Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) aka Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht, directed by Werner Herzog, BFI German version remaster, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including German 5.1 remaster, two commentary tracks, and English subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079641/

Video encoded in two-pass 13 Mbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image.

English subtitles, converted to SRT, proofed and corrected. English subtitles for German commentary converted to SRT.

Note : Rumor has it that the very day Bram Stoker's Dracula went out of copyright, Herzog went into production on this, his remake of the original Murnau Nosferatu, which was famously ordered to be destroyed after a copyright lawsuit from Stoker's widow. Even the production was a homage to early filmmaking, shooting two versions of all dialogue scenes in parallel, one in English and one in German, and assembling two similar, but different cuts, one in each language. This is the German version, which Herzog prefers, and it's a pretty great film. A moody meditation on evil, disease and decay, with Klaus Kinski's Count being both magnetic and repulsive, bringing disease while also being a disease himself, and Isabelle Adjani as a very enigmatic Lucy Harker. A tour de force in all senses.

Jonathan Harker is a real estate agent who's sent by his employer Renfield to Transylvania to sell a property in the city to Count Dracula. On the way, locals attempt to dissuade him from going, and when he arrives at the castle, he finds it a derelict ruin, abandoned apart from the strange, feral-looking Count. After several unsettling encounters with the Count, Harker closes the deal, selling a house near his own, but the Count attacks him at night, and later is seen loading coffins onto a cart and leaving. Harker escapes from the castle but is injured and ill, and in the meantime, the Count travels by ship, killing everyone on board until the ghost ship, filled with rats, arrives in Wismar. The plague quickly spreads through the city, and as Jonathan finally arrives home, deathly ill from vampiric infection, Lucy contemplates the sacrifice she must make to save everyone around her.

This remaster, which is probably from an internegative, looks decent, but suffers from somewhat crushed blacks and a bit of variable grain. The 5.1 remaster sounds good, the two commentary tracks are both very good, as they tend to be with anything involving Herzog. All in all, a pretty good package.

Hot tip
Quote: