Last year’s gothic blockbuster was Robert Eggers’ Christmas-release chomp at the Count Orlok apple. But in 1979, Werner Herzog made the definitive adaptation of silent film’s most fearsome creature – a slow and visually arresting feature that freshens rather than remakes the original Twenties picture. Here, Klaus Kinski’s count haunts the screen as, in Herzog’s words, “not a monster, but an ambivalent, masterful force of change” while Possession’s Isabelle Adjani plays terror with a subtle sexual edge. Perhaps the modern crowd loves to see the vampyr’s penis, but Herzog locks all in from the first minute of real mummy footage. – James Scott
