Old Movies

I watch a lot of old movies. I thoroughly enjoy reading things like the American Film Institute's Top 100 lists and picking up whatever movies I haven't seen on Netflix. (Erin would tell you that such checklist behavior is a tenet of my OCD, but what does she know.) Consequently, I've seen scads of movies -- everything from François Truffaut's French New Wave classics to, somewhat embarrasingly, Hostel.

Erin, on the other hand, has absolutely no desire to watch many old movies. Occasionally she's up for an Audrey Hepburn or Fred Astaire pic, but The Battleship Potemkin? No way.

The other night, after I got the Tivo all setup, I wanted to give the Amazon Unbox service a quick spin. As it turns out, they're currently running a promotion on a handful of classic movies where you can download and watch them for free on your Tivo. So what did I select to watch? The 1922 F.W. Murnau silent classic Nosferatu.

Nosferatu is widely considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Max Schreck plays a timelessly scary looking version of Dracula who, for my money, scares the pants off Bela Lagosi's 1931 "I'm a lover not a biter" version of the same character. (Plus it doesn't hurt that Schreck's name translates to "terror" in his native Germany.) So I thoroughly enjoyed my 63 minutes of reading dialog and digging Nosferatu's rat-like fangs.

Erin, on the other hand, could do nothing but make fun of me as I sat in the dark on the couch with my popcorn. What does she know? She made us rent Deliver Us From Eva early in our marriage. Enough said.

In the end, I decided that part of the reason scary movies aren't really scary any more is the selection of actors. Many old movies were genuinely disturbing, and it was partly because the actors portraying the parts were frequently crazy themselves, leaving little reliance on acting ability. With this in mind, perhaps we need to start letting Phil Spector and O.J. do buddy commedies.