Nosferatu

For this particular film, we've got to go way back. You think Bella Lugosi was the original vampire of the silver screen? Think again. Max Schrek's got him beat by about a decade. All the way back in 1922 Germany, the production of Nosferatu was underway. Anyone who has read or seen a decent version of Dracula will recognize plenty of plot similarities. Why? The original plan was to do Dracula, but the director couldn't get the rights off of Bram Stoker's wife. So the director (F.W. Murnau) decided to embellish a bit. He changed the Count's name to Orlock and left out his background story. Other than that, yeah... The story's mostly the same. Now some people are going to skip over this movie immediately for one reason, it's a silent film. I know, sounds weird right? Having a vampire movie be completely silent? But you have to remember, they didn't exactly have a lot of choice back then. Film was still a relatively new thing and had a lot of limitations on it. Even with those setbacks, the movie is still pretty damn creepy. You can check out the whole story behind the film here. If you want a modern follow-up to it then I suggest a film called Shadow of the Vampire. It's a fictional film about the making of Nosferatu starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. Malkovich plays Murnau, the director, while Dafoe plays alongside him as Schrek. Keep in mind this is a fictional account of what happened, even though they add in some cool info about the actual filming. They do a really good job of matching up characters that look like the original actors from Nosferatu, an impressive feat considering the fashions and how odd some of them looked. For a more in depth look at Shadow of the Vampire go and look here.