One of the most secret elements about Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu—a reimagining of a silent film that famously ditched its plot Dracula– what Count Orlok it seems. Before the film hit theaters, marketing material showed the vampire played by Bill Skarsgård in silhouette or shadow only. This is emphasized in the discussion of how freakishly awesome the character can be seen on the screen, but now that the movie is out, the audience is also looking at a surprising choice of grooming.

Obviously… that mustache!

In a spoiler-y interview with differentEggers was asked why Count Orlok had such unusual facial hair. As is often the case with this writer-director, it began as he did extensive research before production.

“To try to create a more frightening vampire than we’ve done in a long time, I went back to the legend,” he said in the trade. “It’s something I like though, but the first folk vampire was written by people who believed vampires existed. There’s some good stuff out there, and the vampire of the tale is a colorful, walking undead who corpse.

It led to that, he explained, thinking “What does a dead Transylvanian nobleman look like?”

From there, Eggers said, he thought it meant “this complicated Hungarian costume with long sleeves, weird high-heeled shoes and a feather hat. It also meant a mustache. Anyway, there’s no way this guy doesn’t have a mustache. Try to find a Transylvanian old enough to grow a mustache. It’s part of the culture. If you don’t want to be bothered Googling, think Vlad the Impaler. Even Bram Stoker understood to give Dracula a mustache in the book.

So there you have it: it’s a culturally appropriate choice—as you can see, the other characters in the film, including Prof. Willem Dafoe’s Von Franz, also ‘staches—and it’s something Stoker himself considered while working on the 1897 novel that started it all.

Nosferatu is in theaters now.

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