Directed by Werner Herzog • 1972 • West Germany, Mexico, Peru
Starring Klaus Kinski, Ruy Guerra, Helena Roho
The first of Werner Herzog’s legendary—and notoriously tempestuous—collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski is a feverish account of sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador Lope de Aguirre’s obsessive quest through the South American rainforest to discover the fabled city of gold, El Dorado, a crazed delusion that leads him and his band of explorers into the heart of darkness. Kinski’s unhinged performance, the mystical score by Popol Vuh, and the lush, hallucinatory jungle images come together in one of the most haunting, deliriously inspired visions in all of 1970s cinema, a senses-shattering journey to the edge of madness.
Up Next in Directed by Werner Herzog
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Fitzcarraldo
Directed by Werner Herzog • 1982 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, Claudia CardinaleWerner Herzog’s infamously arduous productions were already legendary when he outdid himself with FITZCARRALDO, a feat as utterly quixotic and improbable as its protagonist. Klaus Kinski stars as the wild-ey...
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Nosferatu the Vampyre
Directed by Werner Herzog • 1979 • West Germany
Starring Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno GanzIt is 1850 in the beautiful, perfectly-kept town of Wismar. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is about to leave on a long journey over the Carpathian Mountains to finalize real-estate arrangements with ...
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Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Directed by Werner Herzog • 2009 • United States
Starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val KilmerTwo of contemporary cinema’s most electrifying eccentrics, Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage, join forces for a thoroughly unhinged pulp fever dream. Not—despite the title—a remake of or sequel to the si...