In the hundred years since its release, Nosferatu paved the way for all vampire movies that followed. The fact that sunlight will kill the creature came directly from Nosferatu and has remained a staple of vampire lore ever since. Prior to the release of Nosferatu in 1922, vampires as well as Dracula himself, in the novel could walk freely in the daylight. Nosferatu changed all that and to the point that all Dracula movies since starting with House of Frankenstein had the vampire destroyed by the rising sun. In fact, nearly every vampire movie, TV shows, comic book, video game, and novel with few exceptions has the creatures meet their demise by sunlight.
Strangely enough, this death by sunlight was only executed for Count Orlok because the filmmakers of Nosferatu didn’t have the means of doing any elaborate special effects. Stakes through the heart or decapitation would have been costly upon the fact that actions such as that would not have gone over well in a 1920’s world. The vampire’s death by fading away with the rays of the rising daybreak was simple, trouble-free, and most of all acceptable for the time. Even in the 1931 Universal classic with Bella Lugosi, when Dracula meets his end, he is staked off-screen to appease moviegoers of the time. Blood and vampire staking wouldn’t become a thing until the Christopher Lee era of the 60’s and 70’s.
Prana, the film studio behind the making of Nosferatu was founded in 1921 and had the intent to follow Nosferatu with other supernatural movies before Universal and Hammer Films would become the horror icons they are today. Prana was to be that kind of studio and may have followed up Nosferatu with their own adaptation of perhaps Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Phantom of the Opera among other literary properties. However, it was not meant to be and those novel adaptations were covered later by Universal.
The very look of the vampire himself gave the film a creepy feel. His very appearance was as frightening then as it is today. His bald head, pointed ears, rat-like fangs in the front of his mouth, and his long claw-like fingernails gave the creature a scary inhuman façade unlike anything ever seen in early cinema. It must have been truly terrifying to see this creature walk on screen for the first time. We today have seen this monster's image in one place or another even if you have never seen the movie. We know what this creature looks like but to the moviegoers of 1922, his forbidding presence must have been truly chilling. Despite the creatures, menacing facial features, in truth, only the actor’s ears and teeth were enhanced with his signature rat teeth and pointed ears. When casting Max Schreck for the role of the vampire, the film’s director F.W. Murnau thought that the actor was a frightening and unattractive man…ideal for someone to play the first incarnation of Dracula on screen.
A misconception over the years forced a Dracula vs Nosferatu kind of rumor when it was thought that the filmmakers went behind the widow of Bram Stoker’s back to make the movie without her permission. That all the main characters as well as the vampire himself had their names changed to hide the fact that they were doing Dracula on the sly. However, this is untrue because right at the beginning of the title cards it reads (Based on Dracula by Bram Stoker) giving full credit to the author. What they didn’t do was get the okay from Stoker's wife nor pay her for the use of her late husband’s novel. The fact that the names were all changed and the film's location in Germany was not to hide that they were making Dracula, but to give the characters and setting more of a German feel since, unlike the novel that was written for a British audience. The filmmakers never meant to deceive anyone and hide the fact that they were doing Dracula under scandalous circumstances. They just wanted to make it more German for their viewers….who were German.