Vampire in Venice (Italian: Nosferatu a Venezia), also known as Prince of the Night and Nosferatu in Venice is a 1988 Italian supernatural horror film directed by Augusto Caminito and an uncredited Klaus Kinski,[1] and starring Kinski, Christopher Plummer, Donald Pleasence, and Barbara De Rossi.

British Professor Paris Catalano travels to Venice to investigate the whereabouts of the infamous vampire Nosferatu, whose last known appearance was during the Carnival of 1786.

He is summoned there by the young Princess Helietta Canins, who believes that the vampire may be interred in a sealed tomb in the basement of her ancestral estate.

Upon his arrival, Catalano notices that Helietta bears a striking resemblance to Nosferatu's long-lost love, Letizia.

Nosferatu roams Venice, soon locating Helietta's mother, Princess Catalano, and forces her out of her balcony, pushing her to her death below where she is impaled on an iron fence.

Despondent, Catalano packs his bags and leaves the Canins' mansion, announcing that only a pure woman willing to give Nosferatu her true love can destroy him.

Subsequently, Catalano, who was dying of an unspecified illness, commits suicide by jumping from a bridge into the Grand Canal.

[1] Caminito was introduced to the script for Nosferatu in Venice by Carlo Alberto Alfieri who had written the screenplay and its original story with Leandro Lucchetti.

[2] Cozzi recounts that Caminito felt the film would be a bigger success with a larger budget and a better-known director.

[2] As a consequence, Caminito doubled the film's budget and fired Lucidi, who had only shot a few scenes without Kinski set at the Carnival of Venice in February 1986 .

[2] Caminito hired director Pasquale Squitieri and assembled a cast that included Christopher Plummer, Donald Pleasence, Barbara De Rossi, and Yorgo Voyagis.

[2] Squitieri re-wrote the script, setting it in the near future of 1996 Venice and hired a number of comic book artists to storyboard the film.

[5] As Caminito felt they could not lose Kinski, he terminated the contract with Squitieri and paid him the agreed sum before the director had the chance to shoot anything.

[5] This led to the hiring of Mario Caiano, who had worked with Kinski in the past on films such as The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe.

When Voyagis' girlfriend, Anne Knecht, visited the set, Kinski demanded Caminito hire her as the female lead.

[6] The boom man on set, Luciano Muratori, stated that during a scene where Nosferatu was to turn Elvire Audray's character Uta into a vampire which was supposed to be Kinski pretending to lean over and bite her neck led to Kinski inserting his fingers into the woman's vagina, which had her run from the set in tears.

[6] A day prior to its premiere, Caminito claimed Vampire in Venice to be one hour and forty-six minutes in length.

[1][6] Matthew Edwards, author of Klaus Kinski: Beast of Cinema commented on the film's commercial performance in Italy as being "a box-office disaster".

[12] From retrospective reviews, David Alexander writing in Rue Morgue found the film to be "confusing and scattershot", with "some awkwardly constructed scenes and goofy editing choices, though an overall atmosphere of Gothic dread helps somewhat", and specifically noting Tonino Nardi's "Beautifully hazy cityscapes in Venice".

[13] Matthew Edwards described the film "difficult to review" noting "its rich atmospheric texture, evocative imagery of Venice and Kinski's wild performance."

[14] Kim Newman reviewed the film in Sight & Sound stating that the film was "a mess [...] but a strangely beautiful mess, with an oddly poetic take on vampirism"[15] Newman noted that characters often die off screen and other characters often enter the plot without explaining who they are or what happens to them.