Nosferatu the Vampyre/Fun Facts

From The Grindhouse Cinema Database

< Nosferatu the Vampyre

Nosferatuff.jpeg

  • The scene where Nosferatu arrives in the city required thousands of grey rats. Real grey rats were unavailable and therefore white ones were painted grey and used instead.
  • Cameo: [Beverly Walker]
  • Director Cameo: [Werner Herzog] the person who sticks his foot into the coffin and gets his toe bitten by a rat.
  • As this movie was made long after the copyright to Bram Stoker's Dracula had expired, Herzog decided to restore the original names of the characters, while still following the movie blueprint laid out by F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu Eine Symphonie Des Grauens (1922).
  • Werner Herzog cast Roland Topor as Renfield after seeing him in a French TV show. He had been greatly impressed with the crazy, utterly desperate laugh with which Topor had concluded his every statement on that show.
  • The coach that picks up Harker at the Borgo pass was a real hearse that was actually still in use in Bulgaria at the time of the shoot.
  • Klaus Kinski had to spend approximately four hours per day in make-up. Fresh latex ear pieces had to be poured for each day of shooting because they were destroyed at removal. Kinski, notorious for his violent daily temper-tantrums, had a very good relationship to Japanese make-up artist Reiko Kruk and was exceedingly patient and well-behaved during make-up.
  • Production designer Henning von Gierke, also an accomplished chef who enjoyed cooking for the crew, prepared the food for the breakfast shot himself.
  • The whole crew comprised 16 people - twice as many as Herzog had when he shot Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972).
  • The exceedingly difficult slow-motion shots of a bat in flight were not shot by Werner Herzog's crew but borrowed from a scientific documentary.
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