Shadow Of The Vampire [2001] [DVD]

However, bored with the blood of bats and chickens, the isolated, lonely Schreck gets peckish during the early days of filming and starts an early course of cameraman Wolfgang (Ronan Vibert), and one by one, crew members fall sick and die... Mehrige's ingenious film is at once a dedicated homage to the look and feel of the original silent Nosferatu, a classy drama-horror, and a black comedy on the excesses of, and sacrifices for, Art. The scenes are cleverly shot, with colour 'backstage/real life' footage merging into the sepia-toned, closed-filter stagey-ness of the silent movie scenes. Peculiarly, even though Schreck is supposed to be bumping off cast and crew at a rapid rate, we only ever see him attack 2 crew members: Wolfgang (who he repeatedly visits) and a camera assistant (who he throws from the boat set after biting him once). The film was shot on an incredibly tight budget and a 35 day schedule, and according to interviews with Mehrige, he began to realise that he was rapidly running out of money and time about halfway through the production, having to throw out pages of script. This would explain why we get plenty of development of Vibert's character slipping into anemia-induced fear and death, but characters such as Eddie Izzard's (terrific) von Wagenheim simply disappear from the plot.

Shadow is a short-feeling 91minutes. Dafoe makes a consistently entertaining, vile rather Steptoe-like Nosferatu, and the ensemble acting (particularly from Izzard and Vibert) is flawless (albeit with purposefully dodgy German accents), with each character being more than just vampire-fodder two-dimensional ciphers.

The mix of horror and black comedy is tipped more in the direction of the latter, and as much as I genuinely like the film, and as funny as it is, it's possible that it would have been a more meaty production if it had leaned more to the horror end of the scale.

A welcome companion to the sub-genre, along with Gods and Monsters, Ed Wood, and the forthcoming Izzard-starring The Cat's Miaow.

Jo Fishwick

"Shadow of the Vampire" has an obvious affection for the way in which silent movies were made, and key sequences of the film emulate the style of the time (shot in black & white, iris in & iris out, etc.). Both Schreck and Murnau are interested in immortality, albeit of different sorts, and it is not surprising that by the end of the film there is the question of which character is the real monster is quite debatable. Dafoe's performance as the title character was certainly worthy of an Oscar nomination, one of those grand disappearances beneath the make-up reminiscent of John Hurt in "The Elephant Man." Malkovich is at the stage in his career where it is difficult to notice how good he is because of how good he is (he improvised a lot of the dialogue during the final scene). Producer Nicholas Cage certainly deserves credit for getting E. Elias Merhige to direct another film. It had been almost a decade since Merhige wrote and directed "Begotten," and he was threatening to become the J. D. Salinger of contemporary American cinema. "Shadow of the Vampire" is destined to become a beloved little horror film, if not a cult classic.

Given the subject matter, the DVD extras are pretty sparse this time around. Merhige does the audio commentary alone and there are brief interviews with him, Dafoe and Cage. However, the featurette is standard Hollywood fare when what I was really expecting was a documentary-style look at the original "Nosferatu" with film historians or horror writers holding forth on its greatness. While having seen the original "Nosferatu" is not necessary to understanding "Shadow of the Vampire," it certainly would enhance your enjoyment of this film, and since "Shadow" is only 93 minutes long, you can easily do a double feature on a Friday night when the moon is full. Finally, please remember this is a film that requires the willing suspension of disbelief and do not get sidetracked by how a vampire who casts no reflection in a mirror can be captured on film. Just enjoy the ride.