SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRESHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE
When you just about give up on a movie during the opening credits,
and it goes downhill from there for another 20 minutes, it's a
practically paranormal event if your interest later rises up out
of the ashes of cringing regret--but when Willem Dafoe finally
fully enters Shadow of the Vampire a similar spike in audience
sympathy and wakefulness occurs. Director Merhige, surely at least
a raw protege of if not an outright patsy for star John Malkovich
(who plays F. R. Murnau, German director of Nosferatu,
during the shooting of that film), follows up his amazingly long
and narcoleptic opening credit sequence with some unfortunate
retro story cards and much fey Mike-Meyers-as-Dieter German mincing
by Malkovich and Eddie Izzard and everyone's favorite alien life
form, Udo Kier. Things look bad. But when Dafoe makes his entrance,
as a vampire playing eccentric actor Max Schreck playing Nosferatu's
Count Orlock, things do become entertaining, if never really that
good. Izzard and Malkovich both become more engrossing in their
scenes with Dafoe's Schreck, and the movie does generate a little
suspense toward the end. Catherine McCormick, whose extremely
expressive breasts rightly receive their own listing in the closing
credits, is a very lively presence as Nosferatu's female
lead, Greta Schroder, the preeminent object of Schreck's bloodlust.
The movie's overall fecklessness prevents the climax--the filming
of the vampire's death scene--from
being as affecting as it could have been, but even so there are
a couple of tight tense moments. But the scariest scene by far
is earlier, when we see the horrible bare foot of Malkovich idly
gripping an iron bed frame, each eager brown toe more godforsaken
than the next. Reader, my flesh crawled! Yours will too.