NOSFERATU
By Dominic Nicoscia

THE VAMPIRE LIVES: Nosferatu and Rotting, Moldy Flesh team up at the Clearview.

I can deliver any number of Halloween clichés about how this past Saturday’s showing of “Nosferatu” at Red Bank’s Clearview cinema was hair-raising, de-frightful or the ever-popular spooktacular. And while a majority of them would be appropriate, I don’t think they would quite capture the gestalt of the evening. However I did realize one thing while watching the most popular horror bootleg ever on the big screen for the first and last time: all the special effects, psychotic plot-lines and A-list actors of today are no substitute for the classics. The realization that “Nosferatu” would never again be screened in this format combined with garden-state captains of industrial, Rotting, Moldy Flesh, providing the soundtrack to the experience made it clear that this night would be something special.

The evening began at 10 pm, when the lights went low and people of all creeds, colors and costumes were silenced by RMF’s first note. From that point on, the band demonstrated their excellent knowledge of pace, feeling, tone and context as they wove a sonic blanket for “Nosferatu’s” five acts. The band stood in the shadows and let their instruments do the talking as they made you an unwitting hostage to their sepulchral symphony. When all was said and done and Count Orlok had been slain, they delivered a soft and dramatically final refrain and took a curtain-call at the behest of the event’s organizer and Freedom Film Society president, Marc Leckstein.

It was good to do something Halloween-related without having to go out and beg for candy or take your drunken friend home from a party. The show was an exciting, creative and culturally advantageous display of what true artists are capable of and how art-ifacts can endure. Though I was one of the only slobs out of costume, it made me appreciate Halloween a lot more.

Even though Bram Stoker’s wife sued the studio that made the first-ever vampire film into bankruptcy, we can certainly be grateful that the film survived long enough for someone so conscious-and perhaps a bit less scrupulous-to restore it. I felt privileged that the event was in such a small and intimate venue. Most of all I would like to thank Leckstein and the good folks at the Freedom Film Society as well as RMF for giving me a Halloween experience worth discussing. The classics never die, unless they get a stake through the heart.