Watch the Original Nosferatu, the Classic German Expressionist Vampire Film, Before the New Remake Arrives This December

F. W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu, far and away the most influ­en­tial ear­ly vam­pire movie, came out 102 years ago. For about ten of those years, Robert Eggers has been try­ing to remake it. He would­n’t be the first: Wern­er Her­zog cast Klaus Kin­s­ki as the blood-suck­ing aris­to­crat at the cen­ter of his own ver­sion in 1979, and, though not a remake, E. Elias Mer­hige’s Shad­ow of the Vam­pire, from 2000, brought fresh atten­tion to Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu by grotesque­ly fic­tion­al­iz­ing its pro­duc­tion. In the lat­ter pic­ture, Willem Dafoe plays Max Schreck, the actor who took on the orig­i­nal role of the Drac­u­la-inspired Count Orlok, as an actu­al vam­pire.

Dafoe changes sides in Eggers’ Nos­fer­atu, due out this Christ­mas (see trail­er below), by appear­ing as a vam­pire hunter. Play­ing Count Orlok is Bill Skars­gård, sure to be unrec­og­niz­able in full cos­tume and make­up. “This Orlok is more of a folk vam­pire than any oth­er film ver­sion,” says Eggers in a recent Van­i­ty Fair inter­view. “That means he’s a dead per­son. And he’s not like, ‘I look great and I’m dead.’ ” What’s more, “for the first time in a Drac­u­la or Nos­fer­atu sto­ry, this guy looks like a dead Tran­syl­van­ian noble­man. Every sin­gle thing he’s wear­ing down to the heels on his shoes is what he would’ve worn.” And lest any view­er with knowl­edge of ancient Roman­ian cul­ture accuse the film of blithe inac­cu­ra­cy, he also speaks a ver­sion of the extinct Dacian lan­guage.

This atten­tion to detail will come as no sur­prise to fans of Eggers, who’s made his name with the his­tor­i­cal films The Witch, The Light­house, and The North­man, all praised for their dis­tinc­tive folk­loric tex­tures. But with Nos­fer­atu, he pays direct homage to what’s pre­sum­ably one of the major influ­ences on his cin­e­mat­ic style. “The ver­sion that I watched as a kid didn’t have music,” he remem­bers. “It might not have had the same impact if it had had a cheesy organ score or synth score.” The video he watched was “a degrad­ed 16-mil­lime­ter print” that had “cer­tain frames where Max Schreck­’s eyes looked like cat eyes. It’s the ver­sion that gave rise to the leg­ends of Max Schreck actu­al­ly being a vam­pire.”

Grow­ing up in the rur­al New Hamp­shire of the nineties, Eggers’ inter­est in see­ing Nos­fer­atu meant that he “had to dri­ve to the town that was pop­u­lat­ed and had a video store to order it, and then it came in the mail a month and a half lat­er.” Today, we can watch it when­ev­er we like, free online, and if you hap­pen nev­er to have seen it, you should cer­tain­ly do so before catch­ing the new remake. If reac­tions to ear­ly screen­ings are any­thing to judge by, this new inter­pre­ta­tion of the mate­r­i­al more than stands on its own dead, accu­rate­ly heeled feet. But as Eggers sure­ly under­stands bet­ter than any­one, you can’t approach the dankly seduc­tive realm of Count Orlok with­out also being pulled back into cin­e­ma his­to­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

10 Great Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: Nos­fer­atu, The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari & More

What Is Ger­man Expres­sion­ism? A Crash Course on the Cin­e­mat­ic Tra­di­tion That Gave Us Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu & More

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Hor­ror Leg­end Christo­pher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.