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Today is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of our lord and savior Maximilian Schreck, otherwise known as the actor who inhabited Nosferatu in FW Murnau's 1922 classic. He didn't play the role - he inhabited it. There has never been and probably will never be an image in film that will scare me more than he does. He was born with a name bound for German Expressionistic horror greatness, wasn't he? I can't really imagine MAX SCHRECK as the dude taking my order at Denny's. His name itself is a guttural black-and-white scream. (Bonus points for thinking about Christopher Walken's character in Batman Returns right now.)
I'm always surprised to see so many credits under his name at IMDb - as far as history's concerned he crawled up out of the ground for Murnau and crept back under it at the end. Or you know, history as far as E. Elias Merhige's wonderful 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire dictates it. And I don't think that's a bad way to be remembered. I think it's a completely rad way to be remembered. Would that I could be remembered as a foul hell beast to haunt everyone's nightmares for eternity! Oh, to dream. Anyway in his honor, this:
Clockwise: Nosferatu (Max Schreck) in the 1922 film, Mr. Barlow (Reggie Nalder) in Salem's Lot, "Max Schreck" (Willem Dafoe) in Shadow of the Vampire, or Nosferatu (Klaus Kinski) in Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)?
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