I love a strange-off. Remember in "Illuminata", when Ben Gazzara turned in such a profoundly deranged performance that Christopher Walken wasn't the strangest guy in the movie? Walken lost the only strange-off of his career. Kind of like a watershed in film history. John Malkovich, another of the masters of strangeness, lost the strange-off in this film. He was weird, but he wasn't even close to Willem Dafoe. Dafoe was so strange that he may now be the reigning king.

The premise is fascinating. Can you remember if you have ever seen any scenes from the 1922 German expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu? You probably have. It was a rip off of Stoker's Dracula, because Stoker's estate wouldn't sell the rights to his story, and it was one of the first vampire flicks ever made. They always show clips from it in film history documentaries. I've never seen the movie, but I've seen the clips several dozen times.

For nearly a century, people have wondered how in the world the lead actor, Max Schreck, managed to look so creepy in the role. It is positively brilliant how they created the impression of Nosferatu so long ago, with the narrow mouth and the rat teeth, and the pointed ears, and long fingernails, and so forth. This guy looked really creepy.

Well, this movie posits an hypothetical answer: there was no Max Schreck. The director (F.W. Murnau, played by Malkovich) was so in love with his movie realism that he hired a real vampire to play the part of an actor playing a vampire. So how do you pay a real vampire? You let him devour the beautiful leading lady after the filming is over! Talk about an over-the-top premise.

Of course, there was a Max Shreck, and he acted for another decade or more in non-vampire films. And the real Greta Schroder worked in one more picture, noticeably still alive. But ignore all that. This movie gives you a much more interesting explanation.

Willem Dafoe must have practiced for months in front of a mirror to get this down, because he absolutely nailed Max Schreck. They cut in some real footage from the original Nosferatu, and they also show new black-and-white footage with Dafoe, and you simply can't tell when Dafoe ends and Shreck begins. Many people have said that Dafoe is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, probably in the Supporting division, and it's hard to argue with the nomination. All actors know that this kind of over-the-top role is easier to do than realism, but Dafoe's impression is so accurate that I feel it will be impossible to ignore.

The concept is basically played for very dark humor, not serious drama. The director gets upset when the vampire devours his photographer, so he confronts him and asks him - why eat somebody essential like the photographer? If he just had to eat, why not just the script girl? The vampire's answer, "I'll eat her later." When the director has to fly to Berlin to get a new photographer, he tells the vampire not to eat any more crew members, and Nosferatu replies, "I've come to the conclusion that once the filming is started, we really don't need a writer any more." You get the idea.

I know it sounds kinda dumb, but they manage to pull this off simply because (1) it's such a creative and loony premise, (2) everybody really gets into it, and (3) the film is only 90 minutes long, so they don't overstay their welcome. It's an actor's dream. Drug frenzies, flesh eating, larger-than-life leading ladies, temperamental artists. Virtually every role allows the actors their moments in the sun - er, darkness - and they all chew the scenery. It's just people having fun, and we get to watch with a quizzical look on our faces, an occasional scare, and an occasional belly laugh.