Lafayette Journal & CourierA festival of frightsLong Center hosts silent horror on the big screen August 31, 2006 All of these horror films must pay homage to a film that creeped out audiences almost 85 years ago -- the chilling F. W. Murnau movie Nosferatu. Released in 1922, Nosferatu was one of the first full-length horror films. Purdue University experts call it one of the 10 best silent films of all time. "This is The Wizard of Oz of horror movies," said Lance Duerfahrd, assistant professor of English and visual studies. "People stole from it, and it keeps giving." Lafayette will have a rare opportunity to see Nosferatu on a big screen at 8 p.m. Friday at Long Center for the Performing Arts, 111 N. Sixth St. Theater organist Ken Double will accompany the film to bring extra mood and drama to the black and white movie. The screening is a part of the joint conference of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism and the North American Victorian Studies Association. It runs today through Sunday with workshops and lectures at Purdue University's Stewart Center. More than 600 participants from six countries and every state in America will attend. Nosferatu pays homage to a tale from the 19th century. "Murnau used a lot from Bram Stoker's Dracula, so much that Stoker's family tried to sue the studio," said Dino Felluga, an associate professor of English and organizer of the silent film screenings. However, there are significant differences between Dracula and Nosferatu. Nosferatu's Count Orlock is portrayed as meek and rat-like compared to Dracula. He is bald with jutting, hairy eyebrows. His posture is hunched, and his fingernails are long and sharp. Instead of fangs, he has two lower teeth that are pointy and shoot out of his mouth. "It's bad dentistry, not your typical fangs," joked Duerfahrd, who has just arrived at Purdue after teaching at Columbia University. Associate professor of English Emily Allen said the monster's appearance in Nosferatu evokes laughs from her students when she screens it for them. Count Orlock is not your average vampire, but Allen notices that students' chuckles soon turn to nervousness. "Then they are gripped and nothing is funny at the end of the movie," Allen said. While Murnau's photography and direction was top notch, Nosferatu would not hold up without its mysterious leading man, Max Schreck. The actor who only required a little bit of make-up for the role of Count Orlock cannot be found in any other film except Nosferatu and little was known about him before and after filming. Schreck has so much mystique that there were rumors that he really was a vampire or at least trying to be one. The 2000 film, Shadow of the Vampire with Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich, explored more of this idea. Hardcore horror film buffs will want to arrive early to the screening to see the first short horror movie -- a 1910 Thomas Edison version of Frankenstein will be shown for the first time in Greater Lafayette. It's based on Mary Shelley's classic novel. Felluga said the early version of Frankenstein was thought lost for decades until a print was discovered in private hands and screened in 1993. The film features early special effects of the monster's creation in a chemical vat, not by electricity as in in the famous 1931 Boris Karloff version. Long Center operations manager Shannon Sabel sees the silent film festival rejuvenating the use of the theater organ, an uncommon instrument in 2006. The Long Center Theater Organ Society brought three concerts to the downtown Lafayette theater in 2005. Those were the only times the organ was used all year. "This is a great opportunity for people in the community to see these films in the same sort of venue and same sort of feeling, the ambiance, that were there when they were first shown -- with live music," Sabel said.
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