Vampire’s Kiss

(Robert Bierman, 1988)

What a film with which to kick start The Cage Rage! Vampire’s Kiss sees Cage take on the role of a womanising publishing executive, who during the throes of passion with a mysterious woman is bitten on neck. Cage believes he’s becoming a vampire. Is that the case or is he just going batty?

age gives an outrageous performance and I recognised several moments from the Nicolas Cage Losing his Shit video on YouTube. An excellent sign.

I liked the intro montage, which managed to make New York look suitably gothic. The film reminded me in a lot of ways of American Psycho (rich New Yorker sleeps around, goes a bit mad, questions his reality). I also liked the awkward black humour in the film and Cage’s scenes with his psychiatrist are consistently amusing.

I was somewhat troubled by the film’s slightly offhand attitude to women. Cage’s tormenting of his assistant Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) pushes the boundaries of taste a little too closely. Alonso gives Cage as good as she gets though, more or less, which is good to see.

It would have been interesting to see this film in ’88 (the year of my birth, incidentally), before the recent Twilight-inspired re-proliferation of the vampire genre. Watching it now, Vampire’s Kiss felt like an original and refreshing take on the mythological monster. One can only imagine how exciting watching this vampire movie must have been before we were seeing the current oversaturation of bloodsuckers.