Vampire’s Kiss features one of Nicolas Cage’s best, most out-of-control performances
“You’re a very bright girl. That’s why I know today, by God, is the day you’re going to find that Heatherton contract.” —Nicolas Cage, Vampire’s Kiss
A performance like Nicolas Cage’s gonzo turn in the brilliant 1989 black comedy Vampire’s Kiss—and this is true of many Nicolas Cage performances—raises the question of what good acting really means. Take accents, for example. As Peter Loew, a womanizing New York literary agent, Cage isn’t identified as British. But some kind of accent comes out of his mouth anyway, flickering in and out like a fluorescent bulb, and nearly impossible to pin down. The most likely explanation is that Cage imagined Peter as a fop of the first order, the type of ivory-tower Manhattanite whose exalted sense of privilege naturally leads to a hilariously affected manner of speech. But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Peter is British, and Cage utterly failed in sticking the accent. Does that mean his performance in Vampire’s Kiss somehow isn’t the best of his career?
Of course it doesn’t. Which also suggests, say, Keanu Reeves’ deplorable accent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula isn’t the reason his performance is terrible; his performance is terrible because he’s hamstrung by the accent, and his evident struggle with it makes him stilted and awkward. (Contrast that with Peter Dinklage on Game Of Thrones, frequently decried for his wavering accent, and yet the runaway star of that show.) What’s important about Peter Loew in Vampire’s Kiss is that he be unhinged, an American yuppie turned American psycho whose fear and contempt for women manifests in sadism, madness, and finally, full-on vampirism. For Cage, this means a steady amplification of intensity, from the charming drunk on his nightly conquest to the obsessive tormenter of an office underling to the lunatic who greets the morning in a blood-spattered dress-shirt, shrieking at the sun and begging passersby to stake him in the heart with the sharp end of a broken wooden plank. To put it in Spinal Tap terms, this film requires him to start at about eight and go all the way up to 11—which is something Cage is fully capable of pulling off. He goes far out on a limb in Vampire’s Kiss, and the movie goes right out there with him.
The screenplay for Vampire’s Kiss was written by Joseph Minion, whose other major credit is Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, a script he famously wrote as a student at Columbia University. The two films are natural companions: dark, mostly nocturnal New York comedies in which a man’s feelings of estrangement from the opposite sex drive him to the brink. They also share a wonderful absurdist streak that Vampire’s Kiss presses even more audaciously than After Hours, which cut from the script a scene in which Griffin Dunne’s character was supposed to hide from an angry mob by crawling into an available womb. By contrast, there’s nothing stopping Peter Loew from picking up a set of cheap vampire fangs from a costume shop and taking a chunk out of a pretty club-goer’s neck. Minion and director Robert Bierman follow his premise through to the end, when Peter’s strange transformation into a blood-sucking creature of the night is complete. Needless to say, audiences in 1989 largely declined to take this journey with them.
Bierman isn’t a director of Scorsese’s caliber—Bierman’s career shifted permanently to British television after this movie flopped—but he gives Vampire’s Kiss the ominous noir quality it requires. Like After Hours, it takes place in an abstracted New York, one that’s vaguely hostile and conspicuously underpopulated, where the inexplicable happens and no one bats an eye. Peter feels comfortable prowling this scene, just as any skirt-chasing executive with no commitments might, but then he takes his girlfriend (Kasi Lemmons) back to his apartment one night and a bat intervenes in their coupling. The bat never visibly bites Peter, but the incident triggers a change in him: He confesses to his therapist (Elizabeth Ashley) that he was “turned on” by the creature, and soon after, he encounters a mysterious seductress named Rachel (Jennifer Beals) who pins him down and sinks her fangs into him. Rachel doesn’t exist—viewers see him cut his neck shaving, in the place where the marks would be—but he believes he’s turning into a vampire, and modifies his behavior accordingly.