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Robert Eggers’ lushly gothic remake of “Nosferatu” is a loving homage to silent films, with its dramatic black-and-white scenes and overpowering sense of creeping dread.

The eerie images of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) hand sweeping over the entire city of London and — in one of the film’s most striking shots — the face of his obsession, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), is a nod to F. W. Murnau’s original 1922 film, in which Count Orlok’s shadow falls across his victims before the monster himself enters the frame.

If you’re ready to do a deeper dive into the classics that influenced Eggers, start with these seven films.

Max Schreck in the 1922 version of “Nosferatu” Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

Long before Bela Lugosi donned a cape to play Dracula, German director F.W. Murnau brought his terrifying bat-eared, clawed monster Count Orlok to the screen. The character, whose name was changed to...

A Look Back: Murnau’s ‘Faust’A fun evening with friends including my friend Christa Lang Fuller, who introduced me to the 96 year old former actress Noreen Nash, (see blog) not too long ago. Christa hosted an evening with Justin from the Academy Museum, from next door and French American producer Martine Melloul and me to watch the vintage film ‘Faust’.

Christa is my age, German born, and was a young actress in Paris when she met the director Sam Fuller. At 23 she married him and eventually they left Paris for the U.S. They had a daughter, Samantha and she has a daughter, Samia. Sam died in 1997 and so the three women live in a beautiful warm and welcoming home on Woodrow Wilson Drive.

Christa has a sort of salon and along with her stories she feeds us food in abundance. This time Justin from the Academy Museum brought...

The latest restoration of a German silent classic is F.W. Murnau's lavishly mounted version of the Goethe tale, starring Emil Jannings as Mephisto. It's an impressive drama but also has a sense of (Teutonic) humor here and there. Most every shot is a fantastic visuals, and the bigger scenes use visual designs worthy of fine art. Faust Blu-ray + DVD Kino Classics 1926 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 106, 116 min / Street Date November 17, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.96 Starring Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn, Frida Richard, William Dieterle, Yvette Guilbert, Eric Barclay, Hanna Ralph, Werner Fuetterer. Cinematography Carl Hoffman Production Design Robert Herlth, Walter Röhrig Film Editor Elfi Böttrich Written by Gerhart Hauptmann, Hans Kyser from plays by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Christopher Marlowe Produced by Erich Pommer Directed by F.W. Murnau

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Back in film school, lecturers on cinema art of the 1920s claimed that Germany had an edge over Hollywood.

In today's chapter of our ongoing tribute to horror's early days, we take a look at an epic dark fantasy from director F.W. Murnau, whom you may remember as the director of the 1922 film Nosferatu, the first – though unofficial – cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. (For a really cool fictionalized take on the making of that film, check out E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire.) When Murnau returned to horror four years later, he did so in a major way, with the most elaborate and expensive German film production to date; Fritz Lang's monumental Metropolis would edge it out of the top spot the following year. The story of Faust is universally known, but got a big boost from an adaptation by renowned German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which was published in the early 1800s. The legend itself involves a master alchemist (Gösta Ekman) who...