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YMMV: Nosferatu

  • Ass Pull: One of the most famous in movie history; Murnau couldn't figure out how to kill Orlock, so he finally just said "Uh, sunlight? Yeah, that works..." Since then, every vampire in fiction has been vulnerable to it.
  • Complete Monster: Count Orlok, the eponymous "Nosferatu," is one of the earliest examples of vampires in cinema in the film and one of the most terrifying. When Thomas Hutter arrives in the Transylvanian Carpathian Mountains, the locals speak Orlok's name in hushed whispers and don't dare to venture out at dark. Upon meeting Orlok, Hutter is attacked and the count tries to feed from him fatally before being repulsed. Hutter witnesses Orlok loading up several coffins to be transported across the sea, and Orlok later kills the crew of the schooner transporting him. The other coffins are revealed to also contain plague-bearing rats, and Orlok's arrival spreads a deathly plague all over Europe. He uses the plague as cover to feed on the people of Hutter's home village of Wisborg without suspicion before Hutter's innocent wife Ellen catches his eye. Orlok attacks Ellen, draining her to death in her Heroic Sacrifice to keep him distracted before the sun rises to destroy him. Orlok had spawned a legion of imitators and while later vampires were portrayed as sophisticated, urbane and charming, Orlok is nothing more than a cunning, evil and ravenous beast that can barely pass as a human being.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: In the case of Werner Herzog's Nosferatu The Vampyre, there's another collaboration and brilliant soundtrack by German group Popol Vuh.
    • As well as Wagner's Rheingold, used when darkness falls during Harker's walk to the castle, culminating in him (and the audience) seeing the vampire for the first time.
  • I Am Not Shazam: "Nosferatu" is another word for "vampire", but some seem to believe that it's actually Orlok's name.
  • Narm: In order to make the carriage seem "Supernaturally fast," they just sped up the camera. In 1922 this certainly looked spooky, but today? Brings Benny Hill to mind.
  • Nightmare Retardant: in the opening scenes the villagers claim a werewolf roams thru the forest at night. The atmosphere is really creepy and the audience wonders what this creature will look like. When the protagonist goes to sleep the camera shows a wolflike creature walking in the forest, but it's clearly not a wolf, left alone a werewolf, but a striped hyena! And it's strange to downright ridiculous that this animal walks around in Transylvania, Romania.
  • Spell My Name with an S: Orlok? Orlock? Both spellings have been used frequently, though the former seems to be the correct one.
  • Watch It for the Meme: Some younger viewers watch the film just to find out who was the guy flickering the lights in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

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