Shadow of the Vampire
Schreck? Not quite. Schrecklich? Undoubtedly.

"Why, oh why did I let Fran Drescher give me a manicure?"

As far as biopics go, you could do a lot worse than the life of F.W. Murnau, the legendary German filmmaker who revolutionized the horror genre with 1922's Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. The guy pretty much had everything requisite for good drama -- incredible talent, unwavering ambition, and, of course, tormenting sexual issues, all played out in the decadent backdrop of Weimar Berlin. And when it comes to a classic like Nosferatu, it gets really hard to screw things up; while the film's subject matter (a thinly veiled retelling of the Dracula story) and style (German expressionism given form in a natural landscape) alone should be enough to sate interest, the production was also noted for its eclectic cast, including the flamboyant Greta Schroeder and the bizarre, freaky-looking Max Schreck. Put all this in the hands of a proven talent like Begotten's E. Elias Merhige, and a cast that ranges from Oscar winners like John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe to genre cult stars like Udo Kier, and you've a project with the highest potential to rock of any movie this year.

All of which makes it so very hard to say that Shadow of the Vampire, a vampire film about the vampire film, well, sucks. Watching it fail so miserably was a pretty amazing experience, one that solidifies my view that Hollywood can manage to ruin anything, even a project that seems to have everything going for it. Initially just sloppy and sophomorically written, Shadow of the Vampire gradually dissolves into a mishmash of overdone performances, lost accents, pretentious direction, and dialogue that plays like rejected Patti Smith lyrics. On the plus side, it has great sets, wonderful makeup, and a kick-ass score, although the latter truly sounds the best when heard over the end credits.

"One, two, Freddy's coming for you... oh wait, wrong flick."

The film opens with an old-fashioned placard (meant to evoke those used in silent movies) informing us that we're about to see the "brilliant" director F.W. Murnau, who was, it reads, one of the greatest film directors of all time. Initially I wondered about the painstaking explanation -- I mean, show, don't tell, people! -- but about halfway into the movie I realized it needed to be said, otherwise the entire audience would be wondering how the hell Murnau stayed employed, much less a studio great. For the director, by way of Malkovich and first-time screenwriter Steven Katz, is a full-fledged loon, whose only modes of expression are cold ennui or rip-roaring fury, the latter of which causes our hero to surrender his Deutscher demeanor to a very American accent. This is Murnau by way of Hollywood -- a morphine-addled sex fiend, a spoiled showman who flies his cast all around Germany (why one needs to fly -- in 1922 -- from Berlin to Bremen is never explained), an Andy Warhol clone forty years too soon. The real Murnau died in Hollywood seventy years ago; the fictional Murnau, in a sense, has done the same today.

Shadow of the Vampire is pretty upfront about taking creative liberties; its main premise, that actor Max Schreck is really a vampire who works only if he can feed on the unknowing cast, can be debunked with a cursory glance at the IMDb. Still, it's a cool idea, especially when applied to a director whose films carried such a dreamlike sensibility. Less cool is the portrayal of Schreck by Willem Dafoe, who evokes less the silent screen actor than the final scene in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when head vamp Pee Wee Herman dies a long, slow death over the credits. Dafoe looks great as Schreck, with his big bald head and long, skanky fingernails, but he basically spends the bulk of the film sniffing, grunting, and panting when not admiring his manicure far more than any woman I've ever encountered. And I live in Queens.

Being F.W. Murnau: John Malkovich gives 'em hell in Shadow of the Vampire.

The true problem of the film, however, lies with Katz's script, which begins with ham-handed exposition ("Do you think that maybe he has become so involved with his character that he isn't really playing a part at all, but has become the character?" is a loose paraphrase of one player's comments on Schreck) and ends in a series of goofy prose, including my favorite, "There's no way off the island!", which elicited a rather inappropriate response from the Survivor-starved screening audience. The attempt to add bits of German into the film is also hilarious; perhaps banking a little too much on an all-American audience, the film plays like a translation tape: "No makeup" "Kein Schminke" (a.k.a., "No makeup"). While the pleasure of hearing Malkovich call Dafoe a "schweinhund fuckwad" are immense, Shadow is an embarrassingly naive take on a foreign culture and film industry. The presence of real German actors next to those whose accents aren't exactly, well, there (Cary Elwes) also adds to the confusion and unintentional laughs.

"Gosh, I hope the fact that I'm cross-eyed won't affect the movie!"

More than that, it's just nonsensical. Without giving too much away, I have rarely seen a movie in which so many individuals could have easily prevented their own demise, or whose demise I cared about so little. Take away the period setting, and you've got Scream 4 -- none of the characters are remotely well-developed, and none seem to have any interests or life outside the making of Nosferatu. They're plot devices for a plotless film. With the exception of Eddie Izzard as lead actor Gustav von Wangerheim and Kier as producer Albin Grau, much of the acting is about on par with the writing, which is to say, bad. Even the Nosferatu within the Vampire is botched, full of re-shot scenes that have no real significance and bringing a very silly new meaning to those that do. It's a far cry from the Frankenstein scenes in Gods and Monsters, which it seems to try to evoke, and an even further cry from the movie that serves as its basis. For a movie whose premise seems somewhat derived from the duplicitous nature of its lead performer -- Schreck, in German, means "fright" -- Shadow of the Vampire strays too far from the actual events without employing anything remotely creative to compensate. Or, as Katz might put it, in that goofy, obvious dialect: "Schrecklich". "Dreadful."

DROOL FACTOR: Some of the guys in the smaller roles aren't bad, but they're so indistinguishable it's impossible to tell who's who. Enjoy them en masse. Former hottie Cary Elwes, however, is a long way from his Princess Bride days.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Morphine shots, blood drinking, really ooky press-on nails. But it's much less fun than you'd think.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: None. Catherine McCormack as Greta Schroeder (pretty much the only woman in the film) has about ten minutes of screen time and doesn't do anything to deserve it. Cool makeup though.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Shadow of the Vampire releases nationwide on December 29th.

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