1922 The castle plays a vampireHrad hrá upíra

In 1922 the German director F. W. Murnau brought a film crew here and used the castle as Count Orlok's lair in Nosferatu — the first great vampire film, and an unlicensed reworking of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula with the names changed. Murnau needed a building that would read as menace in one shot without a word of explanation, and Orava, photographed from the valley floor as a black jagged stack against a pale sky, gave him exactly that. Stoker's widow sued, won, and a court ordered the prints destroyed, but too many copies had already scattered and the film survived. So a Slovak village acquired a second, entirely unasked-for fame: to a great many people abroad this is not a palatine's castle at all, it is a vampire's house.V roku 1922 sem nemecký režisér F. W. Murnau priviedol filmový štáb a hrad použil ako sídlo grófa Orloka vo filme Nosferatu — v prvom veľkom upírskom filme a nepovolenom prepracovaní románu Brama Stokera Dracula so zmenenými menami. Murnau potreboval stavbu, ktorá bude v jedinom zábere pôsobiť hrozivo bez slova vysvetlenia, a Orava, snímaná z dna doliny ako čierna zubatá hmota proti bledej oblohe, mu to dala presne. Stokerova vdova sa súdila, vyhrala a súd nariadil kópie zničiť, no priveľa ich už bolo rozptýlených po svete a film prežil. Slovenská dedina tak získala druhú, celkom nechcenú slávu: pre veľa ľudí v zahraničí to nie je palatínov hrad, ale dom upíra.