Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery

Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery is a movie monster museum located in Salem, MA. This private collection of James Lurgio features full-size creature creations that are made of resin, latex, and silicone. Many of the artists who created the figures in the collection work in the movie industry, some on the actual movie the piece is based on.

The gallery is spookily lit and decorated, and includes a few dramatic corner turns. The collection is well balanced between classic and modern monster characters and more or less follows chronological order, starting with the gallery’s namesake from the 1922 German film Nosferatu and extending all the way through other silent-era creations, Universal monsters, Hammer Studios horror characters, 80s slashers, and other less easily classifiable icons of the genre. All told, about 50 different characters were on display.

Highlights include many of the Universal monsters, Vincent Price from House of Wax, Alfred Hitchcock, The Darkness from Legend, and Linda Blair from The Exorcist. Christopher Lee also appears a couple of times, as does Peter Cushing. More recent monsters from The Shining and Fright Night through to George Romero’s Land of the Dead are also on display. Besides full-size figures, the collection also boasts movie props and prop replicas, as well as a life casts of famous actors and directors of the macabre.

Adapted with Permission from: The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker