11 Frightful Facts About ‘Nosferatu’

Before Bela Lugosi ever donned his Dracula cape, there was Max Schreck’s pointy-eared Count Orlok, the villain in the 1922 German silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. It’s now recognized as one of the greatest horror movies ever made—and inspired the, ahem, revamped version, starring Bill Skarsgård as Orlok and Willem Dafoe as the Van Helsing-like Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, and opening in theaters on December 25, 2024.

The original Nosferatu has a complicated legacy because it shamelessly plagiarized Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And yet, if it had never been made, the vampire genre so embedded in pop culture might never have taken off. Let’s take a bite out of a truly terrifying classic.  

1. Nosferatu wasn’t the first film to be based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
2. Nosferatu brazenly ripped off Stoker’s novel.
3. The movie’s artistic production was inspired by the work of Czech artist Hugo Steiner-Prag.
4. Nosferatu’s vampire was played by a little-known actor.
5. Some special effects were achieved with stop-motion photography.
6. Orava Castle in Slovakia stands in for Orlok’s abode.
7. Nosferatu originated a common vampire trope.
8. The movie’s premiere was followed by a costume party.
9. Florence Stoker sued the studio. 
10. Many soundtracks have been written for Nosferatu.
11. Werner Herzog wrote, produced, and directed a remake of Nosferatu.

Nosferatu wasn’t the first film to be based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Dracula, published in 1897, earned Bram Stoker praise but not much cash. It sold around 30,000 copies per year for the next three decades, and most of its profits bypassed Stoker and went directly to his publisher. Stoker remained hobbled by debt until his death in 1911.

Ten years later, Stoker’s notorious count made his film debut. The Hungarian film Drakula halála (Dracula’s Death) was the earliest attempt to adapt the 1897 novel into a motion picture. Directed by Karoly Latjay, it tells the story of a young woman who has a terrible nightmare after she crosses paths with the eponymous villain, who is an unstable musician rather than a suave aristocrat. No copies of the silent film survive, though publicity photos and reviews have been preserved.

Nosferatu brazenly ripped off Stoker’s novel.

While serving in World War I, German artist Albin Grau met a Serbian farmer who claimed to be the son of a vampire. He never forgot the story, and when he formed the movie company Prana-Film with producer Enrico Dieckmann in 1921, they chose a vampire tale as their first feature film. Grau felt that an adaptation of Dracula would be ideal and didn't bother securing the necessary rights from Stoker’s estate.

Grau believed that he could avoid a lawsuit by tweaking Dracula’s plot in a few key places. The setting was changed from Victorian London to 17th century Germany, the script did away with the book’s original ending and Van Helsing character, and the key players were renamed. Count Dracula became Count Orlok. The full title, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, was inspired by a term that appears twice in the movie’s source material: Stoker mistakenly thought nosferatu meant “vampire” in Romanian.

The movie’s artistic production was inspired by the work of Czech artist Hugo Steiner-Prag.

Prana-Film tapped F.W. Murnau, a filmmaker renowned for his expressionistic style, to direct Nosferatu. Grau served as the movie’s artistic producer, designing everything from the sets to the costumes to Orlok’s makeup. Throughout the process, his guiding light was The Golem, a classic horror story by Gustav Meyrink published as a novel in 1915.

The second edition of the book included 18 atmospheric, black-and-white illustrations by Hugo Steiner-Prag. Grau said images had a huge influence on Nosferatu’s concept art and storyboards; one sketch likely inspired the physical appearance of Count Orlok. 

Nosferatu’s vampire was played by a little-known actor.

Much of Max Schreck’s life and film career is a mystery. According to a biographer Stefan Eickhoff, the actor’s colleagues regarded him as a “loyal, conscientious loner with an offbeat sense of humor and a talent for playing the grotesque.” Schreck appeared in more than 40 films but is best remembered for his disturbing portrayal of Count Orlok. (In fact, Schreck means “fright” in German.)

His performance was so effective that some viewers wondered if the obscure actor was an actual vampire in real life. Film critic Ado Kyrou popularized this idea in 1953 when he wrongly claimed that the name of the actor who played Murnau’s monster had never been revealed. “Who hides behind the character of Nosferatu? Maybe Nosferatu himself?” he wrote.

That suggestion was subsequently used as the premise of Shadow of the Vampire (2000), featuring John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as a bloodsucking, coffin-loving Max Schreck.

Some special effects were achieved with stop-motion photography.

