News

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horrors was an unauthorized yet first adaptation of Bram Stoker 1897’s novel Dracula, the most influential literary source for the vampire legend. To evade copyright law, Nosferatu’s screenwriter Henrik Galeen changed the story from London to the fictional small-town of Wisborg, Germany, and also altered the characters’ names. But Bram Stoker’s estate filed suit, claiming the adaptation was an infringement. The German court ruling (in 1925) ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. As a result producer Albin Grau (also the film’s costume designer and art director) who produced only Nosferatu under his company banner, Prana Film was forced to declare bankruptcy. The orders were followed meticulously although one print, thankfully, found its way to the United States.

In his 1997 review of Nosferatu, film critic Roger Ebert (which he included in his ‘Great Films’ list) writes, “Ironically, in the...

Stories mutate over time, adapting to both storytellers and their audience in often unpredictable ways. This is precisely why folks will still flock to creature features about monsters they’ve seen a million times before, as it’s always fun to find out how filmmakers have managed to update the source material. And when it comes to classic monsters that have gone through cinematic makeovers, it’s hard to compete with the good-old vampire.

From foreign sex symbols to zombie-like hordes and even mindless bat-monsters, vampires have proven to be an oddly versatile creature for filmmakers of every disposition. And in honor of Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake revamping one of the most iconic depictions of blood-sucking ghouls in cinema history, we’ve decided to come up with a list celebrating six of the scariest vampire designs in horror!

As usual, this list is purely based on personal opinion, but be...

For many horror fans, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is the most anticipated movie of 2024, perhaps even of the decade so far. It has had a troubled history with many fits and starts along the way before finally reaching screens after nearly a decade in the making (Bloody Disgusting first reported on an Eggers helmed Nosferatu in July of 2015) this Christmas Day. There is much at stake and there are big shoes to fill for this movie but if the pre-release buzz is any indication, the film may well exceed its monumental expectations.

The history of Nosferatu reaches back over one hundred years and is one of the greatest and most consistent of all horror legacies. Ostensibly retellings of Dracula, the major Nosferatu films become something unique from the world’s most famous vampire with far more sinister underpinnings than the majority of “official” Dracula stories. Nosferatu in all its forms leans into the ideas of plague,...

Over one hundred years on, Nosferatu’s fangs are as sharp as ever. Empire celebrates the bloodsucking horror film that came from nowhere – and changed everything.

“Wanted: 30 – 50 rats.”

This advert, placed in a local German newspaper in the summer of 1921, heralded the production of a film that continues to haunt our screens, and our imaginations. F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror was the first and is arguably still the best vampire movie. Its influence is so vast, it is almost impossible to measure. It is as timely now as when it was made, in the wake of another devastating pandemic.

“It’s kind of the invention of the modern horror movie,” Robert Eggers tells Empire — the director of The Northman and The Lighthouse had long cherished a plan for his own Nosferatu remake. “The thing that really makes it so memorable and important for everyone is Max Schreck,...

Robin Bextor’s documentary about Fw Murnau’s 1922 silent masterpiece makes some sharp points but leaves noticeable holes

There are two types of vampire: one is the vulpine, Bela Lugosi-esque seducer, while the other is the “verminous” kind pioneered by Count Orlok in the 1922 German silent horror classic Nosferatu. That’s one of the sharper observations in this reasonably interesting but shakily organised documentary timed to coincide with the Robert Eggers remake; a comeback, after decades of hot vampire dominance, for the hideous original progenitor in our atavistic, post-pandemic times.

Fw Murnau’s Nosferatu, a first but unauthorised adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was almost lost when the author’s widow succeeded in having most copies of it destroyed. What a loss that would have been: a sui generis masterpiece that was instigated by producer Albin Grau meeting a Serbian soldier on the western front who claimed his father was a vampire,...

The above German poster from 1922 by Albin Grau (scanned from trade magazine Der Film: Zeitschrift für die Gesamt-Interessen der Kinematographie) sold for $21,000 in July 2014. A jack of all trades, Grau was largely responsible for not only the key art, but also the set design, costumes, storyboards and other promotional materials of the first significant vampire feature length film in cinema history: F. W. Murnau's copyright skirting, Weimar-era expressionist icon, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. In 1979, Werner Herzog directed an homage of sorts to Max Schreck's look and performance, Nosferatu the Vampyre, featuring his craziest collaborator, and 'best fiend,' Klaus Kinski. And being released on Christmas, 2024, a chiaroscuro-heavy remake of Murnau's original, using a shorter title, Nosferatu, from Robert Eggers makes this very particular look of vampire now a...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

One of the most influential horror movies, 1922's Nosferatu, has an upcoming remake from Robert Eggers, director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman. It is one of the most anticipated horror films of the year; however, the original movie did not receive the same sort of warm reception.

