Vampire's Kiss (1989)

After years of waiting, I'm happy to announce that Vampire's Kiss has finally made the jump from obscure, out-of-print DVD to Blu-ray. It's a film I can't wait to discuss, as I've always found it kind of fascinating, but it's more than a little overwhelming attempting to figure out where to start with this strange little gem. 

Despite what the marketing materials, box art, and muted public response to the film both then and now might imply, this isn't some forgettable whacky rom-com about a man who falls in love with a vampire. No, this is a film about a very twisted man who is lonely and desperately looking for love in all the wrong places. A successful yuppie living in New York, Peter Lowe is having something of an existential and/or identity crisis. He sleepwalks through life, day in and day out, with little time for anything besides idly passing time at the office, engaging in either corporate brown-nosing or torturing his poor secretary Alva. He is apparently seeing a girl who he frequently goes out with, but he's grown rather distant from her as of late. In fact, he's grown rather distant from everyone around him. In a bustling city like New York, the throngs of people only make his loneliness and alienation all the more obvious, and no one bats an eye at his obvious warning signs and calls for help because... well, c'mon, this is New York we're talking about! And in the '80s no less.

Everything changes for Peter one night when he meets a striking new girl at a club named Rachel. Dark, mysterious, and sexy, she seduces him effortlessly, only to reveal herself to be a vampire. She sinks her fangs into Peter's neck and drinks his blood, leaving him just enough to survive. Strangely enough, Peter finds this experience incredibly exciting, and furthermore, quite arousing, and so becomes obsessed with this strange woman. Every night from then on, she comes to his window and drinks his blood, as Peter comes to grips with the fact that he's becoming a vampire too. All while holding up a steady job and stringing along his previous, very confused beau no less.

Does it sound wacky? Because it is pretty wacky and weird, though less so than the premise probably  implies. It's actually a very intelligent, grounded film about isolation, alienation, and loneliness, seen through the eyes of an unreliable, and unlikable protagonist. A black comedy film that references and subverts horror cliches in a way that feels positively postmodern, it's an odd duck, to say the least. The easiest way to describe it is a far superior, more mature version of American Psycho. A lonely yuppie, an already infamously vampiric bunch, becomes a mythical creature and is let loose upon the crowded streets of New York. There's a definite element of psychology to the whole thing: it's pretty cloudy from the very beginning as to whether or not there is actually any presence of the supernatural here at all. Could Peter Lowe's fantasies simply be invading his reality as a result of his isolation and bottled-up pain? Is everything just a hallucination? Some sort of mental illness? Or could Rachel really be a vampire? The film sure isn't telling, but it offers conflicting evidence to both ends. Needless to say, it makes for one fascinating, if unconventional, film that's sure to spark conversation.

Vampire's Kiss manages to capture the grim urban atmosphere of New York better than most, which contrasts with the whacky premise and insane antics of one Nicolas Cage, who owns the film with his legendary performance. The delineation between Cage and the character he's playing becomes quite blurry as the film goes on, and it's impossible to know how much was in the script and how much was simply improvised by the infamously demented method actor. His performance feels like Patrick Bateman by way of Bela Legosi, if that's any help. Cage uses an infamous accent that was apparently inspired by his father, a professor of literature, who made the conscious decision at some point in his life to speak in a put-on voice of "distinction." 

Cage mixes real-life inspiration with inspiration from German expressionist horror films, and silent films in particular, to bring a larger-than-life quality to the role, and the results are baffling, if impossible to look away from. He's playing a character who is often putting on a performance himself, and so Cage makes full use of the whole spectrum of performance art and film acting to emphasize this point, and it's nothing short of glorious. 

I'm serious. I don't love everything Cage has ever been in, and I think he often way overshoots his mark, but damn if he isn't usually compelling nonetheless. That being said, this is probably the definitive unhinged Nicolas Cage performance, which is no small feat considering the man has been acting for four decades at this point and has no end of bizarre roles worth discussing. He brings an energy and excitement to this one that reminds me of the many great frontmen in rock 'n' roll and punk rock history. It's far from traditional film acting, but I'll defend it until my dying breath.

