Let’s get something straight right off the bat (so to speak). Max Schreck was not a vampire. Yet his performance as Count Orlok was so eerily effective that one could almost be forgiven for thinking so. It is this myth that Shadow of the Vampire deliciously explores. Part horror, part comedy, part drama, part fantasy, the one genre that the film least belongs to is biopic. Nevertheless, we couldn’t resist including it in this collection of movies about movies.

After a painfully long credit sequence, the movie opens with F. W. Murnau completing the last studio shot for Nosferatu. Delighted to finally be free of such artifice, he embarks with cast and crew to Czechoslovakia for location shooting. Waiting for them is the mysterious Max Schreck, a ‘method actor’ who shares Murnau’s quest for realism.

Willem Dafoe is great fun as Max Schreck. The rest of the cast, notably John Malkovich as the equally maniacal F.W. Murnau, plays it straight, letting the comical conceit of the story provide the laughs. At just over 90 minutes, Shadow of the Vampire is a relatively short film, yet it does lag towards the end as subplots involving drug use are added but not fully explored. Thankfully the film rouses for the last scene, providing a horrifying finale to a film that contains few, if any, genuine scares.

Though unavoidably uneven in tone, Shadow of the Vampire is almost successful in straddling so many genres. Perhaps the last words spoken by Murnau onscreen give voice to every director’s common lament - “I think we have it”.