Stunning theatrical publicity photograph featuring Klaus Kinski (Count Dracula) posing outdoors with both his hands folded together.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (German: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, lit. 'Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night') is a 1979 horror film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is set primarily in 19th-century Wismar, Germany and Transylvania, and was conceived as a stylistic remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 German Dracula adaptation Nosferatu. The picture stars Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker, Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker, and French artist-writer Roland Topor as Renfield. There are two different versions of the film, one in which the actors speak English, and one in which they speak German.

Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a 95% approval critic response based on 54 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Stunning visuals from Werner Herzog and an intense portrayal of the famed bloodsucker from Klaus Kinski make this remake of Nosferatu a horror classic in its own right."

In 2011, Roger Ebert added the film to his "Great Movies Collection." Concluding his four-star review, Ebert said: "One striking quality of the film is its beauty. Herzog's pictorial eye is not often enough credited. His films always upstage it with their themes. We are focused on what happens, and there are few 'beauty shots.' Look here at his control of the color palette, his off-center compositions, of the dramatic counterpoint of light and dark. Here is a film that does honor to the seriousness of vampires. No, I don't believe in them. But if they were real, here is how they must look".

Herzog's production of Nosferatu was very well received by critics and enjoyed a comfortable degree of commercial success. The film also marks the second of five collaborations between director Werner Herzog and actor Kinski, immediately followed by 1979's Woyzeck. The film had 1,000,000 admissions in West Germany and grossed ITL 53,870,000 in Italy. It was also a modest success in Adjani's home country, taking in 933,533 admissions in France.

The 1988 Italian horror film Nosferatu in Venice is a "sequel-in-name-only", again featuring Kinski in the title role. While the basic story is derived from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, director Herzog made the 1979 film primarily as an homage remake of F. W. Murnau's silent film Nosferatu (1922), which differs somewhat from Stoker's original work.

The makers of the earlier film changed several minor details and character names. They also did not have permission to use the intellectual property of the novel, which was owned (at the time) by Stoker's widow Florence. A lawsuit was filed, resulting in an order for the destruction of all prints of the film. Some prints survived and were restored after Florence Stoker had died and the copyright had expired. By the 1960s and early 1970s the original silent returned to circulation, and was enjoyed by a new generation of moviegoers.

Mr. Herzog considered Murnau's Nosferatu to be the greatest film ever to come out of Germany, and was eager to make his own version of the film, with Klaus Kinski in the leading role. In 1979, by the very day the copyright for Dracula had entered the public domain, Herzog proceeded with his updated version of the classic German film, which could now include the original character names.