Shadow of The Vampire

This is an unfinished piece. I publish it because I am sick of deleting unfinished pieces.

Here it is:

There's an amusing production available, for a limited time only (as you'd expect from a hierarchical, monopolistic, statist organisation with delusions of commercial competitiveness making a pretence of social inclusion and democratic accountability), at BBC iPlayer.

It's a very camp production, or at least it seems so to me, although you'd have to be of a certain age, upbringing and education to see that, with some very theatrical performances, perhaps 'inspired' by the overly theatrical performances of the actors and actress in 1920s horror films; it's enjoyable none the less. Willem Dafoe plays Max Schrek, the actor who played Count Orlock in the original Nos Feratu. The theme of the plot is that the director FW Murnau has discoverd the vampire Orlock in a remote rural hidey hole and done a deal with him to make the film. The deal being that he gets to keep the actress. Willem Dafoe is unrecognisable as Shrek and it's a valid criticism of the film that he looks too robustly healthy; in the original film, Orlock looks sickly and diseased and Shreck should too. The curse of the vampire is not only that he is condemned to feed on human blood, and so steal the souls of others and condemn them in turn to an eternal living hell as vampires but that in feeding the vampire feeds on the diseases of others and suffers from those diseases in turn, each disease building on the those he has ingested before, suffering and torment building with each meal, in the knowledge that as diseased and tormented as he might become he can never find the release of death.

It's a pity that the make up did not suggest that.

Crap, as I'm sure you'll agree. It's one saving grace is that I've published it.