'Nosferatu' brings adult fun to Halloween celebration

Nathan Junior, of Musical Independence, will be providing background music during a special showing of "Nosferatu" by the Heritage Museum.

/ Photo by L.E. Masterson

INDEPENDENCE - The welcome mat is out for one of filmdom’s most bloodthirsty characters.

Yes, Nosferatu, the 1922 self-titled silent film about a vampire that ended up terrorizing filmgoers in its day, will be shown by the Heritage Museum Society as a fundraiser.

Ticket sales from “Nosferatu: A Symphony of History” benefit the Heritage Museum’s educational program and other projects.

For a town that already celebrates Halloween with a Ghost Walk and Trick or Treat night, why not bring to it a movie that was once banned in several countries for its excessive terror?

“Cinematically speaking, (Nosferatu) really was one of the first horror movies. It’s one of the first really scary movies,” said Heritage Society secretary Kevin Cassidy. “This was like the first Dracula movie ever.”

Bram Stoker wrote the novel Dracula. Any similarities Nosferatu shares with the better-known vampire were purely intentional.

“(Nosferatu) was a ripoff of Dracula. And Bram Stoker’s wife, he was dead by then, she sued because they never requested and received the rights to release it,” said Cassidy of the legal entanglement. “She won in court. They destroyed all the movies except for a few copies that were hidden away, and that’s how they were able to save it for posterity.”

That foresight, which basically saved a film now considered a classic in the horror genre, has Cassidy thinking about other possibilities.

“This community celebrates Halloween very well … But there’s never anything that’s just for grown-ups, and it was kind of (why) this (film) makes sense. And if it’s successful, the hope would be to do something like this again next year,” he said.

The score will be performed live by Nathan Junior, owner of Musical Independence. But this won’t be a typical screening of a classic silent movie.

“It’s not an event where you sit and watch a movie. It’s going to be playing. The music is going to be, I think, more enjoyable than even the movie itself,” said Natascha Adams, director of the Heritage Museum. “So we had someone call … who wanted to buy tickets, and she wanted to know what seats she would get. I had to explain that it’s not a viewing. This is happening while everyone else is chit-chatting.”

Instead, the film is being utilized more “for the background and entertainment value, and for people to mingle and enjoy their company and a glass of wine, and as an opportunity for us to fundraise on behalf of the museum,” said Adams.

One measure of how successful the Ghost Walk has become is that it drew some 500 people to the museum earlier this month. Adams wants to build on that success.

“So the museum does the Ghost Walk. But we were thinking, you know, how else can we provide something fun for the community that’s more geared toward adults,” she said. “So I started asking folks what they thought might be fun.”

Networking led Adams to Junior. She learned he provides live accompaniment for a movie theater in Corvallis.

“Once he shared that it seemed to all fall into place,” she said. “(Nosferatu) is a silent movie. It has a very dramatic soundtrack. So we thought it would be fun to have (Junior) play live music to accompany the movie while folks just kind of mingle and drink wine …”

Organ music will dominate Junior’s score. But other instruments will be introduced as the film’s narrative dictates.

“I’m going to try, best I can, to follow the plot, and to help the casual viewer along the way,” he said. “I try to attach themes to the central characters that sound like I feel they are.”

It’s one week before the big event and Junior has yet to see the film.

“For many years now, people have been improvising along to the film. Which is what I plan to do,” he said.

That’s his plan, though change is possible.

“So the first time I ever see the movie, I’ll be reacting to it musically,” he said. “Unless I cave in and watch it first. It is pretty long. So I’m debating my approach.”

Junior has a friend that has scored Nosferatu multiple times.

“The first time he went into Nosferatu cold, and he played it brilliantly,” said Junior. “Next couple of times his performances were really dodgy. Then he went in and studied the film and finally came up with loose themes to improvise around.”

Time will soon tell what approach Junior takes. But he does have a framework in mind.

“I want to try to keep it totally acoustic,” he said. “I probably will have a single microphone back where I’m playing to pick up the acoustic instruments and other scoring effects I might add.”

One purpose of a score is to engage an audience, to draw them into a cinematic world.

“What I try to do for the audience is to assign little themes that I improvise for certain characters. And when I feel like the narrative is taking over the scene then I’ll try to include a little more of that, if it’s their scene,” he said.

Adams said she has complete confidence in Junior’s talent.

“(Junior) has just been doing it so long that he just improvises as the movie plays,” she said. “He will just do his thing, and he’s pretty good at it.”

The Heritage Museum is at 281 S. Second Street. Valkyrie Wine Tavern is at 301 S. Main Street. Both are in Independence.

Adams added that the Heritage Museum Society is the nonprofit that supports the museum.

“So the library has the Friends of the Library. The Heritage Society is the equivalent of that.”

One of the organs Junior will play was given to Valkyrie by the museum. The other is his own antique organ.

(Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Polk County Itemizer-Observer in October. This is an edited version.)