Nosferatu (1922)
Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu invented vampire cinema and still frightens a century later. The estate sued anyway and won, and a court ordered every copy destroyed.
Director: F.W. Murnau
F W Murnau directed Nosferatu, an unauthorised Dracula adaptation whose negatives a court ordered destroyed, and surviving prints are the reason it exists at all. Sunrise won three Academy Awards at the first ceremony and its camera movement was decades ahead of anything else. He died in a car accident at forty-two.