Possibly cool Vampire flick, BURNED TO LIGHT starring Malkovich and Dafoe!!!

Last year the LIONS GATE brought us a film that really made folks like me squeel with the joy of excellent filmmaking... GODS & MONSTERS. That film... Directed by Bill Condon and starring a top notch inexpensive cast provided me with one of my top films of 1998.

So it was with a certain amount of interest that I turned my eyes towards their latest production a film called BURNED TO LIGHT (formerly known as SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE). It’s a small $8 million dollar production being shot in Luxembourg and ya know... To most people’s eyes this film would have gone unnoticed until the film had finished shooting, but I got curious when I found out that the plotline caused my pulse to race with interest.

First off, the film is directed by E Elias Merhige, a director I’m not familiar with. And it’s produced by... Nicholas Cage (yeah, that one)

The basic plot of the film is set around shooting the first vampire film, Nosferatu. Apparently during this the cast and crew begin to suspect that Murnau (played by John Malkovich) has cast a real vampire as Nosferatu (played by Willem Dafoe) in his obsession for detail. They began absolutely believing this when people begin to die on the set. Apparently whole scenes from the original Nosferatu in addition to recreated scenes starring the “actors” are intercut with the narrative to provide a juxtaposition to the fillmmakers' experience.

The set up for the introduction of Max Schreck (if that name is familiar to some of you, it’s because Tim Burton and crew paid homage to the name by having Christopher Walken play a character of the same name in BATMAN RETURNS) is mysterious as Gustav (a lawyer played by cult fave Eddie Izzard) informs the crew that their ‘star’ is an obscure character actor that studied under the tutelege of Stanislavsky and has been living in Czechoslovakia to study to become a vampire. In addition, Max Schreck will be seen already in make-up and only at night to perform his role.

Is Max Schreck really a vampire? I don’t friggin care. All I know is with Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck and Malkovich as Murnau... You couldn’t beat me away from the theater with a wrecking ball.

Personally I’m hoping for a great film... but one never knows about the smaller films. Sometimes they are gems... sometimes they are merely forgettable. But this is one project that I definitely want to hear everything I can about. What have you heard?