Short Film: Orlock

Coming in under 10-minutes this is a silent homage to Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, directed by Kevin Forte and released in 2011.

The film has a near sepia tone and a deliberate fuzzing and added film degradation, which is meant to harken back to the days of silent movies and nitrate film and which also allows the filmmakers to hide any issues. That said, when we see him, the makeup work for Orlock (Michael Licatese) looks pretty good.

Amy (Lori Pirone) conducts a ritual, including cutting her hand and drinking her own blood, to try and summon Orlock. A note here, whilst the IMDb page calls him Graf Orlock, the intertitles (on more than one occasion) say Count Graf Orlock… Graf, of course, means Count and it is a little faux pas. Eventually Amy puts her ritual candles out and goes to bed.

Amy turned

Some time later, Mist rolls down the side of the house and Orlock arrives. He enters the building and feeds from Amy – a scene that has a fair amount of fake blood – and turns her. She awakens vampire… and that’s it, though the intertitles do give us a tad more of an insight into the workings of her mind. The film is an homage, as mentioned, and clearly a labour of love for Forte, who would go on to bring us A Vampire’s Heartbreak.

The imdb page is here, the film can be watched on YouTube.