A few years back during our household celebration of "Fright Month" (well known to everyone else as the "Countdown to Halloween"), we were doing a day of vampires and wanted to play director Werner Herzog's Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (1979). I don't speak German, and I was busy elsewhere in the house, so we decided to play the English language version; assuming it was dubbed. I was so shocked and excited to learn that the English version was an entirely different film that I quit my chores and sat down glued to it, totally enthralled. Entitled Nosferatu the Vampyre, it stars the same actors who are speaking their lines in English, but the script is not the same as the German version. What idiot I was! I had owned a copy of the DVD for years and was completely ignorant of that I had in my possession an extra vampire film of some considerable merit.
The vampire, of course, is Herzog's "my best fiend" Klaus Kinski, who stared again in a 1988 film as a vampire entitled Nosferatu a Venezia (Vampire in Venice). Also starring is Isabelle Adjani, whose exotic beauty comes from a nice mixture of Algerian and German genes. Her beauty and gait lends a kind of otherness to her character, before she ever utters a single word. Of course, this was not her first go round with the horror genre in the 1970's. She was already well known for playing the lead in Roman Polanski's The Tenant (Le locataire) [1976]. Bruna Ganz as Jonathan Harker does a great job portraying a man slipping into Madness; and, of course, Roland Topor's portrayal of the mad Renfield is unmatched in cinema (even Tom Waits, with his offer of a bug canape can't top Topor's giggling!)
I you haven't seen this version, I highly recommend it. Cheers!
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