"Harker" (Bruno Ganz) travels to remote Transylvania where he is to help "Count Dracula" (Klaus Kinski) buy a new home in his hometown of Wismar. Why? Well that's because he has fallen in love with a photograph of his beautiful wife "Lucy" (Isabelle Adjani) and has determined to make her his immortal bride. "Harker" had been warned by the locals of the dangers of visiting the "Count" but he pressed on regardless, so ought not to have been surprised when his host absconds from his castle on a schooner laden with coffins, soil and a deadly plague of rats so he can ensnare his innocent young wife. Can he race back home in time to thwart this evil? There's nothing especially new about the chronology of the story here, it's the characterisation of the vampire that helps this stand out. It's obvious from the start that "Dracula" is not of human kind. Contrasting with most interpretations of the title role, Kinski and Warner Herzog attempt to imbue "Dracula" with a degree of humanity. He doles out his lusts left, right and centre upon the innocent, spreading plague and disaster wherever he goes, but he too is cursed. By his own immortality, by his search for some kind of fulfilment or contentedness. This isn't a depiction riddled with sharp teeth and ketchup, it's much more subtle, refined even, telling of a character that it's almost impossible not to feel sorry for. The production itself has dated rather badly, and at times it did remind me of one of these "Sherlock Holmes" remakes, but the thrust of the story is still interestingly different to the normal depiction of this epitome of evil and worth sticking with.
The visuals in Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu the Vampyre" are luscious, hauntingly beautiful in ways that make you wonder: where did Herzog find these set pieces? The plague-ridden streets, the Gothic architecture, the rats flooding through medieval towns—it all feels discovered rather than constructed. This is Herzog's trademark style at its finest. You never feel like you're watching a movie. Instead, you're observing a documentary about a particular vampire, as though this is simply everyday experience captured on film.
Klaus Kinski's interpretation is 180 degrees from Bram Stoker's Dracula. He plays the count not as aristocratic predator but as a pathetic, misunderstood child: lonely, cursed, suffering his immortality. It's a brilliant tack for any actor to find this in the vampire character, transforming the monster into something tragic and almost pitiable. Herzog famously said the 11,000 rats used in filming were better behaved than Kinski, which tells you everything about their volatile collaboration.
What makes this version particularly resonant is how clearly it functions as metaphor for The Plague, or any pandemic. Dracula isn't evil; he's a vector, a non-judgmental, non-intentional cause of death. This interpretation fits perfectly with Kinski's pathetic creature. He doesn't choose to destroy, he simply is destruction. The horror isn't in malice, but in inevitability.
Herzog understood that the most terrifying monsters are the ones who cannot help what they are.
