Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren vog obam Here. Death was not the end for poor Lucy was Stern Wrath, a character in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. She fell victim to the book's aristocratic villain while stealing her blood. Night after night, Count Dracula of Transylvania slowly drained the life out of Lucy, but that was only the beginning for the young woman's killer also transformed her into an undead vampire like himself.
A brief reign of terror ensued at the graveyard. Then Lucy's living fiancee, Arthur, and his companions, including the vampire savvy dr Abraham van Helsing, found her awake near her tomb. She was finally destroyed for good after trying to lure Arthur into a lover's embrace. Had Arthur accepted her kiss, Dr Van Helsing explained in his broken English, the morning suitor would have quote become no farratu as they call it in Eastern Europe. The nosferatu do not die like
the bee when he stinged once. He's only stronger, and being stronger have yet more power to work evil. In the novel Dracula, Stoker treats nosferatu as a synonym for vampire. Countless horror writers took his lead, using the two terms interchangeably over the next hundred plus years, including Treehouse of Terror four episode of The Simpsons. Like Van Helsing, Stoker seems to have believed that nosferatu was an authentic word of Eastern European origin, but the evidence tells another story.
No s farratu is probably a mistranslation of a Romanian or Greek term that scholars have yet pinned down. Whatever its origins were, horror media gave nos ferratu a new meaning, and it became fodder for some of the scariest vampire stories ever to rise from the shadows. Nineteenth century travel writer Emily Girard was talking vampires well before d Kilo went to print. Born in Scotland in eighteen forty nine, she emerged as a novelist and literary critic, but history
mostly remembers her nonfiction works on European folklore. Gerard's eighteen eighty five essay Transylvanian Superstitions contains the following passage. More decidedly evil, however, is the vampire or no sfaratu, in whom every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell. The problem is no Sfaratu wasn't a real word, not in Romanian and not in any known Eastern European language or dialect. Gerard might have bungled
the Romanian word nasu ferrite, which means unbearable. It's also possible that she misinterpreted and misspelled neckara tool, a Romanian term for devil, Or maybe Girard was thinking of the Greek word nasophos, defined as a plague carrier. A nineteenth century travel piece Torturing Spirits in Romanian popular belief makes
a similar mistake. The text mentions the nosferat, whom the author calls the most dangerous torturing spirit of Romanian folklore, but there's no proof that he was ever exposed to this concept out in the field. The author may have borrowed the word nos farat from Gerard's writings. Bram Stoker
seemingly did. Most horror historians credit Gerard's essay and her eight book The Land Beyond the Forest, Facts, Figures and Fancies from Transylvania with introducing Stoker to the term nos farrat to, but the word only makes two appearances in the Dracula novel, and it didn't really go mainstream until one of Germany's strangest motion picture companies came along, Prana Film. This young German based studio was drawn to all things
occult and supernatural. Early in the nineteen twenties, Prana resolved to put Dracula on the silver screen. What followed was a true classic of the horror genre and a legal disaster. Always spoke by email with Jonathan Bailey, a horror fan who has written about this surprisingly long history of copyright issues in monster cinema on his website Plagiarism Today. He said Prana Film wanted to do an expressionistic retelling of the story of Dracula. That was very much the intent
from day one. However, the estate of Bram Stoker meaning his widow Florence Stoker, didn't want to sell them the rights. Rather than abandoned the idea, they changed the name and a few other elements to make it an original work. Calling most of the revisions that Prana Film made superficial would be generous. The vampire in Prana's script is still an aristocrat with a spooky castle who travels across the sea and raises hell in a new city. But here
he goes by Count Orlock rather than Count Dracula. To cover its tracks further, Prana Film discarded the book's title. They've chosen replacement No s Ferrat, a symphony of horror known frequently today. Just as Nos Ferrato Germany had already signed into an international agreement protecting the copyright of literary and artistic works. By keeping bram Stoker's basic plot more or less intact, the team at Prana was running a foul of the law, whether they realized it or not.
Bailey explained the film was a very new medium at the time, especially commercially. Whenever a new technology comes along for creativity, copyright is usually one of the last things to get serious thought. Even if filmmakers understood the basics of copyright law, they likely didn't grasp the nuances of it. After all, their filmmakers not lawyers. This is something that
remains very true today. On March four, of n two Prana films, nos Feratu, premiered at the Berlin's Logical Gardens of All Places, starring Max Trak as the seriously creepy count orlock was acclaimed by audiences and most critics. Most critics, that is, except for Florence Stoker, working on her behalf. A German lawyer hired by the British Incorporated Iet of Authors sought compensation from Prana that they had plagiarized Dracula
was not in doubt. However, the studio had blown a large sum of money promoting nos Faratu and went bankrupt before the attorney came knocking. So, in accordance with Stoker's wishes, a German court ordered that every copy of the movie be destroyed. Try as she might, and she did try, Florence Stoker could not slay nos Feratu. An American print survived the destruction campaign. Prana Film's masterpiece now resides in the public domain. It's gotten countless DVD releases and is
free to watch on platforms like YouTube. But nos Ferato may have actually helped the franchise that it ripped off. In Stoker's widow authorized a new stage play adaptation of Dracula. The leading man in the Broadway production was a young Hungarian named Bella Legosi. He had reprised the role for Universal Pictures classic and legal Dracula movie, though Count Dracula defined Bella Legosi's career would only play the character once more on film, in the Night horror comedy Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein. As for that haunting Prana flick, it got a high profile remake in the form of Werner Hertzog's No Sparatto The Vampire from nineteen seventy nine. Then came the novel nos ferratt To spelled n O s or a two by Joe Hill, which is the pen name of Stephen King's son Joseph. A serialized TV adaptation ran on AMC for two seasons in twenty nine, and
so there you have it. No Sparato is a word of unknown origin that appeared in a groundbreaking horror novel, got implicated in some legal drama, changed movie history and inspired a pun from a member of the King family. Emily Gerard had no idea what she had started. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and uced by Tyler Clang. For more than this and lots of other topics, visit
has toufworks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio or more podcasts to my Heart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.