Could that title be any more cheesy?
Caught this movie on Friday with Christine, who had indulged herself in a little bit of bud (and I don't mean the beer - no self-respecting Canadian drinks bud, or dignifies it by capitalizing it, for that matter). If you were driving around downtown Calgary around that time, I was the guy with the black-haired girl who was walking around, madly tearing into a McCain frozen chocolate cake.
Between the awful title and a totally unnecessary trio of title cards telling us about the making of Nosferatu (it's all repeated later anyway, and I'm still not clear on whether it's supposed to be the most "realistic" vampire movie of all time, or just in 1922 when I don't think there was much competition), Shadow Of The Vampire does not make a very impressive stumble out of the gates. It's not until John Malkovich, playing Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau shows up that things pick up; lucky for us, it's not a long wait.
Shadow Of The Vampire bases itself in the premise that Max Schreck, who played Count Orlock in Nosferatu, really is a vampire, a premise that's more easily to swallow than if it was about Lee, Lugosi, Palance or Langella, since those four went on to make widespread enough impressions playing non-vampires that the fanged guy in the cape isn't necessarily the only thing that comes to mind when you hear about them. Most people wouldn't know Max Schreck if they were trapped in an elevator with him.
Shooting in Germany has wrapped, so it's time to move on to Czechoslovakia, where the "superstitious" locals are used for extras and the "eccentric" Schreck will only appear in full makeup and shoot his scenes at night. Murnau seems to have pulled some pretty long strings to get Schreck, who none of the crew has heard of, to act in his picture...what has he promised him in return? Probably not too hard to figure out, since this Schreck seems to have Travolta-like "gimme what I want 'cuz I'm the STAR!" demands (and appetites!).
Cary Elwes shows up later as a cinematographer who has to be flown in when the one on the job falls, uh, "ill". I have to admit to despairing when I saw his name in the credits, since I haven't liked him in anything since The Princess Bride (though Christine, a fan, managed to say "Yay" at his appearance, between fistfuls of chocolatey goodness). Also onboard for the fun is Udo Kier, Catherine McCormack (man, that 20's-Germany ideal of feminine beauty just creeps me out) and Eddie Izzard.
Now, the "actor playing a vampire but he really IS a vampire" idea is not exactly new, but fortunately for this film, the movies that Shadow Of The Vampire follows in exploiting this idea mostly sucked hard (Understudy: Graveyard Shift II, anyone?) so they're not too difficult to top. After all, this is the first movie I know of that has tried attaching this idea to a real production.
The movie looks great and just right all around, though what I don't know about German expressionism could fill a warehouse so if you want me to expand on that, forget it. We see scenes as they're being shot, though the primitive camera's eye, and they look like they could've been pulled right out of the period.
Willem Dafoe gives his frown muscles a big workout here, blessedly playing Schreck as the only kind of vampire I can put up with these days; a predator that's more interested in feeding on his prey than getting her wet. Yeah, he has his romantic side, and he's not above the occasional wisecrack (you all heard the "I'll eat her later" comment in the ads), but for the most part, he's doing it right; he's a predator you'd be right to be frightened of.
Malkovich plays Murnau as something as a blowhard given to pretentious monologues about the immortality of film, a man so dedicated to crafting his own legacy that the lives of those working with him concern him not at all, particularly the writer, Murnau being ultimately as vampiric as anyone here. This should generate some sort of resonance with writers the world over, I would think.
Minor problems abound, like the film's inability to decide on a way to spell "Orlock". Even though it often works, the tone of the movie vacillates between pretentious and something perilously close to goofy, with only isolated scenes (like Schreck's thoughts on Dracula; even the bat-catching part was pretty creepy) I could take as seriously as writer Steven Katz and director E. Elias Merhige seem to have intended.
Once it's all over 93 minutes later, one is left with the impression of Shadow Of The Vampire being a classier, grittier, more "adult" (for whatever that's worth) version of Scream; nothing less, but nothing much more either (Christine, for her part, was left with the impression that it was only 30 minutes long, but remember the bud). It's likeable enough, but the concept of Scream was beaten into the ground by the time Scream 2 came along and more "adult" or no, Shadow Of The Vampire doesn't bring that much new to the table. Worth watching for Dafoe's performance alone, it's still one of the better horror offerings of 2000, a year which will not exactly go down in history for its wealth of quality filmmaking.
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