Vampire in Venice



AKA: Nosferatu in Venice

Professor Paris Catalano is a man who has dedicated his life to the study of Nosferatu, the legendary vampire who mysteriously disappeared around Venice some 200 years ago. After receiving a letter from the Canins family, Paris travels to Venice to visit Helietta Canins, who believes that Nosferatu is connected to her family through a distant ancestor, and that he may be entombed in the family crypt just beneath their home. Paris investigates the site, but is skeptical of the claim. Helietta however, is still convinced that Nosferatu is buried in that one creepy coffin downstairs. So, determined to prove she’s right, she hosts a seance in an effort to awaken the famed Prince of Darkness. To her credit, the seance works and the vampire reawakens…except he’s not downstairs, but in a completely different part of town. And it turns out he’s not all that thrilled about being woken up, either.


I’m sure he’s just hangry. He’ll be fine after a snack.

Vampire in Venice is an Italian horror film from 1988. Produced by an Italian TV network and  Augusto Caminito, the original plan was for this film to be a sequel to the 1979 film, Nosferatu the Vampyre that was directed by Werner Herzog (I should really get around to re-watching that at some point…), which was itself a remake of the original Nosferatu from 1922. Which was a bit of an ambitious plan, because that movie is truly very solid. But sadly, it’s also a plan that never really came to fruition either, for one very notable reason. And that infamous reason can be summed up in two words: Klaus Kinski.


Yup, the emo looking douche. That’s him.

If you’re at all familiar with Klaus Kinski then you probably know that while he could indeed be a very good actor, his most memorable trait was that he was also largely considered to be a crazy, Grade-A asshole who often brought some level of chaos to the various productions he was a part of. And Vampire in Venice is really no different. The movie was already having problems without his help, having already gone through two directors, either due to wanting to go in another direction (Maurizio Lucidi) or concerns about money (Pasquale Squitieri), before finally settling on Mario Caiano. But then Caiano and Kinski had a violent argument on the first day of filming and the actor refused to work with him. So Caiano was let go and producer Augusto Caminito stepped in, because it was either that, or the film wasn’t going to get made at all. But that was just the start. Kinski also didn’t want to go through the makeup process to turn him into the iconic looking vampire from the Herzog film, so as a result he looks absolutely nothing like the original Nosferatu character this film was supposed to be a sequel to. Instead he spends much of his time wandering the set looking like a tipsy French aristocrat that just got himself kicked out of the bar.


*hic* Where the hell am I?

He also reportedly assaulted not one, but two of the actresses on set, violently fondling one and biting the other so badly that she (understandably) refused to work with him further (classy guy…). His behavior was reportedly so bad that at one point the entire crew walked off the set in protest, until he was all but forced to apologize for his abhorrent behavior. Dude was basically a walking, talking red-flag, and many of his actions are legitimately the stuff that Hollywood horror stories are made of.


Some of y’all mock things like “intimacy coordinators” nowadays, but if someone at work suddenly violently bit you on the crotch, I bet most of you wouldn’t be too happy about it.

So it should really come as no surprise that the film has some… problems, may be the nicest way to put it. Perhaps understandably, the story is a bit of a mess. Either due to too many hands in the creative cookie jar, or because of inflated egos, the plot for this thing has quite a few holes in it. Certain story-lines end up going nowhere. Ideas are introduced, only to be discarded. And some of the meaningful story beats that are there end up being horribly confusing, due to jumpy editing. And part of that last point is due to certain people being a nightmare to work with, meaning a couple actors’ story-lines end up inexplicably abandoned. Leaving much of the film to feel horribly disjointed.

The most annoying result of all of this, of course, is that a lot of stuff just never ends up being explained. Especially in regards to the Canins family, or really half the gibberish that comes out of Catalano’s mouth. Because that dude ends up spewing a lot of things out of his pie hole about Nosferatu that’s going to leave most vampire fans scratching their heads. Seriously, I think about 95% of what’s in here runs contrary to standard vampire lore established in the original Nosferatu. The only thing I remember being mentioned that fits into already pre-existing standards, is the part about vampires needing their coffin to contain the soil they were originally buried in. That part was in Nosferatu from 1922, so that checks. Everything else that comes up feels like it’s either something that’s so niche or culturally specific that I don’t know about it or, more likely, simply feels like the movie just pulled a random fact-oid out of its ass.

“Okay, so the vampire wants to die? We’ll just trick him into walking into the daylight then.”
“No, no. He can walk around during the day just fine.”
“Oh… Alright. Then we can just wait for daylight and go stab him in the heart while he sleeps like usual, right?”
“No.”
“No?”
“He only needs to sleep every 24 days.”
“Wait, what? Seriously? I’ve never heard that before… Fine, smart guy. What are we supposed to do then?”
“The only thing that can give the monster eternal peace is receiving unconditional love–”
“Someone go find a dog!”
“– from a virgin.”
“…”
“…”
“Well how bloody convenient for him.”

Seriously, where the hell did they get some of this shit? I mean, I’m pretty sure that the last bit was only in there because Italy likes nakedness and Kinski wanted a viable excuse to stare at naked women all day. But most of their rules feel so random that it’s annoying. Are we sure they’re really fighting a vampire? I’m terribly confused…


But I doubt I’m the only one.

On the plus side, the movie is filled with a veritable bevy of good actors. Yeah, okay, Kinski is there, and while he’s sometimes intense and all, I can’t say this is one of his better performances. I thought he actually looked kinda disinterested or bored most of the time, to be honest. But luckily you’ve also got people like de Rossi, Donald Pleasence and Christopher Plummer in there too, so there’s no shortage of competence on display. It’s just a shame that with such a good line-up at their disposal, that the film’s story issues cause their characters to be so woefully underdeveloped that they feel absolutely wasted in their roles.


Everybody wave at Donald.

The other plus in the film’s favor, is that it is often very nice to look at. Between the scenery and atmosphere, the movie looks truly lovely. The story may often be a confusing mess, but they actually shot much of the movie in Venice, and like I think I’ve said before, it would be hard as hell to make that city look ugly. So while other parts of the film may have been plagued with problems, at the very least the cinematographer was blissfully on point.


Whoever it was, they loved having the actors pose majestically on boats.



I’m just…I don’t know. I guess I had some level of hope for Vampire in Venice when I saw all the actors involved. But now having seen it, I just feel rather…blah, about the whole thing. I did like how it looked, I will admit that. It’s often very pretty. But even though I was able to follow the story and I thought it had some good ideas that I liked, the plot ended up being a lot of disjointed nonsense with a bunch of made-up junk cobbling it together. So overall…uh, boo, I guess. I don’t know. I’m still kinda bummed honestly. It’s not really arty enough for the art-house fiends. It’s not really good enough for the horror purists. And it’s definitely  not even weird enough for the Z-grade fans either. It’s just kind of blah. If you like Kinski, Pleasence or Plummer, or just enjoy odd vampire movies just for the boobies, then feel free to give this a watch just for that. But I can’t imagine too many other people would be all that impressed with this one.

Vampire in Venice is available on a variety of streaming services.

Vampire in Venice is also available on Bluray as Nosferatu in Venice.

Helpful Links: