Nosferatu the Vampyre

To say of someone that they were born to play a vampire is a strange compliment, but if you will compare the two versions of Nosferatu you might agree with me that only Kinski could have equaled or rivaled Max Schreck's performance.

This is a pinnacle of horror cinema: atmospheric, rhapsodic and -- especially in the slow-burn confrontations between Lucy and her otherworldly inamorato -- achingly transcendent.

Between the hordes of stowaway rats that accompany Dracula's arrival, and a town-plaza dance of folly by doomed survivors (a Herzog addition), it's like being present at the birth of a medieval legend.

The acting is too eccentric and the narrative drive too weak to satisfy fans of the genre, but Herzog's admirers will find much in the film's animistic landscapes and clusters of visionary imagery.

There's a grey, plodding quality to the film which sidesteps oppressive, doom-laden inevitability and goes straight to slightly dull.

It's funny without being silly, eerie without being foolish and uncommonly beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with mere prettiness.

An evocative exercise in alienation and existential dread, Herzog masterfully tackles one of the greatest gothic stories ever with Nosferatu the Vampyre with the unforgettable (as always) Klaus Kinski as the titular blood-sucker.

It's a curious mix: at times deliriously hammy, at others melancholy, contemplative and oddly beautiful.

Worth seeing for the visuals, then, but minor Herzog.

Madness and death hang over Herzog's Wagner-scored vision like a black cloud, while Kinski adds much poignancy to Dracula, the lonely immortal.

Nosferatu is at least as much a tribute to surrealist pioneer Luis Bunuel as it is to Murnau.

Herzog, cinematographer Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein and production designer Henning von Gierke conjure a near-endless stream of arresting images.