1Nosferatu (1922)
Count Orlok is the oldest entry on our list, but sometimes you get it right the first time. He’s everything you could want in a movie monster: his gnarled teeth and sharp fingernails mark him as a dangerous predator, while his giant eyes and bald head look like a disgusting human-shaped rat or bat. We haven’t even gotten to his jerky movements, which look like stuttering footage of some alien creature, or the violent lust in actor Max Schreck’s eyes in every scene.
There’s an entire separate horror movie about the unsettling terror of working with anyone who could embody Count Orlok (Shadow of the Vampire), but nothing can live up to the original Nosferatu. As terrifying now as he was almost 100 years ago, Count Orlok set the bar high for movie monsters.
