One of the first and best draculas, Bela Lugosi has scared many.

Nosferatu as the first real rendition of Dracula gives us a clearer picture of what Dracula would be without all the oversized fangs, blood, capes, & modern effects time has bestowed upon it. Murnau not having any other Dracula remakes to base his production on has stuck pretty close to the story Bram Stoker published in 1897. The actor who plays the vampire, Max Schreck, gives us a brilliant performance that leaves you believing he had a dead mans curse upon him. His features differ from those we are accustomed to such as his fangs being in the middle of his mouth rather than the sides. His make up, clothing, & mood give us the truly eerie & frightful feeling needed to fully enjoy this film.

The story begins in Bremen, Germany where Knock (Alexander Granach) a real estate agent, sends Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), his employee, to visit the castle of Count Orlok to aid in his purchase of a house in town. Murnau begins to show us signs of what is to come. From the townspeople reactions to the very mention of Orlok's name & the way the animals seem to sense his presence.

Murnau demonstrates some advanced story telling by interlacing events simultaneously. He shows Hutter's wife in Bremen crying out a warning to her husband while Orlok approaches, which causes Orlok to turn away. As Hutter sensing his danger flees back home we see three scenes being simultaneously carried out. Hutter traveling home by coach, Orlok traveling by sea, & Hutter's wife restlessly waiting for her husbands return.

Upon the ships arrival into town the only one to emerge is Orlok himself. The entire Crew has "sickened" & died, leaving the townspeople to blame it on a plague. Knock is stoned while creeping about on rooftops by townspeople panicked about the plague. Hutter's wife is the one who saves the city with a selfless sacrifice. Upon learning that the sure way to kill a Vampire is to keep him out past the cock's crow she entices him to her bedside till dawn. Which Orlok finds is too late.

Another classic horror, Halloween, made Jamie Lee Curtis famous. It was a cold Halloween night in 1963 when six year old Michael Audrey Myers brutally murdered his 17-year-old sister, Judith Margaret Myers. He was sentenced to the Smith's Grove-Warren County Sanitarium for his brutal crime. There, he remained locked away and dormant for 15 years.
But on October 30, 1978, things are about to change. While being transferred for a court date, a 21-year-old Michael Myers steals a car and escapes Smith's Grove. He returns to his quiet hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, where he follows three young women.
Seventeen-year-old Laurie Strode is a quiet bookworm, preferring babysitting over parties. As she goes about her school day, she finds her mind playing tricks on her. Her friends, Annie and Lynda, are busy thinking about the fun of Halloween night.
That evening, Laurie and Annie are babysitting across the street from each other. Laurie has to keep an eye on comic-loving Tommy Doyle, while Annie watches "little Lindsey Wallace," obsessed with the television. Little do they know, Michael Myers has come home to kill. Carefully, he murders Annie first, followed by Lynda and her boyfriend Bob.
Their only hope is Dr. Loomis, Michael's childhood psychiatrist who has followed Michael's trail back to Haddonfield. Loomis enlists the help of town sheriff Leigh Brackett, who happens to be Annie's father. The duo search the streets, but the bogeyman is close to his prize for the night: Laurie!

A pulsing finale will have horror fans screaming as Michael stalks innocent Laurie, praying that Dr. Loomis will rescue her. He is the only one who knows just what Michael is - pure evil!

The exorcist is another horror classic you can't beat.Who will ever forget the little girl vomiting green puke?

One of the new blood horrors but I think the book was better.

The Shining is Stanley Kubrick's (loose) adaptation of Stephen King's best seller set in the Overlook, a haunted hotel in the Rockies, and featuring a boy with powers of telepathy and prophecy (the shining). Kubrick's camera is fluid and creates brilliant sequences: Jack Torrance and family haunted by a moldy corpse, his wife discovering a weird manuscript, a chase through a hedgerow maze, Torrance meeting ghostly bartender Joseph Turkel and the deterioration of Jack's sanity as chases his wife with an ax.

