Nosferatu the Vampire

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror; or simply Nosferatu) is a 1922 German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok.The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok"). Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. However, a few prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema. As of 2015, it is Rotten Tomatoes' second best-reviewed horror film of all time. The film was released in the United States on June 3, 1929, seven years after its original premiere in Germany, where it instantly became a hit success. This is not the first film adaptation of the novel by Bram Stoker. The first adaptation of the novel, entitled Drakula (1920) was made 2 years previously by an unnamed Soviet film director; today, no known copies of this film are known to exist and it is believed to have been irrevocably lost. The second adaptation, which was released a year before the Nosferatu adaptation of the novel, was a silent horror film called Dracula's Death (Drakula halála) by Hungarian director Károly Lajthay (this film is also considered lost).