Flashback: Nosferatu the Vampyre, directed by Werner Herzog (1979)
Bats are kind of repulsive, but compared to some of the nasty beasties out there, they're fairly tame; they get a bad rap, is all.
Nosferatu the Vampyre
Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz
Director: Werner Herzog
Similarly, the bat's closest mythological anthropomorphic counterpart, the vampire, is often sold to us as a soulless, mostly stereotypical villain.
Modern fiction might now paint them as terribly sensitive characters - True Blood, Twilight - but eccentric German filmmaker Werner Herzog took an entirely different approach in his sound-and-colour remake of the atmospheric 1922 silent film Nosferatu. Like that early cinema classic, his film is jarringly haphazard, a collected series of eerie set pieces that only just come together as a discernible Dracula adaptation.
In the beginning, we're introduced to Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz), a struggling 19th-century estate agent who's sent by his employer to Transylvania, to meet the ominous Count Dracula. Numerous warnings from townsfolk follow, and it's only when we finally come face to face with the immortal vampire (Klaus Kinski), half an hour into its running time, does the film begin to take shape.
Herzog wasn't attempting an out-and-out remake, he has often reminded audiences, instead taking a more sympathetic approach to Bram Stoker's ageless tale. In particular, it was through the diminutive, often hot-headed Kinski that the director found the ideal match for his distinctive approach to the character.