Our main character, Jonathan, rides from Wismar, Germany, to Dracula's castle in Transylvania (yeah, he rides the entire way on horseback seemingly without any breaks...) to talk to Count Dracula about the deeds to a large house Dracula wishes to buy in Wismar.
Dracula locks Jonathan in his castle and drinks his blood at night. He leaves the castle hidden in a pile of coffins and is shipped onto a boat to Wismar, followed by a swarm of disease-ridden rats.
Dracula is particularly fascinated by Jonathan's wife, Lucy, who lets him drink her blood one night to be caught by the morning sun, which kills him.
Each role is brilliantly played. Klaus Kinski plays the sinister and haunted Dracula, Isabelle Adjani plays Lucy, the unheard heroin who suffers Dracula and the wake of chaos he leaves behind, and Bruno Ganz plays Jonathan who slowly turns into a vampire because of Dracula's bite. Kinski plays Dracula in a way that shows he is cursed, not merely evil. It's a haunted and lonely character - I began to feel sorry for him.
The story of Dracula is too famous for the film to be full of surprises, but it is wonderfully suspenseful and full of surreal moments and great acting that we forget we know the story.
