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Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on December 22, 2000, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The “what if” premise behind Shadow of the Vampire—what if Max Schreck, the creepy-looking actor who played the title role in Nosferatu, really was a vampire?—is not only a terrific one on which to build a film, but a strikingly logical one as well. Not only is little known about the real Schreck, but his unusual appearance and the fact that he seems to have no significant credits other than Nosferatu convey a sense of mystery about him. Add the fact that the movie’s origins in early-1900s Germany add a sense of otherworldliness to the whole scenario, and it only makes sense that Schreck could have been a real bloodsucker wrangled into the film by its director, F.W. Murnau.
As imagined by writer Steven Katz and presented by director E. Elias Merhige, Murnau (played by John Malkovich) made an almost Faustian bargain to have Schreck (Willem Dafoe) play his vampire: He literally promised his star the neck of leading lady Greta (Catherine McCormack) once filming was finished. Of course, Schreck had to feed somehow while the production went on, and Shadow adds black comedy to its mix of historical drama and horror as he takes to snacking on lesser members of the crew, causing no end of consternation for Murnau.
Much of the buzz attending Shadow has had to do with Dafoe’s performance, and it is entirely earned. Disappearing behind a makeup job that’s every bit as remarkable (if not as praised in advance) as his acting, Dafoe makes Schreck as much a conniver as a monster; he grants the vampire a fiendish intelligence that adds dimension to the character. As Murnau, Malkovich makes a good foil, though there are times when he seems to be simply, well, being John Malkovich. Their duel of wills is backed by a solid collection of British and European faces, including McCormack, Udo Kier as Murnau’s concerned producer, Cary Elwes as a cinematographer brought in to replace one whom Schreck has nibbled on and Eddie Izzard as one of Schreck’s co-stars.
Lou Bogue’s cinematography (which often slips into black and white to evocatively recreate famous scenes from Nosferatu) and Assheton Gorton’s production design add the proper atmosphere—and, in fact, are better sustained than the story. At a certain point, the resolution becomes a foregone conclusion, and the film’s final half hour lacks the giddy charge of what has gone before. Yet there’s much to recommend Shadow of the Vampire, not least the fact that it proves, nearly 100 years after Nosferatu, that there is still fresh blood to be tapped from the vampire genre.
And not a moment too soon, either, as it begins its theatrical run December 29, just a week after the debut of Dracula 2000. As bound to formulas both classic and contemporary as Shadow is playfully inventive, the latest Dimension genre release posits that the Count has been sealed up in the basement of antiques dealer Matthew Van Helsing (Christopher Plummer), who has been carrying on his grandfather’s work and trying to figure out a way to dispatch Dracula for good. Soon, of course, the vampire (Gerard Butler) is freed when Van Helsing’s duplicitous new employee Solina (Jennifer Esposito) and her gang raid Van Helsing’s storage crypt. The chase is on as Van Helsing and his assistant Simon (Jonny Lee Miller) travel to New Orleans, where the former’s unsuspecting daughter Mary (Justine Waddell) has been having bad dreams about a handsome guy in black pursuing her. Yet despite the fact that Simon—and, presumably, Solina—know about Van Helsing’s ancestry, they seem implausibly slow to pick up on why bodies are starting to fall, only to rise again with fangs.
Most of Dracula 2000, scripted by Joel Soisson and directed by Patrick Lussier, is an unimaginative update of the Bram Stoker novel/Bela Lugosi film, with such ill-advised additions as Hong Kong-style fight scenes and a half-baked religious element (wait till you find out about Dracula’s true origin!). Little is done with the promising introduction of the age-old vampire (whose garb and coif are nonetheless pure contemporary) into the modern age; there’s a clever bit involving the inability to see him through a video camera, but while it’s funny once to see innocent heroine Mary clad in a Virgin store T-shirt, the onscreen plugs for the store soon become obnoxious. Nor is the movie ever particularly scary, in part because most of its scare tactics have been seen many times before, and one of its best and more original setpieces (Van Helsing’s initial capture of Dracula) is frittered away in a flashback.
Apparently a victim of the same kind of Miramax art-commerce bargain that led Anna Paquin into She’s All That, Trainspotting and Mansfield Park’s Miller brings energy if not conviction to the hero’s role, while Plummer adds a much-needed touch of class. Waddell and Butler fare less well, partially because their roles are underwritten and partially because neither appears up to the demands of essaying their archetypal characters. Clearly more inspired by commercial imperatives than creative ones, Dracula 2000 is another disappointment “presented” by Wes Craven; if it’s true that he’s anxious to escape the horror genre, his association with a movie like this can only help hasten his departure.
