In Stoker's novel, sunlight weakens vampires, but that doesn't stop the title villain from walking around during the day. Nosferatu's fiery demise was added by the filmmakers to make the climax more visually interesting.
Break into Three: Ellen reads from Hutter's book. She learns that the only way to defeat the Nosferatu is if a sinless maiden gives her blood to it willingly, making it forget about the coming dawn until it is too late.
Plague arriving on ships. Rats. The Black Death coming to Europe. In Nosferatu, the corrupting power of the vampire is linked to that most symbolically potent infectious disease, bubonic plague, with its centuries of history and the power to generate fear.
But the original Nosferatu almost vanished into celluloid history, because its screenplay was an unauthorized blatant rip of Bram Stoker's Dracula. That author's estate successfully sued for copyright infringement, with the result that the producers declared bankruptcy.
At the end of the film Nosferatu, Count Orlok is burned up by the sunlight after spending the entire evening with Ellen. In Stoker's Dracula, The sunlight was pretty much harmless to vampires. The idea of vampires being killed by sunlight has become very popular in the Vampire-verse.
In early versions of the film, the name "Dracula" was still used, making the plagiarism obvious. Florence Stoker promptly filed copyright infringement, with strict demands that the estate would be compensated for Nosferatu and all copies of the film would be destroyed.
Nosferatu, released in 1922 and directed by F.W. Murnau, is a silent film following an animalistic vampire preying on innocent victims. The story is clearly adapted from Bram Stoker's Dracula—the monster in need of human blood must be defeated by an unsuspecting visitor to his castle—but with key differences.
Various names and other details were changed from the novel, including Count Dracula being renamed Count Orlok then finally Nosferatu, an archaic Romanian word with a suggested etymology of Nesuferitu`, meaning "the offensive one" or "the insufferable one".
"Nosferatu" has been presented as archaic Romanian word, synonymous with "vampire". However, it was largely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Western fiction such as the gothic novel Dracula (1897) and the German expressionist film Nosferatu (1922).
Jure Grando Alilović or Giure Grando (1578–1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. He was referred to as a štrigon, a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock.
In Stoker's novel — which is the gold standard of vampire lore, even though he invented some of it and took some of it from existing legends — Dracula was killed by slashing his throat and plunging a knife into his heart.
Garlic, specifically the chemical compound allicin inside garlic, is a powerful antibiotic. Some European beliefs around vampires stated they were created by a disease of the blood, so a powerful antibiotic would “kill” a vampire.
Vampires also have objects that hurt them and/or reduce their abilities. Vampires hate garlic, running water, and objects associated with Christianity such as holy water and crucifixes. It's believed that vampires often need to be invited inside the place of residence of a human if the deed is in a human's name.
However the fictional character, created by author Bram Stoker, was in fact based on a real historical figure called Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, was a 15th-century warlord, in what today is Romania, in south-eastern Europe.
Count Dracula is an undead, centuries-old vampire, and a Transylvanian nobleman who claims to be a Székely descended from Attila the Hun. He inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass.
His name had its origin in the sobriquet of his father, Vlad Dracul ("Vlad the Dragon" in medieval Romanian), who received it after he became a member of the Order of the Dragon. Dracula is the Slavonic genitive form of Dracul, meaning "[the son] of Dracul (or the Dragon)".
After routing the Romani, Harker decapitates Dracula as Quincey stabs him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust, freeing Mina from her vampiric curse. Quincey is mortally wounded in the fight against the Romani.
Losing his first wife made Dracula reject God as a cruel, ungrateful tyrant. He vowed to curse him forever and steal the world away from him. Losing his second wife made him loathe humanity, dismissing them as greedy, petty, false and unworthy (while he is worse) and yearning to crush them.
The novel ends with a final battle in which the men seize Count Dracula's coffin. Harker cuts Dracula's head off while Morris stabs him in the heart. Dracula's body crumbles into dust, signaling that he is finally defeated, and that Mina is no longer in danger.
The movie was banned in Sweden due to excessive horror. The ban was finally lifted in 1972. All known prints and negatives were destroyed under the terms of settlement of a lawsuit by Bram Stoker's widow.
Pursuing merciless legal action and winning a grueling three-year battle, after discovering that Nosferatu's production company Prana Film was bankrupt and unable to compensate her, it was allegedly at her insistence that the negatives were handed over, and all copies were subsequently destroyed.
The character of Dracula created by Bram Stoker is under public domain. However, specific adaptations of Dracula, such as the Universal version or the Castlevania version, are owned by the people who created him.
