The silent film features actor Max Schreck as Count Orlok, who for my money is still the scariest screen vampire of all time!
Nosferatu (which means "vampire" in German), is a very obvious and unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, with the character names and other small details changed.
Most people assume these alterations were made to avoid legal entanglements. That seems unlikely though, as the movie actually states in the credits that it's based on Stoker's novel!
So why change the names and such? Some have suggested it was to make the story more relatable to German audiences. Eh, I guess so.
Apparently Bram Stoker's heirs weren't amused by the film, and sued Prana Film studio for copyright infringement. They actually won, and the court ordered all prints of the film to be destroyed (!). Luckily a few foreign copies managed to survive, preserving it for all time.
