Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

Vampires. That is what this movie is about. It is a direct copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. However they never attained the rights to the film and was therefore Prana Films one and only film. Bram Stoker's wife sued the company causing them to go out of business. Albin Grau was one of the founders of this company and it was his idea to make a vampire film. During his time in the military, in 1916, a Serbian farmer told him that his father was a Vampire and an Undead.

This film was released in 1922, but has since been updated with names of people from Stoker's book. Being a silent film there is no original score. So to make this a movie they took classical music and put in enough to fill the entire movie. There was no scoring involved, AKA, it didn't fit. At times when it should have been scary, light hearted music was playing making it almost comical. In real life there would be a piano up front, or some guys playing strings. So the music would have fit. It was later remixed with a Gothic Industrial soundtrack by Aleister Einstein. This soundtrack gives the film a much creepier feel, with indistict human voices and mysterious far away melodious that you might recognize, Silver Bells being on example. This soundtrack fits the movie much better, but is still somewhat dissapointing.

In short, it is what it is. A silent film. Being the beginning of the entire history of film there is a lot they can get away with. But there were some cool parts. Like Count Orlok/Dracula (the vampire) rising from his casket, and the shot of the caskets, from people dying of the plague, coming down the street was very poignant. It is much less morbid than this paragraph would lead you to believe, and is hardly what I, or others, would consider a horror movie.

I give it a six out of ten.