“Wild At Heart” (1990)
David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” is a lovers-on-the-run nightmare that makes “Bonnie and Clyde” look like a bedtime story, and its demented highlights render the X-rated highlights of “Natural Born Killers” as kid’s stuff. While the movie’s central, hot-blooded lovebirds, played by Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, often seem like they might be on their own planet, Dafoe’s character –a rotten-toothed gangster named Bobby Peru – is so out-there that he might as well occupy his own solar system. Everything about Bobby Peru, from his wardrobe to his serial killer’s smile to the way he smokes a cigarette, is such a choice that it goes beyond “movie acting” and into the realm of pure performance art. To give the most bizarre performance in a Lynch movie that stars Nic Cage, of all people, is no small achievement, and thanks to Dafoe’s contributions, Bobby Peru remains one of the most memorably repulsive slimeballs ever to grace a movie screen.
“Light Sleeper” (1992)
Paul Schrader and Abel Ferrara are Dafoe’s cinematic brothers, and while the world and plot of “Light Sleeper” suggest another scathing urban morality play in the vein of “Bad Lieutenant,” the style of this unusually thoughtful crime film is 100% uncut Schrader. Dafoe’s character here, John LeTour, is a high-class drug courier who delivers narcotics throughout the five boroughs of New York City. He’s a shrewd hustler with a remorseless streak, and he’s not afraid to knock some sense into a jonesing addict when he’s behind on a payment. John is also plagued by memories of a toxic relationship and struggles with his own substance dependency, placing him firmly within the pantheon of troubled Schrader antiheroes. “Light Sleeper” is also distinctive for being Dafoe’s first collaboration with the legendary writer/director – in other words, it planted the seed that would eventually grow into one of the more fruitful cinematic bromances of our time.
“Shadow Of The Vampire” (2000)
At this point, there have been a few iterations of “Nosferatu”: not only F.W. Murnau’s original, silent German Expressionist masterpiece, but also Werner Herzog’s brilliant “Nosferatu The Vampyre,” and Robert Eggers’ long-percolating remake that may or may not feature Robert Pattinson as the iconic bloodsucker. “Shadow of the Vampire,” a Nicolas Cage-co-produced oddity that purports to depict the production of the 1922 “Nosferatu,” sees Dafoe stealing the show as the original film’s Count Orlok, a.k.a. legendary German actor Max Schrek. Dafoe does marvelous things with his face in this film (and Dafoe’s face, let’s be honest, is one of his most powerful tools as a performer). There is an awe-inspiring degree of formal control in this performance, which constantly keeps the viewers in the dark about the details of Schrek’s own personal demons.
“Auto Focus” (2002)
Paul Schrader’s fearless psychodrama “Auto Focus,” tells the sordid story of sex-addicted T.V. actor Bob Crane, whose legendary appetite for smut was definitively quelled when he was found, bludgeoned to death in an Arizona apartment complex. As Crane, Greg Kinnear is a revelation; the actor’s white-bread affability only serves to underline what a hollow shell of a man the “Hogan’s Heroes” star became as he succumbed to his illicit vices. As John Henry Carpenter, Crane’s pal in pornographic exploits, Dafoe is similarly ingratiating and far more terrifying. There’s no limit to Carpenter’s perversions, and Dafoe beautifully leans into the character’s ugly possessive streak, which becomes more foreboding as the film builds to its horrifically inevitable conclusion. “Auto Focus” is another one of Schrader’s parables about obsessive men at war with their basest instincts. To this day, it remains one of his finest collaborations with Dafoe.
“Spider-Man” (2002)
Sam Raimi understood that a “Spider-Man” movie is only as good as its primary villain. While the “Evil Dead” director’s 2002 origin story remains unique today for how relatively un-action-packed it is, the director clearly knew that without a memorable bad guy to anchor his story, his “Spider-Man” would be just another garden-variety blockbuster. Enter Willem Dafoe, who is so unusually magnetic as Harry Osborn, i.e., the Green Goblin, that he elevates Raimi’s film to a new level of psychological darkness that transcends the pop theatrics we tend to see in these sorts of movies. Like many franchise supervillains, Osborn is a megalomaniacal genius who eventually becomes so drunk with power that he loses his soul. Dafoe has always had an impressive ability to remain grounded in big Hollywood, and in “Spider-Man,” the actor injects a mega-sized tentpole thrill ride with his wicked trademark energy.