Trying to imagine the film without Cage is near-impossible, but one has to imagine that it would be nowhere near as interesting. Lowe as a character, especially for a lead, is often repulsive. His treatment of his secretary, initially darkly comedic, eventually leads to implied sexual assault, and his personality is somewhat psychopathic across the board. His most sympathetic traits are that he's so pathetic, even his imaginary friends and lovers tell him so, and that he starts the film near-suicidal and only gets worse from there. And besides, as often happens in great art, it's hard not to see yourself in him a bit if you've ever felt lonely and alienated from the people around you. And his dilemma and situation are interesting: is his vampire fixation a sexual kink? Or is it something more metaphorical or allegorical? All we can do is speculate.

One of the most divisive aspects of the film is its use of a strange, unconventional blend of genres, with an emphasis on comedy. Its style of comedy, however, is distinctly Kafka-esque, and when combined with all the horror elements, seems to give off the impression that any and all comedic leanings were probably unintentional and thus that the film is just bad. Or at least that's what everybody loves to repeat on the internet. Those online who still discuss the film seem to be dedicated to the idea of enjoying it purely out of a sense of irony, but this is total bullshit. It's clearly marketed and labeled as a comedy, so when it makes you laugh, it gave you exactly what you paid for. The horror is intended to be silly and prop up the comedy, not the other way around. That contrast I mentioned earlier between the crowds of New Yorkers and Peter Lowe is often a reliable source of laughs, and shows that the filmmakers were in on the joke. Only in New York could a lunatic be walking around in the state Lowe is at the end of the film and no one even so much as bat an eye. It's wonderful, and captures the spirit of the city quite well, methinks. Granted, I'm a country boy that doesn't know one thing about New York City, but somehow it still feels authentic.

But I say it again, this film is weird. As funny as it often is, and as distinctly not scary as it is, it does have a nasty black comedy streak that will turn many off. The deadpan jokes about rape and murder will probably cross the line for a good portion of the audience, but I feel they're done up about as well as could ever be expected. It all leads up to a rather downbeat, anti-climatic ending (almost as anti-climatic as Bram Stoker's Dracula, funnily enough) that won't exactly win over many who were already on the fence, but I think any other ending would have just felt like cheating. 

I'm going to wrap up by discussing the film's director, Mr. Robert Bierman, who had apparently never directed a feature before. Now, for an inexperienced director to be able to so deftly navigate such odd and even contradictory material in such an effortless fashion is nothing short of incredible, and I can't believe the man hasn't done more with film in the decades since Vampire's Kiss, but alas: he really hasn't. Listening to the commentary track that's been included with my new Blu-ray, my resolve that this film is actually a very thoughtful, subversive film has finally been totally validated, as both Bierman and Cage come off as very intelligent and almost divinely inspired by the material. They brought out the best in each other and created something unlike much of anything else in cinema. And it wasn't just them: everyone across the entire cast does phenomenal work, but special mention must go to Maria Conchita Alfonso and especially Elizabeth Ashley, who was perfectly able to modulate her performance to fit every scene she was in, whether it was implied to be really happening or just a daydream of Peter's. Everyone brings their A-game and takes a chance on quite unconventional and uncompromisingly strange material, but the results are nothing short of stunning. 

If you find yourself ever feeling like an outcast, or that you're all alone in the world, just pop in Vampire's Kiss and I promise you that by the time credits roll, you'll feel loads better. Nobody has it as bad as Peter Lowe, after all. Give it a try if you're into the unique, weird side of cinema. You know: if you treasure something being different in your films and stories. Otherwise, this is far from a crowd-pleasing film. But you know what, speaking as a country boy, I ain't the biggest fan of crowds anyway.