My Best Fiend

"Every grey hair on my head, I call Kinski."

Written and directed by Werner Herzog. 1999.

I'm not sure which is better: Klaus Kinski's mad raving that he's Jesus or Werner Herzog's quiet intent toward deicide. "One day I seriously decided to firebomb him in his home," director Herzog tells the camera, the Peruvian jungle and the shoot of Aguirre, The Wrath of God his backdrop. "I was prevented from doing so only by the vigilance of his Alsacian shepherd." One only wishes there were footage of that.

Nosferatu, the Vampyre

"Death is not the worst. There are things more horrible than death."

Written and directed by Werner Herzog. 1979.

Herzog's interpretation of the original German film is eerie, atmospheric, and somehow apocalyptic -- as a good vampire narrative should be. Kinski's vampyre is forbidden to participate in his own apocalypse, here confined to a German village, a household. A woman's heart.