No matter how fantastic the subject matter is, or once was, Werner Herzog's homage to the vampire genre comes across as dismally familiar (a wayfarer asks directions to Count Dracula's castle and the innkeeper promptly lets a tray of glasses crash to the floor, after which, as all eyes in the place turn on the questioner, you could hear a pin drop). In what has to be his least exotic and most orthodox effort, Herzog copies freely from his own earlier movies as well as from the 1922 F.W. Murnau original on which this is based. Klaus Kinski's movements and gestures in the lead role are very beautiful, but this blue-faced ghoul with the Dumbo ears and the Howard Hughes fingernails is so socially unacceptable that you cannot believe for an instant that Jonathan Harker would consent to enter his door and sit down at his table. Herzog gives the game away much too early. He puts no conviction whatsoever into the characterization of the Good People (Isabelle Adjani and Bruno Ganz, saddled with such stilted lines as "Jonathan, I must tell you of my fear, even if you think it comes from your wife's feeble heart"), and as a consequence, he appears, as usual, to be playing with a stacked deck. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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