Nosferatu Makes A Sucker Out Of Movie Fans

The first screen portrayal of Dracula was so scary that some critics asked whether the actor Max Schreck himself could be a vampire.

The German actor who stared in the 1922 film ' Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror ' was born in 1879 and is said to have died of heart failure aged 56, and was buried in an unmarked grave near Berlin in 1936.

Screck has actually been seen in recent years and was interviewed by German author Stefan Eickhoff, who has written what he says is the first biography of Schreck.

"Nosferatu" failed to make its lead a star, but achieved such cult status that some film scholars speculated his name Schreck means "fear" or "fright" in German was a pseudonym.

Eickhoff found there were virtually no anecdotes featuring Schreck, nor any references to him in the memoirs of the many people he had worked with, it was as if no one remembered anything about him.

Schreck, who was married to a woman he once described as a 'real pain in the neck' had no children except for those of the night, he was a loner and would spend hours walking through dense, dark forests wearing a black cloak.

Eickhoff said of his interview with the actor: " Schreck would have been over 120 years old which would have been impossible, the man was strong and very alert and looked like he was only in his 70's."

Still mysterious Schreck would not go into detail about his life after the 1922 film.

In his book Eickhoff describes his encounter with Schreck as a bird eying up a nice juicy grub.