Shadow of the Vampire.

* Directed by E. Elias Merhige * Starring Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich, Eddie Izzard, Catherine McCormack * Released by Lions Gate Films

There is no greater horror than the making of a horror movie. The collected fiendishness of Frankenstein, Dracula, Freddy, Chucky, the Mummy, Norman Bates's mommy, and Rosemary's baby cannot hold a candle to the terror wrought by an insecure actor, a monomaniacal director, or a stalking camera. That was the news The Blair Witch Project concealed up its threadbare sleeve, and that is the news that Shadow of the Vampire is presently recycling in much more sumptuous clothing.

Shadow of the Vampire, a ghoulish fictional speculation on the production of German auteur F.W. Mumau's classic silent Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror, owes as much to Ed Wood and Gods and Monsters in its self-referential obsession with the demons that plague the makers of scary movies. Where the bogeymen in those films were economical and psychological, respectively, the demon in E. Elias Merhige's Shadow turns out to be, quite literally, a demon.

The film barely alludes to Mumau's bisexuality (he was rumored to have been performing fellatio on a teenager when he died at 42 in an auto crash). John Malkovich plays him as an impulsive, explosive autocrat who controls his cast and crew by keeping them in the dark about their assignments until filming. A stickler for authenticity, he finds his bloodsucking Count Orlock in a creepy, bucktoothed diva of an actor named Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe), who never appears out of costume. The company thinks he's the ultimate Method actor, but he's really a moonlighting vampire to whom Mumau has contracted the neck of his leading lady (Catherine McCormack) in exchange for his acting services.

It's a puerile premise, made even sillier by highfalutin dialogue (by screenwriter Steven Katz) and somnolent pacing that makes us wonder at times if they are pulling our leg or embalming a classic silent picture in the process of trying to emulate it. Merhige does cast a disquieting "anything can happen and does" mood over his film. At the same time, he keeps the joke floating through the bravura hamming of Dafoe, who snarls and flashes his teeth like Rudolph Giuliani doing Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor.

The best thing going, however, is transvestite comic Eddie Izzard. As Nosferatu's leading man, Gustav von Wangenheim, Izzard puts on hilarious faces as Murnau cajoles a performance out of him with the camera rolling. If only Shadow of the Vampire were always as fun for the audience as it appears to have been for the smarty-pants clowns who made it.

Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday.