An Estate Agent's Clerk (Gustav von Wangenheim) in the city of Bremen leaves his bride (Greta Schroeder) to conduct business in the distant Carpathian mountains with an eccentric client named Graf Orlok (Max Schreck). During a long and hazardous journey, the closer he gets to his destination, the more terrified are the people he meets. What he finds when he reaches Orlok's sinister castle is enough to make the flesh of the most devoted horror fan creep.
On first release, the critics were divided and the paying public were often bewildered by the director's brilliant use of time and space distortion in this unparalleled horror masterpiece. It was the very first film to be based on the Dracula character created by Bram Stoker. Names were changed and the location switched from Transylvania to the city of Bremen, but the Stoker estate, who had not given permission for the film, recognised the similarities and sued the film's German producers.
An English judge ordered that all copies of the film were to be destroyed and the negative burned. Fortunately, the order was not enforcible in Germany and so a print survived. Different versions of this film have appeared over the years under the titles 'Dracula', 'Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror' and 'Nosferatu The Vampire' but this original full-length version is rightly acclaimed as a true landmark of the horror genre and its imagery is now a true legend in film-making history.