Nosferatu the Vampyre (German: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, lit. 'Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night') is a 1979 gothic horror film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is set primarily in 19th-century Wismar, Germany and Transylvania, and was conceived as a stylistic remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 German Dracula adaptation Nosferatu. The picture stars Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker, Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker, and French artist-writer Roland Topor as Renfield. There are two different versions of the film, one in which the actors speak English, and one in which they speak German.[3]
Herzog's production of Nosferatu was very well received by critics and enjoyed a comfortable degree of commercial success.[4] The film also marks the second of five collaborations between director Herzog and actor Kinski,[5] immediately followed by 1979's Woyzeck. The film had 1,000,000 admissions in West Germany and grossed ITL 53,870,000 in Italy.[6] It was also a modest success in Adjani's home country, taking in 933,533 admissions in France.[7]
A novelization of the screenplay was written by Paul Monette and published by both Avon Publishing (ISBN 978-0380441075) and Picador (ISBN 978-0330259293) in 1979. The 1988 Italian horror film Nosferatu in Venice is a "sequel-in-name-only",[8] again featuring Kinski in the title role.[9]
