(Werner Herzog, 1979, West Germany/France, 107 minutes)

Bavarian legend Werner Herzog has directed somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 films in his career, but only one of them is a horror movie: 1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht). Making keen early use of Isabelle Adjani’s haunted stare, here she plays Lucy Harker, wife to Jonathan Harker (Wings of Desire’s Bruno Ganz), who is negotiating for a house purchased by Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski, a scarier actor than Dracula is a character). Keith Uhlich, writing for Time Out New York, calls Nosferatu “[the] pinnacle of horror cinema: atmospheric, rhapsodic, and achingly transcendent.” With a score from Popol Vuh, who also wrote the music for Herzog/Kinski collaborations Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde.

In German with English subtitles.