You expect strong drama and highly watchable weirdness from Werner Herzog. But I wasn’t prepared for the lizard love in “Bad Lieutentant: Port of Call – New Orleans” (hereafter, just “Bad Lt.”).

In this high-strung, over-wrought tale of corruption and dissolution, there are two or three moments when, apropos of nothing, Herzog suddenly inserts large iguanas into the scene. Then he puts his camera right in the lizards’ faces – and leaves it there.

What does it mean? A shout-out to the lizard-brain primal instinct within us all? An homage to Jim Morrison of the Doors, self-styled Lizard King? A bid to get an otherwise wildly inappropriate selection shown on Animal Planet when it goes to cable?

Who knows? As it is, “Bad Lt.” is an overheated melodrama that shares a title and a central idea with Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film of the same name (a film Herzog claims never to have seen). And were it not for an over-the-top performance by Nicolas Cage, who seems truly to have lost his way as an actor, “Bad Lt.” might actually be something of a sleeper – a journey to the dark side by a good man in the grip of bad craziness.

Cage overplays Lt. Terence McDonagh, a police detective in New Orleans who hurt his back rescuing a prisoner from a rapidly flooding jail during Hurricane Katrina. Though he’s in constant pain and walks like Quasimodo, he refused to take a disability retirement. Instead, he’s risen to become a top detective, managing his pain with both prescription pharmaceuticals and street drugs he steals from the police evidence room.

When a family of African immigrants – including several children – is murdered execution-style in a poor part of town, McDonagh jumps into the case. But his investigation is muddied by his outlandish personal life. Aside from his drug habit, he’s also got a huge gambling jones (and an angry bookie looking to collect past losses). He also has a high-priced callgirl (Eva Mendes) for a girlfriend.

Before it’s over, he’s been at the wrong end of a dispute between his girlfriend and the nephew of a local crime boss. And he’ll get into bed, figuratively, with the vicious local drug lord, Big Fate (Exzibit), who McDonagh suspects of murdering the immigrant family.

As noted, with the exception of his reptile fixation, Herzog pitches this all with the right blend of intensity and passion, with occasional comic relief. But every scene is undercut by Cage’s overacting. He acts, at times, as though his head is about to explode. And not the character’s head – it’s Cage himself who seems in danger of self-immolation.

Despite the New Orleans setting, Herzog isn’t interested in Katrina or its aftermath. The setting is there mostly for its exotic topicality. Otherwise, the port of call could just as easily have been Newark.

So how can a critic recommend a movie that seems artistically worthy in virtually every way – except for the central performance around which the entire film is built? I guess I’ve answered my own question there.

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