At one point, Orlok’s coffin closes by itself after the lid levitates off the ground. An early form of stop-motion animation made this possible. By rapidly showing a sequence of still images in which the lid moves closer and closer to its final resting spot, Murnau was able to trick the viewer into thinking that the inanimate object was flying around under its own power. This same technique was also employed during the scene in which Orlok uses his magic to open the hatch of a ship. 

Orava Castle in Slovakia stands in for Orlok’s abode.

Nosferatu was mostly filmed on location within the German cities of Lübeck and Wismar, but the Transylvania scenes were shot in northern Slovakia. With one exception, all the exterior shots of Orlok’s palace actually depict the 700-year-old Orava Castle that sits above the village of Oravský Podzámok. For the last scene in Nosferatu, which depicts the vampire’s abode in ruins, Murnau usedStarhrad, a long-abandoned Slovakian castle that’s been decaying since the 1500s. 

Nosferatu originated a common vampire trope.

The idea that vampires burn up when exposed to direct sunlight is traceable to Nosferatu. In the novel Dracula, the count casually walks around outside in broad daylight. Stoker never implies that solar radiation can destroy a vampire. Grau and screenwriter Henrik Galeen, hoping for a dramatic climax to the film, decided to make the sun’s light fatal to Count Orlok, who disappears in a puff of smoke when he’s lured into a well-lit room.

The movie’s premiere was followed by a costume party.

Prana-Film spent more money promoting Nosferatu than actually making it. Grau launched an ambitious marketing campaign that included newspaper ads, Expressionist posters, and press coverage. Nosferatu finally premiered at the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens on March 4, 1922. The screening was preceded by a prologue delivered by an orator and then a huge dance number. After the film, guests in frock coats and gowns frolicked at a costume ball. The whole event might have been a little too lavish: Reporters who attended the premiere wrote more about the party than the movie.   

Florence Stoker sued the studio. 

Florence Stoker, the author’s widow and estate executor, received an anonymous package a few days after Nosferatu’s premiere containing one of its promotional posters. It bore the inflammatory line, “freely adapted from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

She took immediate legal action. She joined the British Incorporated Society of Authors, which hired a German lawyer to go after Prana-Film. The plan was to sue the company for copyright infringement, but its managers’ bad business decisions had already bankrupted the studio.

When it became clear that Stoker would never recoup any damages, she tried to have all copies of the film destroyed. In 1925, a German court sided with her and ordered that every copy within that nation be burned. But just like Count Dracula, Nosferatu proved very difficult to kill. Over the next few years, copies turned up in the U.S. and UK. A handful of screenings took place, mostly in the U.S., and Stoker relentlessly tracked down wayward copies of the movie and incinerated them. Despite her best efforts, Nosferatu lived on as pirated bootlegs.

Many soundtracks have been written for Nosferatu.

When Nosferatu premiered in Berlin, it was accompanied by a live orchestra playing a score composed by Hans Erdmann. No recordings of the original soundtrack are known to exist. Over the years, Nosferatu has also received several alternative scores. Various DVD editions of the film now include jazz, electronic, and classical background music.

Werner Herzog wrote, produced, and directed a remake of Nosferatu.

Nosferatu (2024) is not the first remake of the original movie. Werner Herzog produced and directed Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), starring Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula and Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker, and remained relatively faithful to Prana-Film’s version. Herzog even tried to shoot the film in Wismar, like Murnau but was unable to do so.

Herzog instead chose Delft, a tidy and historic town in the Netherlands. Unfortunately for residents, he planned to import 10,000 rats for a pivotal scene. “My film is about a community invaded by fear, by an anonymous terror that can hardly be named. The rats are a decisive element because they signify this invasion of fear,” he explained to wary officials. Beverly Walker, an advisor on the film, told BFI the rest of the story:

“The 10,000 rats had been stored in a barn outside the town, where they were cared for by two young women biologists. But the farmer who owned the barn had not been feeding them properly and they were dying. When the girls reproached him, he kicked them off the farm and then refused to allow the production access to the animals—this at exactly the time Herzog had finally found a means of filming them. Herzog, accompanied by a few members of his team and the two women, went to retrieve them. They were met head-on by the farmer and a dozen workmen wielding all manner of farming tools as weapons. A large van was placed horizontally in the driveway to block their exit, and a truly nightmarish fight followed. Windscreens were smashed, cars were damaged, everyone was badly beaten, scratched and bruised. Herzog himself was almost killed when a workman drove a huge crane straight at him.

However, the rats were retrieved, filmed, and later sold to laboratories, and the company moved on to Czechoslovakia.”

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A version of this story was published in 2016; it has been updated for 2024.