Eye Candy #311 - "Nosferatu the Vampyre" (1979)

Nosferatu the Vampyre:  I’m a sucker (no pun intended) for a Herzog/Kinski collaboration and I suppose any director worth his salt would want to give any of the great horror franchises a whirl (and historically, the Dracula films fare better than any of the others).  Performed by European actors for whom English was their second language (some obviously learned their lines phonetically without understanding what they were saying), there are several deviations from the original story here.  Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is sent to Transyvlania by his employer, Renfield, to help Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) purchase a piece of property is Wismar, Germany.  Harker leaves behind his wife Lucy (a combination character of Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra), and Dracula travels to Wismar to take her as his own, turning Jonathan into a vampire, and bringing doom with him.  A more subdued take of on the ol’ Count, where he is less a malevolent force and more the victim of his own circumstances.  The bad things that befall people around him seem more a byproduct of who he is rather than deliberate action on his part.  He is a Dracula tired of immortality, starved for love, and desperately lonely.  Harker is barely a hero, with the focus on Lucy, who stops Dracula.  Also, rather than the sweeping gothic horror shows, the film plays the setting very straight - this is easily the most well-lit Castle Dracula ever committed to film.  Not a menacing shadow, or spooky cobweb to be found, and the sexuality that oozes from some versions is almost completely absent.  The film is okay, but not great, and not the best of the Herzog/Kinski collaborations. I'd give it 3 and a half. Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”