The Best Nosferatu is now available to stream for free

From Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 1 hour ago

At the moment Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu The remake is proving to be a bloody box office hit and has sparked endless debates among horror nerds about whether or not it is superior to the groundbreaking original film. However, real film fans know that preferably Version is the original remake, a modern horror classic that you can stream for free now. Werner Herzog 1979 Nosferatu the vampire is available to stream for free, and when you watch it, you’ll feel like you’ve been bitten by the titular bloodsucker itself.

If you are already a Nosferatu Heck, you won’t be surprised by the plot of Herzog’s remake if you stream it: We follow the adventures of Jonathan Harker, a young real estate agent in the 19th century who must travel to Transylvania to close a deal. Transylvanian boogyman count Dracula wants to buy a house in Harker’s area and forces the young man to leave his beautiful wife behind at home. Before the credits roll, she may unexpectedly prove to be the last defense against this creature of the night before he can expand his body count across the rest of Europe.

How copyright turned Dracula into Nosferatu

This may sound very familiar to you for one very good reason: the year 1979 Nosferatulike the original German film, is based on that of Bram Stoker Dracula.

The German film was made without permission from his estate, and Stoker’s widow Florence felt that FW Murnau’s earlier film did not make enough changes to the source material. She filed a lawsuit that resulted in most copies of the original Nosferatu is destroyed.

Fortunately, some copies survived, and by the time Herzog decided to create his own remake, the previous Stoker copyright had expired. This allowed him to name his monster Dracula instead of Nosferatu in the 1979 version.

Where to stream Nosferatu for free

The 1979 Nosferatu is now available to stream for free on Tubi, unlike some of Tubi’s stranger horror films has a very solid cast, including Bruno Ganz (probably best known for his role as Hitler in the Oscar-nominated film Downfall) as Jonathan Harker. His wife Lucy is played by French film queen Isabelle Yasmine Adjani, previously nominated for her performance in Best Actress The story of Adele H. But the real star of the show is Klaus Klinski, a bona fide screen legend and frequent Herzog collaborator, who makes Count Dracula seem equal parts frightening, seductive and even sympathetic.

Klinski certainly managed to seduce the critics with his brutal charisma: on Rotten tomatoes, Nosferatu the vampire has an impressive 94 percent critical rating. In general, critics praised the film for its beautiful cinematography as well as a Klinski performance that’s intense even by his standards (seriously, this is a guy so unpredictably wild that Werner Herzog seriously threatened to do so). kill him on the set of her previous film Aguirre, Wrath of God). And the audience loved the atmosphere Nosferatu long before its release on Tubi, as evidenced by the film’s whopping 83 percent Popcorn Meter rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Which Nosferatu is the best? There is a clear choice

As for me, I can’t put it more clearly than to say this in relation to Murnau’s original film, Herzog’s Nosferatu is superior in every way. The sets are more elaborate, the plot more complex and the performances more captivating. Horror icon Joe Bob Briggs aired a double feature of the earlier film and the first remake on Shudder in 1922, and watching these films back to back, I was struck by how much better the remake is from the first frame to the end credits (a relative rarity in horror).

If you’re watching Nosferatu the vampire Do you think it’s better on Tubi than the original by FW Murnaus or even the new remake by Robert Eggers? You won’t know until you grit your teeth and try this spooky little morsel for yourself. Luckily, you don’t have to travel all the way to Transylvania to experience this fearsome fiend. All you have to do is click play and experience the heights of horror from your own not-so-haunted home.