With the help of an opening thunderbolt – suitably scaring the bejesus out of me and pretty much everyone around me – some effective lighting, and a voiceover sounding like it emanated from the Dark Lord himself, the Perth Concert Hall was at once transported to deepest, darkest Transylvania. This was the backdrop for organist Alessandro Pittorino, who, sporting a fabulous Gothic headpiece of black feathers (surely raven or crow?), for almost 90 minutes improvised a live accompaniment to the 1922 German expressionist horror film, Nosferatu.

Transfixed by Bram Stoker’s Dracula but unable to secure the rights from the Stoker estate, Nosferatu’s producer, Albin Grau, went ahead anyway and created his own flimsily disguised version of the original. Count Dracula becomes Count Orlock, Jonathan Harker becomes Thomas Hutter, and so on. But for all intents and purposes, Nosferatu is really Dracula’s first outing on the big screen. The tropes and scares with which we are familiar are all there: the terrifying Count and his menacing assistant (Knock); the damsel in distress (Ellen); the horror of the coffin; the wary villagers; the fear of the dark and the purification brought by the morning...