Hey y'all. It's your girl Cheekies and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheekies and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more.

And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. It's going to be an

exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four on the IHeart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production

of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

At last, I can speak to you of the most recent cinematic treatment of Count Orlock,

the off-brand Dracula from 1920's Nosferatu, a symphony of horror,

who went on to become a horror icon in his own right.

We have to remember that in 1922, Bram Stoker's novel Dracula was only 35 years old.

In fact, F.W. Murnau's unauthorized adaptation drew the ire of Stoker's widow, whose legal actions threatened to see all copies of the now legendary silent film destroyed.

Luckily, of course, Murnau's masterpiece survived.

As horror film historian David J. Schaul points out in his book,

V is for Vampire, the A to Z Guide to Everything Undead,

the German expressionist picture can largely be seen as a, quote,

metaphor of the plague-like destruction of Germany in World War I.

He also points out that in its initial release, it was far from the silent black and white nightmare

that we think of today and was actually elaborately color-tinted and accompanied by a modernist

orchestra score. The film influenced not only subsequent Dracula adaptations,

but horror cinema as a whole. While Dracula deservingly enjoys the greater following,

and has seen countless screen and TV incarnations, Count Orlock has enjoyed his own

...