Episode 6: Biting Critique

You may be wondering why we’re talking about Nosferatu on a podcast about science fiction films. I added this movie to our list for a couple of reasons: As with its German Expressionist “siblings,” The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis, Nosferatu has influenced subsequent horror and science fiction films, including “the post-apocalyptic scavengers in I Am Legend, the ravaging blood-suckers in Guillermo del Toro's Blade 2 and TV series The Strain, the Pale Man in del Toro's Pan’s Labyrinth, and the gliding, grinning Gentlemen in ‘Hush,’ the spookiest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (Nosferatu: The monster who still terrifies, 100 years on). The list of characters influenced by the design of Count Orlok also includes Petyr from the film What We Do in the Shadows, Baron Afanas from the TV show of the same name, Kurt Barlow from the 1979 version of Salem’s Lot—and who can forget the Vorvon from the old Buck Rogers TV series? But it isn’t just Nosferatu’s influence on later cinema that prompted me to suggest it. Stories of vampires, like all folklore, were an attempt by people to make sense of phenomena they didn’t understand—almost an allegory, in fact, like Star Trek’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (among so many others).