Who Is Elizabeth Bathory?

Some call her the queen of blood. Others call her the first true vampire. Whatever her label, Elizabeth Bathory has gone down into the history books as a sadistic woman, and whose horrific crimes have made her one of the most infamous women in vampire lore.

Elizabeth Bathory was born a noblewoman in 1560. Her family held lands throughout Transylvania, and were considered one of the most powerful families in the country. When she was teenager, she was betrothed and married to an equally powerful nobleman by the name of Count Ferencz Nadasdy. Throughout their marriage she took many lovers.

At age 25, Bathory began to be terrified of growing old and losing the beauty that she had come to depend on so greatly. After Count Nadasdy's death in 1604, she moved to her family's lands in Vienna, where her obsession would quickly grow dark and evil. Bathory had by this point in her life, according to some accounts, begun to dabble in some forms of sorcery, attending rituals that would include the sacrifice of horses and other animals.

Bathory's personal obsession with blood started quite harmlessly, by all accounts. One of her servant girls had not been performing to her standards, so Countess Bathory struck the young servant girl in the face with scissors. The servant girl's blood sprayed across Bathory's hands. When the Countess went to rinse off the blood, she felt her skin looked smoother and younger than it had in years. The tenuous connection between blood and youth had been made, and it was from here that she began her bloody descent into evil.

Convinced that blood, particularly the blood of young girls, was the secret to eternal youth and beauty, Countess Elizabeth Bathory began to devise scheme after scheme to provide herself with the blood, and therefore the youth, she so desperately sought. During her reign of terror, which lasted several years, some accounts of her murders number in the 600 region or more. Some of these six hundred women killed were noblewomen like Bathory, albeit of a lower station, that she persuaded to come and work for her.

The murders were not as simple nor as straightforward as you might think. Bathory did not deal in simpicities like slitting the throats of the young girls she killed. Most of these servant girls were tortured by Bathory for weeks or even months before they were killed. They were cut with scissors, pricked with pins, even prodded with burning irons onto sharp spikes in a cage hung from the ceiling to provide Bathory with a "blood shower".

No one, not even a noblewoman, can continue these types of crimes indefinitely without questions being raised. The year 1610 marked the first of the inquiries into her crimes. By December of 1610, she was put on trial for her crimes. It has been speculated that the trial was brought about so speedily not only to bring quick justice for the murdered girls, but also (and primarily) to allow the local government to confiscate her family's not inconsiderable land holdings. Many believe the main reason the noblewoman was put to trial at all was for this reason.

No one can accomplish such a venerable feat as six hundred murders alone. Erzsi Majorova, the widow of a local tenant farmer, has long believed to be both the instigator and the brains behind the procuring and the disposal of the murdered girls. Many other accomplices, not named, were also put to trial, and found guilty. All accomplices, including Majorova, were put to death, each by different methods depending on the roles they played in the crimes.

Due to her nobility, Bathory was not allowed by law to be sentenced to death. She was sentenced to life imprisonment at the top of her castle in Cachtice. Her small room had no windows, no doors, and only a small opening in the wall to allow food to be passed through. There were few slits for air, and that was the total of her contact with the outside world. Elizabeth Bathory died in that room in August of 1614.

Her reputuation as a vampire grew not only from her greed for blood to bathe in to maintain her youth, but also for rumours that surfaced during the trial. It was said she bit the young girls and drank their blood outright. Evidence of this was difficult to come by as her court documents were sealed after the trial due to their scandalous nature. They resurfaced later, but were never found in intact form.

Bathory's reputation as a vampire has been celebrated numerous times in film. The movies Daughters of Darkness (1970), Countess Dracula (1971), Blood Castle (1972), Ceremonia Sangrienta (1972) and La Noche de Walpurgis (1972) all have brought Countess Elizabeth Bathory's story to the big screen.