Spooky Movies: Shadow of the Vampire

What if Max Schreck, who played the vampire Count Orlock in the iconic silent 1922 film Nosferatu, had been a real vampire? Shadow of the Vampire is a fictionalized account of the making of Nosferatu. Director F. W. Murnau, played by a scenery-chewing John Malkovich, takes his cast to Czechoslovakia and introduces them to a strange character actor called Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), who will be playing Count Orlock, and who, he warns them, will remain in character at all times. What Murnau doesn’t tell them is that he’s so determined to make the most authentic vampire film ever that he’s hired a real vampire and has promised him the leading lady as a reward. But Schreck won’t be controlled and can’t keep his teeth out of the cast and crew, who start dropping like flies as an obsessive, laudanum-addicted Murnau pushes on relentlessly to complete his film.

Dafoe manages to elicit both sympathy and horror as Schreck. When he’s asked what he thinks of the novel Dracula, Schreck speaks of how lonely the immortal count must have been, and how he must have forgotten how to do everyday things. It’s an incredible scene, and it garnered Dafoe an Oscar nod. You’ll probably get more out of Shadow if you’ve seen Nosferatu, so I recommend them as a double feature. But even if you haven’t seen the original, Shadow is definitely worth a look.