Vampire’s Kiss (1988): The Case of the Missing File [Mike’s Review]
Today on Cage Club, I vant to suck your blood ! Here we are at “Vampire’s Kiss”, the most eccentric Nic Cage movie yet. I had never seen this movie in it’s entirety before but I am pretty familiar that it’s considered to be the reason Cage isn’t just real world famous but internet famous as well. I can understand how Cage’s performance in this movie accounts for most of his reputation as someone who goes over the top, even when you don’t take his performance out of the context of the film. For a full rundown of how the internet reacted when they discovered this performance see Joey’s awesome post this week for more. This movie is bonkers and doesn’t entirely come together but I love it because they are trying something different and Cage is allowed free reign to express himself. It’s almost like they filmed his acting exercises or something. Everyone is really going for it and the director is smart enough to let Cage explore his entire range knowing the highs and lows of his performance would parallel the insanity experienced by the main character. What goes on in the head of a lonely rich executive who’s bored out of his mind? How does a misogynist deal with his own feelings of worthlessness and shame? Why would someone berate their poor secretary to no end? This movie explores these questions and more.
Nic Cage plays Peter Loew, Head of Foreign Distribution at some successful publishing house. He’s chauvinistic and every night he picks up a different woman which he then wishes would leave in the morning. One night, Peter picks up the wrong woman ’cause after they start getting hot and heavy she brandishes her fangs and chomps down on Peter’s neck, infecting him with the Vampire Virus. Or does it? It’s very suspect how there’s no set up whatsoever here, it’s just WHAM, Vampire! Peter spends the rest of the film totally sure that he’s transforming into one of the undead. He has drastic mood swings, overreacts to the littlest problems and is prone to violent behavior. He wears sunglasses in the daytime, turns his apartment into an art deco nest and lashes out at Alva, his secretary who’s looking for an elusive file. Peter keeps getting visits from Rachel, the Vamp Girl who has him under her spell & that’s all in his head. He falls farther into delusion after sexually assaulting Alva and killing a woman in the dance club. I’m not sure what’s real anymore to be honest cause at this point he’s roaming the streets of New York talking to himself and looking like a homeless person. When he returns to the nest he’s visited by Alva’s brother and the sweet kiss of death as retribution of assaulting her earlier. He is finally released from the grip of Vampire madness and we are finally released from this movie.
What I like about this flick is how there is a definitive answer to what is real and not, but a lot is still up for interpretation. Peter is the ultimate unreliable narrator. He isn’t really being visited by a Vampire at night, he’s really just slowly losing his mind. The Vampire is a dominatrix that treats Peter like a dog who comes and goes as she pleases, even threatening Peter not to see anyone else. These sound like the actions of many abusive men that keep women under their control in much the same way, insulting and beating someone into emotional submission. It’s possible the Vampire personifies a reflection of Peter’s self image which is ironic because according to lore Vamps don’t have reflections in mirrors. Am I giving this movie too much credit? I don’t think so, I just think it’s a little ahead of it’s time and couldn’t enunciate everything it meant. I can relate to that. Some movies that come to mind which treat these themes a little better are American Psycho and Fight Club. They also explore similar ideas such as how men with deep rooted female problems cause them to go nuts and indulge in extremely violent fantasies.
Cage is amazing in this movie. His performance is off the charts, but I felt it was pretty much called for and worked in regards to the type of character he was playing. After all this guy WAS going crazy. It would not have been very interesting to just watch some one note performance this whole time or a melancholy delivery. Cage is very expressive and the character is crying for attention the whole movie desperately wanting to be noticed. You also can’t deny the physical gambit that Cage puts himself through. I hear people talk about Jim Carrey being rubbery with his face or very expressive with his body but he’s got nothing on Nic Cage in this movie. Cage even eats a live cockroach and fires off two blanks in his mouth for the sake of his art, talk about commitment.
The final thing I was considering while watching Vampire’s Kiss is how it fit into the mythology that’s been established over the years regarding Vampires. While Peter never fully transforms into a creature of the night he does resemble another character from the Dracula story and that is the madman servant of Dracula, Renfield. In Bram Stokers novel, Renfield is an inmate at the lunatic asylum and suffers from delusions which compel him to eat bugs and birds in the hope of obtaining their life-force for himself. His character strikes some type of deal with Dracula to do his bidding in exchange for more insects and a front row seat for the end of the world. In Vampire’s Kiss the character Peter is very similar to Renfield. Believing he is under the control of a Vampire, he eats a cockroach and even a bird just like the guy in the original novel. Peter also goes insane due to his exposure to the Vampire’s hypnotic gaze but only visits a shrink that never has the chance to fully commit him. It’s nice to recognize the elements from the original source material hidden or disguised in this modern telling regardless of weather the writer had any intention of it.
That will wrap it up for Vampire’s Kiss. Next week he hitch a ride via cameo appearance in the movie “Never On Tuesday”. I have zero knowledge of this movie and never even knew it existed until we stared Cage Club. I am pretty sure it is Nic Cage’s smallest role and I also believe we are the only Nic Cage Podcast that is watching and reviewing this film. So join us next time, unless you were transformed into a Vampire causing you to go nuts.
Mike
@the_mikestir
