Shadow Of The Vampire review

Conjuring the spectre of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, Shadow Of The Vampire is a comic horror story, although its humour is far less obvious and far more sinister. Based on German director F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, it shows the making of the 1922 classic vampire film, introducing the idea that the film's star Max Schreck might somehow have been a little too ideally suited to the role of the blood sucking vampire. Shadow Of The Vampire is an unfamiliar cinematic hybrid of art and farce with the result that it makes an 'arce' of itself.

Prevented from using the character Dracula by Bram Stoker's estate, Murnau simply devised a similar plot and instead called his aristocratic vampire Nosferatu. Malkovich plays the obsessive Murnau who arrives in Eastern Europe with his small crew to film the vital scenes involving the vampire. He explains that the actor playing Nosferatu, Schreck (Willem Dafoe), is a member of a renowned theatre company who has studied under Stanivslaski, although those on the crew familiar with the troupe have never heard of him. Their curiosity is piqued further when Murnau explains that Schreck has totally immersed in the role to such a degree that he will only ever appear to them in character and full makeup and will only shoot his scenes at night.

The sight of the extraordinary looking Nosferatu is initially shocking to the others, but it's his subsequent behavior that causes more concern as strange things begin to happen on the set. The film's photographer is suddenly taken ill and has to be replaced while Murnau deflects all concerns regarding Schreck as he continues an almost adversarial relationship with his "discovery".

Shot in black and white, Shadow Of The Vampire blurs the distinction between the action on and off screen. The performances do the same, a feature that lies at the root of the film's problem. Malkovich needs little encouragement to overact, nor too does Willem Dafoe or Eddie Izzard as Gustav von Wangenheim. Emulating the exaggerated style of acting favoured in silent movies, all seize on the opportunity to ham things up with relish. The result, while at times is funny, ultimately devalues the credulity of their characters. Dafoe's flamboyant portrayal of the lascivious vampire borders on the absurd as he takes a shining and some fangs to his leading lady Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack).

It's difficult to know what to make of Shadow Of The Vampire. Like its title character, we're never quite of its true identity. It's not amusing enough to be a comedy, but too far fetched to be taken seriously. What is funny is that director E. Elias Merhige and screenwriter Steven Katz have managed to take one of cinema's finest horror films, added the provocative and original notion that it was a documentary, combined it with a great cast and made something less frightening than Home Alone.