10 Movie Ripoffs Better Than The Original

Even though F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu was released almost an entire decade before Tod Browning's Dracula, it's no secret that Nosferatu was an unofficial, unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic horror text, resulting in a lawsuit that caused almost all copies of the film to be destroyed. And while both films are stone-cold horror classics, it's fair to say that critical consensus actually comes down on the side of the ripoff here.

Nosferatu's gorgeously lit German Expressionist visuals and sheer pervasive atmosphere pull far ahead of Dracula, its status as a silent film only making it that much more moody and enigmatic. Count Orlok's (Max Schrek) design is also more viscerally unsettling than Dracula (Bela Lugosi), and the film as a whole is just more unnerving to behold.

They're both great films, mind, but in this case, the "ask forgiveness, not permission" rip-off is actually the better-made and more effective movie in basically every respect.