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Public Domain Horror Film Series: Nosferatu (1922)

Event box

Illustrated Nosferatu poster featuring Count Orlok’s pale, shadowed face with wide eyes and pointed teeth looming over a dark castle silhouette and eclipsed moon. The title “Nosferatu” appears in large white letters at the bottom.
Public Domain Horror Film Series: Nosferatu (1922) In-Person

The shadows are getting longer, the nights are getting darker, and Movie Nights in Minerva is bringing back another October full of public domain horror films!

What’s “public domain,” you ask? These are works that have slipped free from copyright’s grip, meaning they belong to everyone. For scholars and students, public domain materials are treasures: they can be studied, remixed, taught, and shared without restriction. For horror fans? They’re a free-for-all of ghosts, monsters, and ghoulish delights we can screen without summoning a copyright lawyer.

This Week’s Fright: Nosferatu (1922)

When young Thomas Hutter travels to Transylvania to meet the mysterious Count Orlok, he soon discovers that his new client has a taste for more than real estate. What follows is a silent nightmare of plague, shadows, and one extremely creepy vampire making his way toward Hutter’s unsuspecting hometown.

  • Rated: Unrated (silent-era horror, eerie imagery & some vampire violence)
  • Runtime: Approximately 1 hour & 30 minutes

And of course, it wouldn’t be Movie Nights in Minerva without hot, fresh popcorn on hand. So grab your friends, embrace your inner creature of the night, and join us in the Minerva Room for one of horror cinema’s original nightmares.

Registration is not required, but preferred.

Date:
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
Time:
7:00pm - 8:45pm
Time Zone:
Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
Location:
Minerva Room (Map )
Campus:
The Uptown Campus
Audience:
  Open Public / Open to all  
Categories:
  Films  

Event Registration Only

Registration is required. There are 90 seats available.

A Film That Almost Disappeared

Nosferatu is a fitting choice during Banned Books Week: audiences almost lost it entirely! The film was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Stoker’s widow, Florence Stoker, successfully sued the filmmakers for copyright infringement. A German court ultimately ordered that copies of Nosferatu be destroyed. Fortunately for generations of horror fans, some prints survived outside Germany, allowing the film to endure long after the company that created it disappeared.

While Nosferatu wasn’t “banned” in quite the same way we talk about challenged books today, its history offers an interesting look at what can happen when access to a creative work is restricted—and just how easily a piece of cultural history can be lost.