9 Under-rated Horror Masterpieces By Directors You Love

Elbow-patched cinephiles everywhere are in love with Werner Herzog’s incredible five-movie collaboration with lunatic thesp Klaus Kinski. Rightly so! Fitzcorraldo, for instance, has some of the most iconic scenes and imagery in cinema, and Aguirre: The Wrath of God is a dark triumph of deranged gloom.

Yes, the arty ones are great, fusing intellectual pleasure with primal fascination. But Herzog's retelling of Nosferatu, one of the oldest stories in horror, is truly essential. Kinski's performance as the starving vampyr cuts right to the tragic humanity - the sad, trapped loneliness - at the heart of the character that makes the tale so enduring.

Herzog and Kinski had a famously explosive relationship, by turns the closest of friends and the fiercest of enemies. There are some great stories about Kinski's legendary on-set tantrums and the pair's colossal arguments, including the time that Herzog coldly and calmly threatened to murder Kinski if he wouldn't just calm down.

Whilst it might be tempting to claim that this tension was the spark that led to the genius of their collaborations, the production of Nosferatu - the pair's crowning achievement - was uncharacteristically bereft of confict, leading to a film of remarkable compassion, restraint, and beauty.