saturni - adopting the name Master Pacitius. In the First World War, Grau served in the Germany army and later claimed that a Serbian farmer had told him that his father was a vampire. He claimed this was his inspiration for Nosferatu. But Grau had a track record for lifting other horror writers' ideas. In 1920, he brazenly lifted the story of Jekyll and Hyde for a production called The Head of Janus - neglecting to contact the estate of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Grau brought the director Murnau into his occult group. At one point in the movie, you see the real estate agent Knock reading a very strange property contract written in a bizarre language. This was created by Grau using genuine occult symbols. In 1936, the Nazi regime in Germany - that came to power in 1933 - banned the Fraternitas Saturni and Grau fled to Switzerland.
The director's head went missing
In 2015, the skull of the director, Murnau, was stolen from his tomb by Satanic occultists and has never been seen again. A melted candle was found nearby. Murnau died in a car accident in 1931 in California and his body was returned to Germany before being buried in Berlin. It was not the first time the tomb had been disturbed over the years.