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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 19582
Released: August 27, 2002 |
| Our Price: $7.95 |
| Used Price: $5.89 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Oscar® winner* Nicolas Cage is amazing (The New Yorker) in this outrageous, erotically charged thriller about a womanizing New York executive who becomes convinced that he's a vampire when one of his conquests bites his neck in the throes of passion. Jennifer Beals (Devil in a Blue Dress) sizzles as the femme fatale who sets Cage on his batty course in this darkly funny, lively, imaginative fantasy (Los Angeles Times)! *1995: Actor, Leaving Las Vegas
Description of Vampire's Kiss:
Nicolas Cage is perfectly cast in this devious black comedy of a New York literary agent whose latest one-night stand lands him in bed with vampire Jennifer Beals, who takes a big, bloody bite out of his identity. The emotionally unstable executive develops an aversion to sunlight, a fear of crosses, and a sudden appetite for cockroaches (not to mention a sadistic pleasure in tormenting hapless secretary Maria Conchita Alonso), but is it a supernatural curse or schizophrenia? Vampire's Kiss (written by After Hours scribe Joseph Minion) walks a dangerous line between satire and psychosis, which Cage pushes to surreal levels with a manic, unhinged performance. "I'm a vampire!" he howls, shuffling down alleys and snapping his cheap plastic fangs, less a Dracula than a bug-eyed, psychotic Renfield. Both funny and unsettling, this is one of the most demented takes on the genre. --Sean Axmaker
Vampire's Kiss Reviews:
Not one of Cage's best performances 
2009-11-26 - This movie is cheesy, even though it's meant that way. The only person i liked in this movie was Alva (played by Maria Conchita Alonso).
Nicholas Cage has definitely changed his voice because when it was in here and also in Valley Girl and Peggy Sue Got Married it was more higher pitched, now when you see him in a movie it's more deeper. And he does a terrible accent in this movie. His acting has gotten better because in here it's just lousy. He plays crazy well but in here it could have been better.
He is a man named Peter Loew who is a publishing executive and he's bit by a vampire (or so he thinks) one night while he takes this woman Rachel (played by Jennifer Beals) home to his apartment for what he thinks will be casual sex, but while they are making out on his bed she bites him on the neck and then basically through out the film he terrorizes Alva when he's at work and he basically goes nuts. Rachel is not even real, she's a figment of his imagination. He finally gets to the point where he truly believes he's a vampire so he goes to a store and buys cheap fangs. Hmmm, okay. Then he goes in a park and catches a pigeon, takes it back to his apartment and eats it. It doesn't get better from there.
Definitely not something i would want to watch again.
Not what it seemed.
2009-05-31 - To be honest, I bought this expecting an amusing vampire movie. I got neither. Normally I hate to give away the plot, but not a single vampire to be found: it's a story about a business man who finally cracks under the psychological pressure he's built into his life. He stresses himself completely into madness, and decides he's been turned into a vampire to explain all his new problems to himself. He isn't, of course, but his fractured mind experiences vampirism like a hypochondriac, culminating in him talking to a fence post he thinks is his psychiatrist and trying to get strangers on the street to drive a broken wood plank he found into his heart like a stake after killing a woman in a night club to drink her blood. In the end, he does get "staked" by the brother of a co-worker he had terrorized during his "transformation."
While it was a good movie about a man's collapse, it wasn't, as advertised, a vampire movie. This is heavy, psychological stuff, and not at all what I'd thought I was buying.
Vampire's Kiss 
2009-04-26 - I became a Nicolas Cage fan recently. This film was one of his early films. It will probably appeal to a very narrow audience because of it's genera.
I think he is an amazing, brave, and talented actor.
I thought this was a very interesting movie. I recommend seeing it because of his acting ability.
When Love's at Stake, Cage Goes Kafkaesque
2009-03-30 - Peter Loew is the tormented protagonist of Vampire's Kiss, the 1988 cult classic from director Robert Bierman that combines quirky comedy with Kafkaesque neo-noir. Loew is a Philly-born literary agent in the foreign-distribution division of an unnamed Manhattan publishing house, who's obsessed about an old contract. Despite his yuppified money and status, he simply wants to be loved and to experience a long-lasting relationship. Prince of the one-night stand, perhaps, but he doesn't want to become the Prince of Darkness! He isn't searching for an eternal bond.
The irony of Vampire's Kiss is that Loew desires love - and sees a therapist for help with that emotion - but is too shallow. Each time, he winds up only boasting to his therapist (portrayed by Elizabeth Ashley) about his nighttime sexual exploits. Therefore, love eludes him. For example, he's seen engaging in a promising romantic relationship with an attractive, culture-loving woman (portrayed by Kasi Lemmons, a decade before she transitioned from acting to brilliant directing), but moments after getting very amorous, he becomes transfixed and turned on by a bat that is circling the room. Paradoxically, while it takes deep puncture wounds from a vampire to render him immune to love's salvation, those very bites turn him batty.
