Top 250 Challenge: 147

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
Number 162 on IMDb's Top 250

Everybody knows the story of Dracula...um...Nosferatu, right? The story centers on Count Dracu...Orlock from Transylvania who has decided that he needs a change of location, from his drafty castle to an old abandoned house in London. So to do this he secures a realtor named Reinfield...um...Knock, but Knock goes crazy and starts eating flies and spiders and the little creatures of the night. So Drac...Orlock gets Jonathon Harker...dang it...Hutter to pay him a visit in Transylvania to finish the paperwork. Hark...Hutter's wife Mina...um, no...Ellen doesn't like it that he has to go. Har...Hutter sees a bunch of freaky stuff in Transylvania and meets Drac...Orlock, the freakyist of the bunch, and oh, by the way, Orlock is a vampire. To make a short story shorter (the movie was only 81 minutes long) Orlock sees a picture of Ellen, falls in lust, jumps on a ship, meets the Werewolf..I mean the captain on the ship, barely beats Hutter to England (Hutter was on horseback), and lets hilarity ensue.

Trivia: Many scenes featuring Graf Orlock were filmed during the day, and when viewed in black and white, this becomes extremely obvious. This potential blooper is corrected when the "official" versions of the movie are tinted blue to represent night. Director F.W. Murnau found Max Schreck "strikingly ugly" in real life and decided the vampire makeup would suffice with just pointy ears and false teeth.

Director F.W. Murnau could not secure the rights to Bram Stoker's Dracula, so he just changed the names and started filming. Count Dracula becomes Count Orlock, Jonathon Harker become Hutter, Mina become Ellen, and Renfield becomes Knock. Because of this, we almost lost this movie forever. Bram Stoker's widow sued and won and had all known prints and negatives destroyed. The only prints that were left were being shown in other countries. They survived. This was a pretty good, pretty creepy movie.