Nosferatu: The Shadowy Tale that Cannot Die

Even in a world flooded with reboots, remakes and re-imaginings, there is something compelling – dare we say eternal? – about the story of Nosferatu. Film-makers return repeatedly to this bloody, transgressive tale. What is it about the story that we find so hypnotising?

Robert Eggers' version is the third straight telling of the story. The first, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, was released as long ago as 1922, a German Expressionist horror masterpiece, rich with iconic images.

A 1979 iteration, Nosferatu the Vampyre, directed by Werner Herzog, was a slow-burning, crepuscular piece. With his frequent collaborator Klaus Kinski in the title role, Herzog's vision was one of death, disease and the loneliness of eternity as a monster.

So where does the much-told story come from?

The short answer is Dracula, the quintessential 1897 vampire novel by Irishman Bram Stoker.

The director of the 1922 Nosferatu changed the name of Stoker's vampire, Dracula, to Orlok. But he retained many of the ideas and much of the plot of the book – an ancient, crumbling castle in the Carpathian mountains and the vampire travelling by ship to a new home being two significant pillars of the story.

What he didn't do was consult the estate of Bram Stoker ing Dracula.

It was perfectly obvious to all that Orlok was Dracula with a twist. And certainly clear to Florence Balcombe, Stoker's widow. She took legal action, and in July 1925, a German court ruled that all copies of Nosferatu were to be burned for copyright infringement.

But by that stage, it was already out in the world, and copies were hastily made. It was too late. Like the bloodlust of its eponymous monster, it could not be contained.

There have been a flood of films about Dracula. Bela Lugosi's performance in the 1931 Hollywood Dracula gave birth to a cultural icon from which Lugosi could never later escape. Closer to home, Christopher Lee portrayed a haughty, brooding Dracula for Hammer Horror in 1958.

And that is the key to Dracula - there are countless interpretations as well as attempts to transplant and reimagine him in all sorts of ways. Some are funny (often inadvertently so.) There is blaxploitation Dracula (Blacula, 1972), martial arts Dracula (The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, 1974), groovy Seventies Dracula (Dracula A.D. 1972, 1972) and the Dracula who doesn't appear at all in a film named for him (The Brides of Dracula, 1960.)

Perhaps the definitive Dracula, for a British audience anyway, is Christopher Lee. He had seen neither Lugosi's performance nor Nosferatu before playing the part, instead going straight back to Stoker's novel for inspiration and understanding. He considered the part a golden opportunity to do something different.

After reading the book, Lee was inspired to bring sensuality to the role. He played Dracula as a suave, cruel, velvet-voiced denizen of the night. A mysterious, smouldering stranger, slowly lowering his bloody mouth to women's bare necks. Would it really be so awful being bitten by such an elegant, powerful presence?

Unfortunately, as one Hammer Horror Dracula sequel followed another, the quality of the scripts tapered off markedly, disappointing and frustrating Lee.

Not every Dracula film is an attempt to recast him in a fashionable new light. Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), was an attempt, as the name suggests, to return to the original novel and produce a more faithful adaptation. One that captured the nuance and foreboding of the Count's existence.

This was a withered, age-old Dracula, played with some relish and a treacly Eastern European accent by Gary Oldman. Religion is at the core of Coppola's version, with Dracula's rejection of God as the force that drove him into the dark, and an emphasis on the tragedy of his creation.

Oldman's vampire was one whose descent we understood, and one for whom we could even feel a tiny bit sorry.

Robert Egger's Helsing is played by Willem Dafoe, who has played both the vampire hunter and his nemesis. The 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire was not a straight-forward retelling, but a macabre meta-narrative, imagining that the director of the 1922 Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, had employed a real vampire to star in his film, with all the carnage and bloodletting one would expect.

Dafoe plays Max Shreck who, in this film, really is the vampire Count Orlok. Dafoe plays Shreck/Orlok as a bitter, ancient soul, unable or unwilling to much of his former life and compelled by his ravenous appetite.

And that, ultimately, is the difference between Orlok and Dracula. Dracula is often repurposed to reflect different themes and interrogate contemporary concerns.

Whatever Dracula was inspired by - and there are some ghoulish suggestions - his meaning changes with every new generation.

But Count Orlok is unchanging. (Eternal, even?) Nosferatu is always the same – just this side of bestial, cunning rather than educated, clawed, ugly, inhuman. He hisses, seethes and loses self-control at the scent of blood.

Perhaps because Dracula is literary and Orlok is cinematic, film-makers have always been captivated by Orlok's look and Shreck's portrayal of him, as much as the idea of Orlok. And so the Nosferatu films are much more faithful to their original inspiration, Murnau's masterpiece.

Nosferatu – ageless, predatory, lying in wait.