Nicolas Cage as Peter Loew is a sight to behold, and he eerily embodies his eccentric, vulnerable character. From his spazzed-out gesticulations and manic speech delivery to his bizarre spurts of rage, Cage's Loew is a case study of the lack of meaningful human connection and its contribution to escalating insanity. The setup of Vampire's Kiss presents him as a man who's antisocial, arrogant, stingy and misogynistic down to the bone, and only in the light of day can the deep bites inflicted upon him blind his superficial view of women and of life in general.
Jennifer Beals deserves special mention for sinking her fangs into a delectable role. Vamping it up for the camera, a post-Flashdance Beals portrays a bloodthirsty barfly (make that "barbat") who manipulates Loew into her object of desire. Obsessive and bicuspid, she alters his destiny in measured erotic doses that are at turns gratifying and gross to watch.
An absorbing subplot in Vampire's Kiss concerns sexual harassment. How the movie delves into the issue is not only disturbing but also disarming. The protagonist's predatory behavior with his secretary, portrayed by the versatile actress Maria Conchita Alonso, is delivered in an absurdly repetitious and hilarious manner. I've read reviews that indicate Alonso's character, Alva, was raped by Cage's Loew, but after watching Vampire's Kiss too many times to admit here, I totally disagree. Loew tore off her clothing, and, yes, that was violent. However, considering how depersonalized and despairing he becomes as the film further develops, I believe that he was trying to provoke an assisted suicide.
I also don't believe that the storyline involving the worksite tension between Loew and Alva is a distracting subplot. That storyline runs parallel to Loew's descent into utter derangement, and his repetitious - and abusive - demand to see the contract is a device that writer Joseph Minion employs to reveal Loew's expanding insanity. For comparison, recall how Jack Nicholson's writer in The Shining gradually slipped into madness by having to repeatedly stop composing the beginning of his novel because his wife continually interrupted his concentration. In that sense, Loew's loss of patience with Alva's incompetence (i.e., it's not as though the "contract" doesn't exist) and its violent consequences are similar to the Nicholas character's verbal abuse of his wife, to whom he frighteningly demands, "Give me the bat, Wendy."
In Vampire's Kiss, prior to Loew developing his supernatural condition, he was behaving erratically at the office. Now, however, his actions -- and the film's humor - veer deeper into dark territory, to the point that the viewer isn't so sure whether to laugh or turn sympathetic. For example, he starts wearing shades by day inside the workplace, performs an existential monologue in front of mirrors in the men's restroom, and -- after he grows impatient waiting for his fangs to develop -- purchases a set of plastic fangs in Chinatown instead of expensive fiberglass prosthetics. After fully accepting his new bad-boy image, he forces his new identity on anyone willing to notice. In one scene in a diner, he disparages a patron who is bragging to her girlfriend about a hansom cab marriage proposal. In another scene he runs through the streets of Manhattan, lisping through fake fangs and yelling at the top of his lungs: "I'm a vampire! I'm a vampire! I'm a vampire!"
However, being a vampire isn't all that it's hyped to be. Sure, he's got the '80s metrosexual look and a job in a skyscraper, but he's afraid of flying - that is, of fully living his life. He's so emasculated that he can't manage to metamorphose into a bat. Later on, he carries a big stick but doesn't have the level of testosterone required to work it. What remains human about him is a tortured being reduced to chasing cockroaches in his brownstone apartment and pigeons on the sidewalk in order to satiate his newfound appetite.
As Loew's character transforms more dramatically with the plot, he finds that the greatest conflict is within himself because no matter how hard he tries to fit into society, he fails. That his fake, plastic fangs don't fit comfortably into his mouth was a brilliant metaphor. Fated to be alienated, ever the outsider, he learns what it really means to be a vampire.
When modern life sucks, a vampire's kiss leads to eternal suffering.
P.S. For those who are nostalgic for New York City's 1980s club scene, you'll want to pay attention to the band jamming at the beginning of Vampire's Kiss. It's the minimalist funk band ESG performing "Moody," which is not only a classic dance song but also a "puntastic" clue to Peter Loew's inevitable journey into madness.
Un-Caged... 
2009-02-06 - Nicolas Cage really comes unglued in this one. His manic performance is legendary. Over the top? More like over the bloody rainbow! His character's affliction could be actual vampirism, delusional psychosis, or a bit of both. Watching his mental disintegration is at once pitiful and hilarious. Jennifer Beals (Lordy! What ever happened to this gorgeous creature??) is the perfect neck-nipper, under her glorious mound of 80s hair. Maria Conchita Alonso makes the best of her confused secretary role. VAMPIRE'S KISS is a wonderful late-late night's entertainment...
