Herzog and Kinski's Nosferatu the Vampyre

Nosferatu the Vampyre (German: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht) is a 1979 gothic horror film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is both a remake of F. W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu (1922) and an adaptation of Bram Stoker‘s Dracula. Unlike Murnau, who changed the character names, Herzog calls his vampire Count Dracula. Klaus Kinski plays him with pale skin, large ears, sharp teeth and long fingernails, in a deliberate homage to Max Schreck‘s Count Orlok, but with far more emphasis on his loneliness. Isabelle Adjani plays Lucy Harker and Bruno Ganz plays Jonathan. Shot in separate English and German versions, it was the second of Herzog and Kinski’s five films together. It was very well received by critics and was a modest commercial success, and it has since influenced Robert Eggers‘s Nosferatu (2024).

At a glance

Release date	January 17, 1979 (France); April 12, 1979 (Wiesbaden, West Germany)
Director	Werner Herzog
Writer	Werner Herzog
Based on	Dracula by Bram Stoker and Nosferatu (1922) by F. W. Murnau
Starring	Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz
Runtime	107 minutes
Budget	DEM 2.5 million (about $1.4 million)
Franchise	Dracula / Nosferatu: remake of Nosferatu (1922); followed by the in-name-only Nosferatu in Venice (1988)

Plot summary

In 1850, Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz), an estate agent in Wismar, is sent by his employer, Renfield (Roland Topor), to sell a house to Count Dracula. Leaving his wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) behind, he travels to Transylvania, ignoring villagers who beg him to stay away. The Count (Klaus Kinski) is pale, with large ears, sharp teeth and long fingernails. He is captivated by a small portrait of Lucy and agrees to the purchase. Harker is preyed on night after night, then finds the Count asleep in a coffin. Dracula sets off for Wismar with coffins of cursed earth, while Harker, injured escaping the castle, falls ill.

Dracula’s ship arrives in Wismar with its crew dead. Rats swarm the streets, and plague spreads. Doctors, including Abraham Van Helsing, blame the rats, but Lucy suspects something else. Dracula visits her and asks for some of the love she gives Jonathan, and she refuses. While the townspeople dance a danse macabre and hold a last supper, Lucy reads that she can destroy the vampire by keeping him distracted until dawn, at the cost of her own life.

Spoiler section: the ending

Lucy scatters consecrated Hosts in Dracula’s coffins and around Jonathan. She lures the Count to her bed and lets him drink until the rooster crows, and he dies in the first light. Van Helsing finds her dead and drives a stake through Dracula’s heart. The recovered Jonathan, now a vampire himself, has Van Helsing arrested for murder. He has a maid sweep away the Hosts around his chair and rides off, dressed in black, saying he has much to do.

Production and behind the scenes

Herzog considered Murnau’s Nosferatu the greatest film ever made in Germany. Murnau’s version had been made without permission from Stoker’s estate and was ordered destroyed after a lawsuit. Surviving prints returned to circulation in the 1960s and early 1970s. Herzog wanted to remake it with Kinski. He also saw it as a “bridge” between Weimar-era Expressionism and the New German Cinema of his own generation, reconnecting German film with its pre-Nazi tradition. Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, Gaumont and the West German broadcaster ZDF co-produced it, on a small budget and with a crew of 16.

Herzog couldn’t film in Wismar, where Murnau had shot, so he moved to Delft in the Netherlands. When Delft refused to allow 11,000 rats to be released, part of that scene was shot in nearby Schiedam. Romania’s CeauÈ™escu regime would not allow filming in Transylvania because of the character’s link to Vlad the Impaler, so Pernštejn Castle in Czechoslovakia stood in for Dracula’s castle. Fox wanted an English-language release, so most dialogue scenes were shot twice, once in German and once in English. Herzog later called the English version “great” but the German one “more authentic.” Popol Vuh scored the film, which also uses Wagner’s Das Rheingold prelude, Gounod and the Georgian folk song “Tsintskaro.”

Release and reception

The film premiered in competition at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival, where production designer Henning von Gierke won a Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement. It sold one million tickets in West Germany and 933,533 in France, Adjani’s home country. Contemporary reviewers noted that it kept the horror and grim atmosphere while putting more weight on the vampire’s tragic loneliness, presenting Dracula as weary, unloved and doomed to immortality. Judith Martin of The Washington Post was less enthusiastic, finding it an overly familiar retelling despite its picturesque, eerie settings. Today it holds 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. The consensus credits Herzog’s “stunning visuals” and Kinski’s “intense portrayal” with making it “a horror classic in its own right.” It has 79 on Metacritic.

Legacy and influence

The film is regarded as a major reinterpretation of both the vampire film and Murnau’s original. The British Film Institute calls it a tribute to the silent film and to the earlier German tradition, and singles out its treatment of immortality, loneliness and the desire for death. In 2025 the BFI listed it among ten notable German horror films. Robert Eggers said he watched Herzog’s version repeatedly as a teenager and that its influence shows in his Nosferatu (2024), even though he avoided rewatching it while developing his own film. Lily-Rose Depp, his Ellen, said she studied Adjani’s Lucy. In 1988, Kinski returned to the role in the Italian Nosferatu in Venice, a sequel in name only. For the original, see Nosferatu (1922) and the Count Orlok and Count Dracula character pages.

Trivia

Renfield is played by French artist and writer Roland Topor.
Behavioral biologist Maarten ‘t Hart, hired to handle the rats, quit over their treatment. He said white rats from Hungary were dyed gray, and many died.
Paul Monette wrote a novelization, published in 1979.
The BFI released a new 4K restoration on September 22, 2025, and Scream Factory released a 4K set in the US on October 21, 2025.
The film also grossed ITL 53,870,000 in Italy.