Grade: B+

Verdict: A stunningly original look inside the lens at silent movie-making, featuring a creepy, campy performance with bite by Dafoe.

Details: Starring Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich. Rated R for blood and gore, drug use and nudity. One hour, 29 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: The movies are an obsessive business, full of filmmakers willing to go to extremes for the sake of their art. One such driven visionary is post-World War I German director F.W. Murnau, who fanatically pursued the first silent version of what would become an industry staple -- the vampire movie.

Just how fanatical he was has never been chronicled until now, until Shadow of the Vampire, an ingenious, diabolical, probably libelous, funhouse of a movie, a fictional peek at the making of the 1922 film classic, Nosferatu. With an audacious screenplay by Steven Katz and a beautifully realized travel back in time by director E. Elias Merhige, this is a creepy and campy, newly minted film history artifact that is stunningly original, even if it is about the undead.

Wait, don't turn the page. In the same way that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the martial arts movie for those who don't like martial arts movies, Shadow of the Vampire will challenge all of your preconceived notions about vampire flicks. Visually striking, superbly acted and laced with a self-mocking humor as pungent as a Bloody Mary, it both fulfills and refutes the genre.

As film fans may already know, Murnau (played by John Malkovich with a tasty foppish menace) tried to bring the novel Dracula to the screen, but was denied the rights by Bram Stoker's widow.

Realizing they were unnecessary, he proceeded with his plans, but called his movie Nosferatu and dubbed his main character Count Orlock. The inspired leap that Shadow of the Vampire makes is to suppose that Murnau, having difficulty casting the role, finds an actual vampire and negotiates working conditions with him to bring unparalleled verisimilitude to the project.

Murnau merely explains to his company that chalky-faced, pointy-eared Max Schreck (a feral Willem Dafoe), whose bony fingers sport long tentacle-like nails, is a Method acting devotee of Stanislavsky's who never appears out of makeup. He will always remain in character and his scenes will all be filmed at night. To appease Schreck, Murnau includes vials of blood and small furry creatures on the catering cart, promising that he can do away with whiny female star Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormick) however he likes, once her scenes are completed.

Malkovich defines the director-as-God syndrome, keeping everyone in the dark about the movie's schedule and locales, narrating the film and orchestrating his performers' emotions as the camera rolls. He builds suspense and apprehension -- among his actors and the audience -- leading up to Schreck's first emergence from his cave.

Murnau has it all figured out, assuming that Schreck abides by their bargain, but the Yoda-esque vampire proves unable, or unwilling, to curb his appetite.

Like all great celluloid monsters, there is a touching side to the misunderstood, justifiably feared Schreck, movingly portrayed by Dafoe in a wonderfully edgy performance.

Cinematographer Lou Bogue impresses with his shifts from color to black-and-white, as the movie shifts from the Nosferatu set to the world inside the film. He and Merhige duplicate the grainy, crude look of the silent era and match it to shots from the actual 1922 classic.

Ultimately, though, like any important history-based film, Shadow of the Vampire is about today. It ponders whether the crazed, often drugged Murnau is much different from contemporary filmmakers, whether our carnivorous need for entertainment has evolved over the years. It is one of the more telling movies about making movies, even if its facts are largely preposterous.

— Hap Erstein, Cox News Service