Nosferatu · reception & legacy

1922 · F. W. Murnau

How Nosferatu has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Bram Stoker's widow sued over this unauthorised Dracula adaptation and a court ordered every print destroyed — the film survived only through bootleg copies, going from legally condemned contraband to arguably the most revered horror film of the silent era.

What's debated

Every remake cycle — Herzog in 1979, Eggers in 2024 — reignites the same fan debate: can anyone actually improve on the original, or is Max Schreck's Orlok simply untouchable?

Its footprint

Orlok's shadow creeping up the staircase is one of the most parodied and referenced images in all of cinema — from SpongeBob's deadpan 'Nosferatu!' gag to Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a whole film built on the joke that Schreck might really have been a vampire.

Where it stands

A cornerstone of the horror canon and a Letterboxd October ritual — the silent film even people who 'don't watch silent films' have seen.

★ Did you know? After Florence Stoker won her copyright suit in 1925, a German court ordered all prints and negatives of the film destroyed — Nosferatu exists today only because copies had already been shipped abroad.