Jonathan Harker (Wings of Desire's Bruno Ganz) is a real estate agent sent by his giggling, unstable boss Mr. Renfield (Roland Topor, who created the "Panic Movement" along with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal) to Transylvania to sell a piece of real estate to Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski, who played Renfield himself in Jesús Franco's Count Dracula). After meeting native Transylvanians and Romani ("gypsies") who seem fearful of the Count, Harker finds himself at Dracula's castle, where he soon realizes the bizarre-looking and even stranger-behaving count is a vampire. Eventually escaping, he makes his way back to Wismar (where Renfield, who babbles about the coming of "the Master," is now locked up in an asylum), soon followed by a boat arriving, with the dead captain lashed to the wheel and the rest of the crew missing, carrying the Count and rats who spread the Black Death. Realizing what has happened, Harker's wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani, who was in Roman Polanski's film adaptation of Topor's novel The Tenant) seeks to destroy the Count and save her husband, despite the disbelief of Dr. Van Helsing (The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser's Walter Ladengast).
Contrary to popular belief, not all remakes are garbage. This view is mainly the result of the glut of crappy ones in recent years, but there are lots of exceptions. I would argue that Brian De Palma's Scarface is superior to Howard Hawks' original, although the original has more than its share of strengths. On the other hand, I will never understand how people can prefer Frank Oz's putrid version of Little Shop of Horrors to Roger Corman's edgy original, which had the balls to have Seymour actually kill the people he fed to Audrey Jr. himself, as well as being free of the eye-rolling musical numbers and bullshit test audience-inspired happy ending. There are also instances of remakes of great movies that are excellent in their own right: Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (itself based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest), comes to mind. Nosferatu the Vampyre is another great example, coming close to (but not equaling or exceeding) the brilliance of F. W. Murnau's original silent film from 1922, adapted from Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Herzog and Kinski collaborated on many films, and brought out the best in each other creatively, despite their oft-tempestuous professional relationship. Herzog's script largely adapts the original film faithfully, but has a unique eerie style all its own, while also restoring the names of the characters in Stoker's novel, rather than the original names Murnau gave them, although even then there is an exception in that Lucy is the name of Jonathan's wife, and Mina her best friend's, rather than the opposite. Kinski's performance and makeup masterfully evoke Max Schreck's performance in the original while making Count Dracula (Graf Orlok in Murnau's film) somewhat more sympathetic, though thankfully with none of the glamorization of vampires found in the execrable Twilight Saga. The man is, and will always be, one of my favorite actors, especially for his performances in not only Herzog's films, but many of his appearances in Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Sergio Corbucci's brilliant and bleak The Great Silence. Ganz portrays the traumatized Harker with his usual skill, and the ever-beautiful Adjani manages to evoke silent film-style acting in her speaking role. Topor, who Herzog cast after seeing him interviewed on French TV and being impressed with the laugh with which he followed every question answered, portrays Renfield's mental breakdown very convincingly. Popol Vuh, who provided music for several of Herzog's other films, does wonderfully atmospheric work, and Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein's cinematography and Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus' editing are award-worthy. A noteworthy scene not in the original film, which I nevertheless loved, is Lucy coming across a group of people in fancy dress, dying from the plague, gathered for one final banquet and dance. The altered ending is very interesting as well, being even more downbeat than the bittersweet conclusion of Murnau's take. If you loved the original Nosferatu, then this is a must-view.
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