The original Nosferatu almost never existed due to a copyright issue. The film was an illegal adaptation of Dracula, which was not public domain at the time in Germany. However, the film was still made, despite the Bram Stoker Estate's objections. This then led to the estate filing a suit against the film and the almost permanent destruction of the classic horror movie.

Nosferatu's Legal Battle With Dracula Explained Nosferatu Was An Unauthorized, Expressionistic Adaptation Of Dracula

As Plagiarism Today reports, producer Albin Grau decided to shoot a vampire film in 1916, and he settled on an expressionistic retelling of...

Back in 1922, German Expressionist filmmaker F. W. Murnau wanted to make his own horror picture based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Because Dracula was copywritten material, Murnau and company were forced to change the character's names, and so Count Dracula became Count Orlok (Max Schreck). Of course, that changed nothing, and, after a lawsuit by Stoker's heirs, Murnau's Nosferatu (sometimes titled Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) was ordered to be destroyed. Miraculously, the film managed to survive, and we've come to see it as the classic, quintessential vampire picture. But did you know that Nosferatu was influenced by the occult? Well, at least the film's producer, Albin Grau, was.

Nosferatu is a German expressionist horror film released in 1922, directed by F.W. Murnau. Despite attempts to differentiate Nosferatu from Dracula, the film faced legal challenges from Stoker's estate. There are two official Nosferatu movies, with a third directed by Robert Eggers, set to release in 2024.

The first trailer for Robert Eggers's Nosferatu is finally out, reminding fans of the controversy surrounding the original movie. Nearly a full century after its release, the 1922 silent version of Nosferatu remains one of the most iconic films of the German Expressionism era and one of the most influential in the horror genre. The movie's vampiric villain, Count Orlok, has been referenced even in modern cartoons like SpongeBob SquarePants, and popularized the standard look of the secular, reclusive vampire.

Without Nosferatu, the horror landscape of the last century would have looked completely different. However, the movie technically shouldn't exist. The similarities between Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula,...

There must be something in the air (or perhaps just the blood) when the internet could get so worked up over a vampire movie trailer that wasn’t even online. Focus Features indeed exhumed an old school—and perhaps too often neglected—marketing trick when they put a coveted teaser only in theaters where it played for days ahead of its online debut. Attached since Thursday only to the healthy opening of elegiac gang drama The Bikeriders, the first trailer for Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu left cinephiles floored. And those who didn’t see it have been suffering from a severe case of Fomo.

That’s all over now though. After days of building buzz among fans of horror, arthouse cinema, and those who are just looking for something a little more sinister in their moviegoing diets, the Nosferatu trailer is at last online and it is a bleak, lascivious delight.

Above: Chinese poster for Spirited Away; artist: Zao Dao.The most popular poster to date on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram, by a dragon’s length, with more than double the amount of likes of its closest contender, was this gorgeous Chinese poster (and its color variant which you can see here) for Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001), which apparently just got a Chinese theatrical release eighteen years after it was made. The posters were painted by the young Chinese comic book artist Zao Dao who you can, and should, read more about here.I was happy to see Renato Casaro’s prop poster for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood’s film-within-the-film Kill Me Now Ringo, Said the Gringo—which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago—make such an impression, as well as another of my favorite Casaros painted forty years earlier, for Screamers, a.k.

For many fans, independent horror filmmaking seems like a relatively new concept. So you may be surprised to find out the maverick spirit that fuels our beloved genre has been burning for almost 100 years now, since the 1912 version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was produced by the independently-run production house Thanhouser Company.

Since then, we’ve enjoyed countless films that bucked the studio system tradition and gave us bold, refreshing explorations of some of our greatest fears and introduced us to some pioneers in the entertainment industry. In honor of these achievements, we here at Dread Central are taking the entire month of March to celebrate all things indie horror.

To kick things off, over the next five days we’d like to take you on a historical journey through the last 100 years of indie horror by taking a look at 25 milestones that helped define the horror genre and, in many cases,...

By Matt Singer

We're getting into the Halloween spirit at IFC.com this week by taking a look back at some famous movie makeup jobs (that are, at minimum, 25 years old) that have maintained their power to scare the bejeezus out of viewers. These kids today with their computer generated imagery and their Blu-rays and their "Saw V"s! Back in our day, we didn't have computers to do our imagination's dirty work for us. Visionary artists had only prosthetics, wire, plaster, rubber and a whole lot of Karo syrup to bring their creations to life! Back in our day, these were the movies you rented on Halloween! At the video store! As far as we're concerned, they still should be. And don't you dare teepee our Web site or we're calling the cops. [Part one of our list can be found here.]

5. Videodrome (1983)

Directed by David Cronenberg

Special Makeup Effects by Rick Baker

To the best of my knowledge,...