Nosferatu the Vampyre

Deliberately slow-paced as if stuck in a permanent nightmare – Werner Herzog’s homage to F.W. Murnau’s 1922 German expressionist horror is richly textured and heavily stylised, even pestilence and the walking dead briefly unite for a dance macabre whilst certain doom looms over the town of Wismar.

Drawing more on Bram Stoker’s original gothic novel than on Murnau’s take on the Dracula tale, director Herzog achieved a ghostly celluloid vision with his Nosferatu – Phantom der Nacht (original German title). Once again, Herzog collaborator Klaus Kinski takes on the lead part, his sickly, cavernous and bald appearance made even more terrifying by his fang-like teeth and pointy ears. Although strongly resembling Max Schreck’s ‘Count Orlok’ in look, thus paralleling Murnau’s silent classic, Kinski’s character in the Herzog version is in fact called Count Dracula. Likewise, Isabelle Adjani portrays Lucy Harker while Bruno Ganz is her husband Jonathan – once again names from Stoker’s novel and not from Murnau’s film. We even get a Mina and a Dr. Van Helsing here.

Nosferatu the Vampyre sets the tone with appropriately gloomy images of foreboding threat and terror… a camera pans across mummified corpses in a cave, obviously victims of pestilence or a similar disease. This is swiftly followed by a slow-motion shot of a bat flying through the night, followed by another swift cut when we see Lucy waking up from a nightmare, screaming loudly. Scenes of domestic bliss in the Harker household juxtapose these disturbing images. Two kittens are playfully engaged in frolics, while Jonathan and Lucy drink coffee before taking a stroll along the beach.

Enter loony estate agent Renfield (Roland Topor), who sends estate agent Jonathan on his way to the Carpathians, all the while a ghostly pale Lucy, her dark and kohl-rimmed eyes setting a stark contrast to the pallor of her skin, has strange forebodings and urges Jonathan not to go… in vain. His journey from middle-class Wismar with its canals and idyllic houses to the haunted realms of Dracula’s territory is one of the strongest points of the film… When Jonathan Harker enters the land of the phantoms and is greeted by mountaintops shrouded in eerie mists, bizarrely shaped castle ruins and mysterious paths alongside mountain-rivers, he might well enter a netherworld inhabited by demons and spirits. Arriving at Castle Dracula, the emaciated and tortured, lonely and love-starved figure of the Count bids Harker welcome… We know how the story continues, so no point going on about it here.

What sets Herzog’s interpretation apart from other cinematic takes of the Dracula story is his eye for frames and angles, for example when we see a canal and the doomed plague ship suddenly edges into the frame – carrying with it hundreds and hundreds of disease-ridden rats that descend upon town, spreading plague in every corner. Or the market scene were infected towns folk hold a ‘last supper’ and merrily dance around coffins – all images that inform us that there is no salvation or redemption for any of the characters, not even the main characters. At the end, while everyone around him dies from plague or from a deadly encounter with the vampire, a transformed Jonathan – by now sporting fangs and elongated, claw-like fingers - saddles a horse and rides into the horizon, murmuring, “There is much to do for me… now….”

Like in Aguirre, the soundtrack for Nosferatu is dominated by the chilling sounds of Popol Vuh, with the exception of Wagner’s ‘Rheingold’ in parts. This really IS a symphony of horror!

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Limited Edition SteelBookTM

• Newly remastered presentations of the English and German versions

• Original mono audio (German and English)

• Alternative 5.1 Surround audio (German)

• Feature-length audio commentary with Werner Herzog

• On-set documentary (1979, 13 mins): promotional film featuring candid interviews with Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski

• Original theatrical trailer

• Stills gallery

• Illustrated booklet with a new essay by Laurie Johnson, full film credits and on-set photographs