Vampire’s Kiss (1989)
Written by Joseph Minion
Directed by Robert Bierman
The trailer for Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu was released online a few days ago and it looks to be quite the descent into classic Gothic horror. Vampires have been a part of cinema for over a century and have appeared in all forms. The recent Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person purports to take a modern satirical look at the monster, while another recent release, Abigail, places the vampire in an action-comedy horror scenario. I don’t think any of these takes on the vampire could ever match the frenzy and unhinged energy Nicolas Cage brings to the monster in Vampire’s Kiss. I was shocked in a way no film has made me in a long time watching the actor’s choices.
Peter Loew (Cage) is a greedy, narcissistic literary agent with a very active nightlife. He drinks, snorts cocaine, and engages in numerous one-night stands. Peter is also under the care of a psychiatrist (Elizabeth Ashley), who is unnerved by his strange behavior. A brief encounter with a bat that slips into his apartment sticks with Peter and leads to him meeting Rachel (Jennifer Beals), a mysterious woman. She comes back to his place, exposing her fangs, and feeds on the man. The following day, he speaks and serves coffee to an empty bed. From there, his behavior worsens, and he becomes convinced that Rachel has turned him into a vampire. But is there even a vampire at all? Peter’s sanity also comes into question as he decides to terrorize Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso), one of his poor employees.
Vampire’s Kiss began as an idea that emerged from screenwriter Joseph Minion’s depression. He was on vacation with his then-girlfriend and realized they were in a deeply toxic relationship. Rachel is Minion’s representation of that partner, but I don’t think Minion lets himself off easy with the character of Peter. What makes it even stranger is that this girlfriend worked on Vampire’s Kiss as a producer and was still dating Minion. She stated that it was “horrifying” to realize what the script was about, and it’s no surprise they broke up after the film was made. Minion also wrote the screenplay for Scorsese’s After Hours and continued his darkly comic portrayal of Manhattan with this film.
Where to start with Cage’s performance? The voice is good. The actor chooses to put an emphasis on certain parts of his sentence or on a word. There is no rhythm or logic for that rhythm, at least within the range of standard human logic. Cage pushes one word or part of a phrase over others in a seemingly random manner, and it becomes a critical feature that highlights how profoundly he loses his mind throughout the film. These scenes have been the most meme-ified, and it makes sense. They are the funniest part of the picture.
That performance sits counter to the intended purpose of the screenplay. From what Minion has said about the story, I never understood that the protagonist was meant to be played so wildly. After Hours was definitely surreal and dark in its comedy, but it wasn’t the central character who was the strangest figure. We sympathize with Paul in that film as he becomes stuck in Kiki’s neighborhood and deals with a procession of crackpots and liars. Throughout most of Vampire’s Kiss, we see things from Peter’s perspective, and it’s very disorienting and fragmented. In some ways, Cage’s performance undercuts the tragedy of what happens to Alva and leaves me with mixed feelings. We’re never supposed to sympathize with him, but we are meant to feel sorry for poor Alva.
The film most closely connected with this would be American Psycho. Both movies center on the depravity of a white-collar corporate world yuppie who sees women as disposable things. A big part of the story is whether or not the things they believe about themselves are, in fact, true. Is Patrick Bateman actually murdering these women, or are they just twisted fantasies playing out in his head? Is Peter Loew really a vampire or just a mentally unwell person? A reading of Vampire’s Kiss through a lens of feminism and communism illuminates a whole host of questions about workplace hierarchies, particularly how male bosses are allowed to exploit & abuse female subordinates, and within corporate culture, that’s “normal.”
This is where the film runs into its big problems. Cage’s performance is over the top, yet the film attempts to create a more nuanced story. It’s certainly an entertaining watch, but my attention started to wan after an hour of the same shenanigans without much development. I think Cage’s Wicker Man works better because it’s not trying to say anything profound. Vampire’s Kiss attempts clever things that don’t quite come together. The conclusion feels like a reinterpretation of a classic vampire movie finale, which I appreciated. The one thing you can’t say is that Cage isn’t memorable in this.
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