10 Scariest Horror Movie Vampires

Almost one hundred years old and this film is still the grand master of all Vampire portrayals on screen. There is no messing about here, no time wasted on understanding the curse or feeling sympathy for the damned. Count Orlock is an evil fiend and he needs to be destroyed.

The subject of a lawsuit on release, Nosferatu was an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was so blatant that Stoker's heirs successfully sued and all copies of the film were ordered destroyed. Thankfully, a few survived this culling.

Orlock differs from Dracula of the novel in several ways, though these are ways we have now come to associate with Vampires. For one, Orlock is completely unable to bear sunlight, while in the novel, sunlight merely weakens the Count. Orlock does not create other Vampires and simply kills people, taking the role of a plague upon the city he inhabits.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote of the movie:

'Here is the story of Dracula before it was buried alive in clichés...It doesn't scare us, but it haunts us.'

The film was also responsible for a true death, that of the film studio that created it. The studio had planned to create a library of Gothic, frightening films but was forced to declare bankruptcy following the lawsuit by Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe. Even if Nosferatu was the only film that Prana Film ever produced, it stands as a fantastic library of one.