Review – Nosferatu (1979)

What a grim, Germanic retelling of the Dracula story. Unlike its silent predecessor, at least this version openly embraces the trappings of Stoker’s novel rather than changing details in hope of avoiding royalty payments and/or copyright trouble. But it does at least a fair amount of homage to the earlier film; for example, Klaus Kinski’s rat-like makeup is based on the vampire styling of the original. Judged strictly on its own merits, however, this movie is a slow-paced adaptation with much posturing and speechifying and very little drama. Some of the visuals are eye-catching, and the association between vampires, rats and the plague is an element missing from most of the sex-obsessed American and British versions of the story. But otherwise the work is too ponderous by far. Mildly amusing