Nosferatu (2024), starring Bill Skarsgard, Willem Dafoe, Lily-Rose Depp, and Nicholas Hault, is the latest in a long line of vampire tales to hit the big screen. While it is not a strict retelling of Bram Stoker’s 19th-century novel Dracula​​​​​, it is related to the work of literature and numerous subsequent adaptions of it. This is especially true of the 1922 horror film, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.
Alongside Nosferatu’s connections with all things Dracula, the original movie and its complex history led to various variations. Lawsuits, copyright contests, and a desire to bring new life, so to speak, to the titular vampire all created the lore and lure of his story. Nosferatu (2024) by writer and director Robert Eggers builds on the long history of Dracula and vampire movies in general. Here’s how.
‘Nosferatu’ (1922) Made Major Changes to Dracula’s Story

Directed by F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror was nominally based on Dracula the novel but the names and many of the characteristics of the vampire were altered. The name of the movie, Nosferatu, was believed to be a variation of an Eastern European word for “vampire.” Nosferatu was set in Germany instead of England and the story took place decades earlier than in Bram Stoker’s work. Instead of Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray, and Count Dracula, the main characters were named Thomas and Ellen Hutter, with the monster given the name Count Orlok.
Unlike Count Dracula, who was just weakened by the rays of the sun, Orlok was completely susceptible to sunlight. Where Dracula created additional vampires, Orlock simply killed his victims. Additionally, Count Dracula’s appearance wasn’t as off-putting as Orlok’s, with the latter having long fingernails, no hair, large ears, and an oddly shaped nose.
Aside from these changes, the crux of Nosferatu was the same concerning Dracula’s plot. Both Orlok and Dracula were vampires, of course, and the two became conflated in the minds of many. This was, in part, why Bram Stoker’s widow, Florence, filed a lawsuit against the film’s production company, Prana Films, for the unauthorized use of Dracula. As much as anything else, it was because the film claimed to be based on her husband’s work.
‘Nosferatu’ Was Destroyed at the Order of a German Court, But the Monster Didn’t Die

After a German court sided with Florence Stoker in the lawsuit against Nosferatu, it ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. There was no way to account for every copy of Nosferatu and, while many copies were destroyed, fragments remained extant. According to silent film expert Brent Reid,

There’s no one original complete print, but there are certainly lots that are more or less complete and some that are fragments… Our current versions of Nosferatu that exist today are patchwork compilations of all of those prints. It’s literally been piecing together the film, almost frame by frame.

This is how Nosferatu lived on, as were reviews of the movie, whether good or bad. The New York Times, for example, described Nosferatu as “not especially stirring” in 1929, but that was around the same time a version with a more positive ending titled The Twelfth Hour was released in theaters in Europe.
Nosferatu set the mold for future presentations of vampires, moving away from the written version into the realm of the monstrous figure played by Max Schreck. When Bela Lugosi played the titular role in 1931’s Dracula, it was heavily influenced by what was seen in Nosferatu. Additionally, clips and an underground following of a sort allowed Nosferatu to continue to pique interest and influence vampire lore worldwide.

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‘Nosferatu the Vampire’ (1979) Added Another Layer to the Connection With Dracula

Werner Herzog made Nosferatu the Vampire in 1979, this time using the names found in Dracula by Bram Stoker. Johnathan Harker, Mina Murray, Count Dracula, and others were now relaying much of the story from the silent German expressionist film, lore included. Because Nosferatu the Vampire was a mix of both Nosferatu and Dracula, the two foundational works were nearly inextricably intertwined. Reviewers like the Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas said Nosferatu the Vampire was, “A film of astonishing beauty and daring… not a horror picture but one of eerie wonderment and bizarre spectacle.”
Roger Ebert expressed a similar sentiment: “This movie isn’t even scary. It’s so slow it’s meditative at times, but it is the most evocative series of images centered around the idea of the vampire that I have ever seen since F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, which was made in 1922.” It appeared as though this was what Herzog hoped to achieve with his version of the story. He later said that Nosferatu the Vampire Herzog as a way to bridge “a void, a big gap in reconnecting to the great cinema of the 1920s.”

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Subsequent vampire stories like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) continued to add to the amalgamation of Dracula and Nosferatu. For example, Coppola’s Dracula was “so bizarre” that his presentation must have echoed Murnau’s Orlock. Additionally, author Rick Worland found that the way Coppola styled sequences in his movie used many of the same techniques as those used in German silent films.
Where to Watch Each Version

Movie

Release Year

Where to Watch

Nosferatu

1922

Prime Video

Nosferatu the Vampyre

1979

Prime Video

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

1992

Prime Video

Nosferatu

2024

In Theaters