Nosferatu: The First Vampire

Purists will--to mix monster movie metaphors--howl at this "digitally remastered" update of F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic silent film which, itself, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Following a brief introduction by David Carradine, viewers are treated to arguably the most creepy vampire performance in cinematic history by Max Schreck (who, when seeing a pic of Thomas Hutter's [a.k.a. the Jonathan Harker character] wife, exclaims: "Is this your wife? What a lovely throat!"). The digitizing effects basically amount to color tinting and a couple of cleverly edited scenes which give the appearance of stop-motion animation, but the really major addition here is the opening to ending soundtrack by Type O Negative, the kind of heavy metal band that I suspect would improve with beer but isn't quite worth the trip to the fridge to test the theory. But they do have range: contrast, for example, the eloquently titled "Unsuccessfully Coping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity" with the much less subtle "Die With Me." Also, as of this writing, their longform music video has just gone ahead of Fleetwood Mac: The Dance on the weekly music video sales chart, so what do I know? Optional. (R. Pitman)