Vampire's Kiss (1989)

Am I getting THROUGH TO YOU, ALMA!

Everyone should watch this. Nic Cage's last moment of onscreen insane greatness.

Agreed, totally zany, off-the-wall performance. His method commitment --in one scene, eating a live cockroach!-- is legend. It's what made him such a cult hero before the Bruckheimer daze.

This will likely go down as the only movie I've ever seen where a character recites the entire ABC's. If there's a movie where Nic Cage is crazier than this, I need to know about it immediately.

It's not very good. Indifferently shot, with a confusing plot and somewhat pedestrian direction - there are around 20 shots of NYC skyline and wide city shots. The only reason to see this is for Nicolas Cage. Who appears as a hollow, executive yuppie who thinks he's turning into a vampire. And he speaks with what I'll refer to as an 'upper-crust British accent' for no reason. It's a terrible and great performance. He abuses an underling in his job at a literary agency, and seems to parody Max Schreck while doing so. There's also no obvious point to the movie - the writing is confused in tone and what the film is about. You can draw conclusions about the well-to-do New Yorker as blood-sucker but ah, no interpretation of this movie will take you very far.

Nicolas Cage fans need to see this though.

Always seemed like some Eastern European accent. I dunno. Though I swear I read somewhere that Nic Cage was purposely going for a Transylvania accent mixed with some other accent so you'd never truly know where he was from.

Didn't the accent slowly creep in, as if Cage's affected asshole thought that's how a vampire should talk?

"Boohoo! BOOHOO!!!"

This movie is pure gold. One of my favorite comedies ever. One of my favorite 80's movies in general really (and by 80's movies I don't just mean movies made in the 80's, I specifically mean movies that blatantly wear their 80's-ness on their sleeve). It's probably still the single weirdest movie and weirdest performance we've ever gotten out of Cage... and considering Cage's career in general, that's really, really saying a lot. Love the ending especially, and the whole arc of the movie in general.

Y'know how in a lot of 70's and 80's (and probably even some 90's) movies that take place in or that feature New York in any way, they'll often have a bit where the main characters are briefly (or maybe not so briefly) hassled by, or at least casually pass by some babbling street crazy/weirdo? It's almost always one of those offhand throwaway things that's done for that whole "Oh New York, look how crazy it is!" effect? I feel like Vampire's Kiss is a movie that's all about taking one of those types of random stock background characters, and making an entire movie/character study about him and how he got to be that way.

That scene near the end where Peter is walking through the city streets holding that giant plank of wood, all covered in blood and looking like a disheveled mess, babbling incoherently to his imaginary date about how he used to be a vampire... I feel like that'd be the point where the main characters in some other random "normal" movie (probably a John Hughes-ish comedy of some kind centering on somewhat sheltered characters who are clearly out of their element in the Big Apple: something like Adventures in Babysitting or something along those lines) would pass by him and look at him for a quick beat before laughing to themselves (or perhaps cringing and walking faster in a creeped out fashion, depending) about what a zany, unpredictable town NYC is and moving on. Or I dunno, maybe that's just me.

For a long, long while, I've toyed with the idea of watching this back to back with American Psycho for an "80's Yuppie Goes Batshit" Double-Feature, just to see how the combo would go down. Still have yet to do it: I probably should try to fix that soon.

*running through the streets* I'mma vampire! I'mma vampire! Keeeel meeeeeeeeee