Charlie Chaplin's last two reeler recalls earlier comedies such as the Essanay Work, with Chaplin casting himself as a worker rather than a Tramp, but the film shows great advances in film technique. Chaplin is a construction worker, who arrives late for work, bringing a flower as peace offering for his boss, Mack Swain. As a ditch digger, Chaplin leaves something to be desired, but as a brick catcher, he's amazing, due to a very clever reverse action scene.

Lunchtime brings Swain's daughter, Edna Purviance with his lunch and Chaplin seems smitten. He has no lunch, but is lucky enough to partake of some of his co-workers' food due to a very active work elevator, which they all seem to use as a sideboard.

It's pay day and Chaplin argues about his wages, despite being overpaid. His battleaxe wife Phyllis Allen (in their first re-teaming since the Keystone days) shows up at the end of the workday to collect his wages, some of which he's able to retain despite her efforts.

That night, Chaplin and his co-workers go drinking and are quite looped at the end of the evening - bellicose but songful. In a rare night time photography scene, Chaplin tries to catch the last streetcar home but is pushed out one end when huge Henry Bergman pushes his way on at the other. In his drunkenness Chaplin boards a hot dog cart, thinking it's another streetcar, holding onto a suspended salami as a hand strap.

Arriving home at daybreak, Chaplin has just started undressing for bed when the alarm clock rings, waking the wife. Pretending to leave for work, he tries to settle down to sleep in the bathtub, but is caught and sent out to work by his nagging mate.

Payday began life as Come Seven, a story about two rich plumbers. Production was interrupted by Chaplin's trip to Europe after only eight scenes were photographed. ~ Phil Posner, Rovi

F. W. Murnau's landmark vampire film Nosferatu isn't merely a variation on Bram Stoker's Dracula: it's a direct steal, so much so that Stoker's widow went to court, demanding in vain that the Murnau film be suppressed and destroyed. The character names have been changed to protect the guilty (in the original German prints, at least), but devotees of Stoker will have little trouble recognizing their Dracula counterparts. The film begins in the Carpathian mountains, where real estate agent Hutter (Gustav von Wagenheim) has arrived to close a sale with the reclusive Herr Orlok (Max Schreck). Despite the feverish warnings of the local peasants, Hutter insists upon completing his journey to Orlok's sinister castle. While enjoying his host's hospitality, Hutter accidently cuts his finger-whereupon Orlok tips his hand by staring intently at the bloody digit, licking his lips. Hutter catches on that Orlok is no ordinary mortal when he witnesses the vampiric nobleman loading himself into a coffin in preparation for his journey to Bremen. By the time the ship bearing Orlok arrives at its destination, the captain and crew have all been killed-and partially devoured. There follows a wave of mysterious deaths in Bremen, which the local authorities attribute to a plague of some sort. But Ellen, Hutter's wife, knows better. Armed with the knowledge that a vampire will perish upon exposure to the rays of the sun, Ellen offers herself to Orlok, deliberately keeping him "entertained" until sunrise. At the cost of her own life, Ellen ends Orlok's reign of terror once and for all. Rumors still persist that Max Schreck, the actor playing Nosferatu, was actually another, better-known performer in disguise. Whatever the case, Schreck's natural countenance was buried under one of the most repulsive facial makeups in cinema history-one that was copied to even greater effect by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake - Nosferatu the Vampyre. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi