It is to rescue Dracula from the defilements of high camp that Werner Herzog has … made his own Nosferatu. Herzog wants to restore Murnau's film to its rightful place in movie history, so he has remade the Murnau version scene by scene…. This is not to say that Herzog has no ideas of his own. Where his film departs from Murnau's, it is in the direction of naturalizing, even humanizing, the Dracula character. (p. 17)

At the same time that he is trying to revive the Dracula legend, Herzog is trying to make us sense its lost power. We should be able to understand, he is suggesting, how compelling a figure Dracula was in a world where death could take such an inexplicable and irresistible form as the plague. Dracula answered a human need which we may have yet, but no longer recognize.

Herzog has naturalized Murnau's Dracula in...