The 20 scariest movie monsters of all time Nosferatu (1922)

The first (unauthorised) adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula is a masterful presentation of the Victorian fears the vampire represents - xenophobia, disease, female sexuality and death. FW Murnau's silent film starring Max Schreck as Dracula character Graf Orlock - the bald, sharp-toothed monster with hideously clawed hands at the end of outstretched arms - sparked a lawsuit by Stoker's estate and all copies were ordered destroyed. Fortunately, a few copies in Germany survived, and Schreck's skulking villain continues to define our ideals of what a monster in "human" form looks like. Indeed, it is his humanness that is the both the allure and the undoing of him - unable to tear himself from the Mina character's neck before sunrise, he meets his doom. Yet the scene where he creeps up the stairs, casting a vast, terrifying shadow on the wall behind him - that is immortal.

Film Arts Guild