Shadow of the Vampire

Shadow of the Vampire
by E. Elias Merhige

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Movie Reviews of Shadow of the Vampire

Movie Review: A fun, dark revisioning of Nosferatu
Summary: 5 Stars

It was Murnau's radical idea (for that time) to film the novel DRACULA on location in an abandoned old castle in Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, the estate of Bram Stoker wouldn't give Murnau the rights to film the novel. So he changed the plot very slightly and the name of his vampire from Count Dracula to Count Orlok.

The Count was played by an actor named Max Schreck, whose name is German for "Maximum Terror. The name fit him well. He is most unlike the vampires that one is used to in a vampire movie. He didn't have a flowing cape, was very ugly, had the ears of a rat, a bald head, long talons for fingernails, extremely dense and bushy eyebrows, and two pointed teeth in the front instead of fangs. He repulsed women instead of seducing them like the charming vampires later on like Bela Lugosi or Frank Langella.

The film was supposed to make Schreck an international star,but lawsuits from the Stoker estate stopped the film from wide distribution and he only did a few more films after. Little is known about him, and that's where the fun begins with SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE.

It's about the making of the silent film NOSFERATU, but it takes a lot of liberties with it. I want to make this clear - this is NOT a realistic account of how NOSFERATU was made. It is the premise of this new film that the director F.W. Murnau (played wonderfully by John Malkovich) would seemingly do anything to get his film made. For the vampire lead, he hires someone (Willem Dafoe) who thinks he is a real vampire - or is he? Murnau tells his cast that his choice for the role of Count Orlok is a theater actor named Max Schreck who likes to stay in character all the time, even when the camera's not running. He tells the cast just to play along with the demands of this strange actor. And the demands do get strange!

It was amazing how much Willem Dafoe's character resembled the original, and how well they recreated the scenes of the silent classic. There's a couple instances where they even inserted footage from the original, but unless you know NOSFERATU real well, you may not be able to tell.

I don't want to tell you anymore of the plot. Just go rent (or but) it and have a good time. There's parts that are funny, parts that are creepy, and even a part where Schreck talks about being a vampire with two of the crew that's a bit melancholic. It's not a real deep movie, but it will make for interesting conversation afterwards. The acting (with an Academy Award nomination for Willem Dafoe), art direction, cinematography, and soundtrack are terrific.

If you haven't seen NOSFERATU, you still should enjoy this movie. But if you have seen NOSFERATU before, you won't see it the same way again.

Summary of Shadow of the Vampire

As these on-set maladies and "accidents" continue, Schreck wields greater control over Murnau, who descends into a kind of obsessive art-for-art's-sake madness until diva costar Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack, doing wonderful work) is served up as the actor's ultimate motivation. Merhige and his actors (including Cary Elwes, as intrepid cameraman Fritz Wagner) have great fun with this ghastly escapade, and the humor is kept delicately subtle to balance the movie's artistic aspirations. To that end, Dafoe is just right, his bald pate and gaunt features a perfect match for the mysterious Schreck, his grimace and talon-like fingers suggesting a human vulture on the prowl. Likewise, the re-creation of Nosferatu's expressionist style is both fanciful and brilliantly authentic. Too bad, then, that this movie suffers a mild case of vampiric anemia; if it shared the depth and richness of, say, Ed Wood, this might have been a cult classic for the ages. --Jeff Shannon