We Already Got 1 ‘Nosferatu’ Remake and It Was Terrible
One of the most famous silent movies of all time is the original Nosferatu. Fans are clamoring for the upcoming remake from Robert Eggers, the director of The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman. Famously, Nosferatu has already been remade as a sound film. Sadly, it was an embarrassing misfire.
An arthouse director gave us his remake of ‘Nosferatu’ in the 1970s
Werner Herzog is one of the most acclaimed arthouse movie directors and German directors ever. Most of his films were not made for the mainstream but his remake of Nosferatu — titled Nosferatu the Vampyre — has broad appeal. After all, 20th-century audiences couldn’t get enough of a certain vampiric count.
The problem here is Klaus Kinski’s version of Count Dracula. In the original Nosferatu, the character eerily pitched somewhere between a human being and an insect. Other interpretations of the count are more suave and seductive. Meanwhile, Kinski’s parasite is more awkward than terrifying. When he dies, he spasms on the floor in one of the most unintentionally funny scenes in any arthouse movie.
Why another remake might work
So one Nosferatu remake failed. Does that mean the upcoming remake is doomed to the same fate? Of course not. The story of Dracula has been done well multiple times in the past and it can be done well in the future.
If anything, Herzog’s film gets Eggers off the hook. Remaking Nosferatu might be considered cinematic blasphemy if not for the fact that Herzog already did it. If anything, Eggers’ upcoming film is more intriguing because audiences will get to see what he could bring to the table that Herzog didn’t when he brought Nosferatu into the sound era. Will the film be more violent or more contemporary? Who knows?
What the director of ‘Nosferatu the Vampyre’ said about his awful film
Fascinatingly, Herzog crafted his remake because he felt especially attached to the original Nosferatu. During a 2012 interview with RogerEbert.com, Herzog discussed his love of the silent film’s director, F. W. Murnau. “I’m still convinced that there’s no better German film than Nosferatu, his silent film, and since we were the first postwar generation and we had no fathers, we had no mentors, we had no teachers, we had no masters, we were a generation of orphans,” he said. “Many of us actually were orphans.
“Same thing with me but in many other cases a father just died in captivity, in the war, whatever,” he added. “And those who make movies, the majority, the vast majority, died with the Nazi regime. A few were sent to concentration camps and the best left the country like Murnau and others, so the only kind of reference in my case was the generation of the grandfathers, the silent era of expressionist films.”
During a 2014 interview with IndieWire, the director praised Kinski’s performance. “It was clear there would never be a vampire of his caliber ever again,” Herzog said. “I do not need to see the vampire films of the future. I still know Kinski will be the best, at least for four or five centuries.”
That might not be true, but at least Herzog approached his remake from a place of love.
