Nicolas Cage plays a guy so crazy, so left field, so wilfully nutso, that if it weren’t for his thick head of lustrous hair I could easily be convinced that this was a modern day documentary made about his everyday life.
And amazingly enough given that this film is now over 25 years old, this film can quite accurately be identified as a key reason behind why Cage is such a polarising figure today. I mean it’s all here, the random yelling, the over the top gestures, the hysterics and crazy eyes. After this eye catching role in what is in reality an otherwise totally forgettable film, could anyone really blame Cage for feeling impelled to ramp up the intensity to eventually bizarre lengths?
Ok so maybe pulling a knife on the missus and naming the kid after Superman weren’t easy to forgive, but yelling a lot and going googly-eyed while someone pays you millions seems perfectly reasonable to me. Other people do it every day for free…
In Vampire’s Kiss Cage plays an everyday suit wearing business douche named Peter Loew, a man who goes to work and visits his psychiatrist (it seems almost daily)’ by day, and by night he heads out to pick up chicks.
But after being bitten by a bat in his own apartment one night, Peter starts to wonder if he might now be a vampire. This only intensifies when he later picks up a hot woman named Rachel (Jennifer Beals) who sucks on his blood…
Or is it all the imagination of a lunatic?
Loew becomes increasingly obsessed with his condition and as the film progresses his behaviour gets progressively more… well Nicolas Cage-y, both in overall douchiness and crazality.
And it’s not like he makes a huge attempt to hide the changes at work either, he wears sunglasses indoors and takes special and perverse delight in torturing his own timid hard working secretary Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso), who is without doubt the only sympathetic character in the entire film.
Perhaps realising that being noticed takes extra effort, Cage embraces what will later become his public motto ‘be all the crazy you can be’, even wolfing down a live cockroach at one point.
The film has definite parallels with American Psycho, only without much of the violence, the nuance (at least early) and my interest.
I guess in 1987 this film and Cage’s performance were probably unique, it’s just that now that Cage and several others have done this shtick a million times since it just isn’t that noteworthy and extreme.
Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. Gee that Nicolas Cage sure is wacky isn’t he? I sure could have included a bunch of photos from the film highlighting just that fact. But that doesn’t make him or this film that interesting.
