Ghouls on Film

What if Hamlet and the classics it inspired - “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” – had been written about two vampires? Well, for one thing, teens everywhere would be a lot more excited to read Shakespeare.

Jordan Galland’s film “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead” is another in the growing genre of creepified classics. That is, romantic fiction that’s been overrun by the undead and almost instantly resurrected as a screenplay. But, as entertaining as “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Pride and Predator” are, they can’t touch the absurdity of Galland’s movie.

Taking a creative cue from the plays that came before it, Galland creates a play within a film. The story goes something like this: A young and unemployed lothario, Julian Marsh, takes a job directing an off Broadway play called “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead,” written by the dramatic and pale dramatist Theo Horace (John Ventimiglia). Horace sounds a lot like someone else in this story, doesn’t it? Catching on yet? Anyway, Julian hires his best friend and ex-girlfriend to play the parts of Hamlet and Ophelia, respectively.

Now comes the gore. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead” (The Play) tells the story of Horatio who is Hamlet’s best friend and also happens to be 2000-year-old vampire living in Rome. He eventually turns Hamlet, along with the bumbling Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, but is unsuccessful in making Ophelia one of his minions. Ophelia prefers to drown herself.

Hamlet vows revenge, but neither bloodsucker can kill the other and they end up battling for centuries until, eventually, one of them moves to New York. The Holy Grail is thrown into the story too. Just to mix things up. In his down time Horatio pays to have three plays written. You may have read some of these in high school English. The final was penned by Horatio himself under the pseudonym Theo Horace.

As it often does, art and life collide (this time ala “Shadow of the Vampire”) and the actors must face some serious demands on their acting and, even more terrifying, the possibility that their production might, quite literally, suck. The film comments on the bloodthirsty nature of fame, the suckiness of exes and the constant modernization of the classics. But mostly it’s really fun and gooey and silly and bloody. At least that’s what I get from the trailer and Undead News. I’ve managed to miss it at film festivals everywhere, but it’s rumored to be getting a theatrical run in April 2010.

Watch the trailer below and look out for some famous faces and a quick cameo. Pictures are here.

Now if someone will just write “The House of the Undead,” set it in a prison camp filled with peasant mutations who have been living in the swamps of St. Petersburg and who break out, led by their decaying and ghoulish master, Aleksandr Petrifyovich.