Peter Loew is a New York City-based literary agent and a narcissistic yuppie, with little in his life but work, one-night stands, and frequent appointments with his therapist, Dr. Glaser. Peter brings home a woman named Jackie from a club, but they are interrupted when a bat flies through the window; he later tells Dr. Glaser that his struggle with the bat aroused him. At his office, Peter torments a secretary, Alva Restrepo, with repeated demands to find an obscure missing document.
At a nightclub, Peter seemingly meets a mysterious woman named Rachel and takes her home. In bed, she exposes her vampire fangs and bites him on the neck, with Peter succumbing to pleasure as she feeds on his blood. The following morning, Peter is seen with an uninjured neck, but cuts himself shaving and applies a bandage. He serves coffee and makes conversation with a non-existent Rachel, casting doubt on the reality of their encounter.
Visiting an art museum with Jackie, Peter abruptly ditches her, and she leaves him an angry phone message. In therapy, he seems not to remember the incident with the bat, and browbeats Alva when she is unable to find the missing contract. His severe mood swings lead to public outbursts, and he makes an apologetic call to Jackie to arrange another date. As he is about to leave, he is drawn into bed by the appearance of Rachel, who again drains his blood, while a dejected Jackie leaves him an angry note to stay away.
At work, an erratic Peter chases Alva into the bathroom and laughs off the incident with his colleagues, but continues to humiliate and threaten her. Finding Jackie’s note, he destroys his apartment in a fit of rage, and unsettles Dr. Glaser with his bizarre rants. Growing sensitive to light, he wears sunglasses indoors and collapses on the street at the sight of a crucifix. Believing the bandage on his neck to be the location of Rachel's vampire bite, his delusions of her nighttime feedings persist, as does his unhinged behavior, including eating cockroaches.
Alva stays home to avoid an increasingly frightening Peter, who arrives at her door and manipulates her into returning to work with him. She confides in her brother Emilio, who gives her blanks for the gun she carries in her purse. Peter fails to see his reflection in mirrors as his mental state deteriorates, and chases Alva through the building after hours. Begging her to shoot him, Peter forces himself on her while hallucinating she is Rachel. Overcome by despair, he fires the gun into his mouth, but assumes his “transformation” has saved him.
Fully believing himself to be a vampire, Peter purchases cheap novelty fangs and catches pigeons to eat in his wrecked apartment, which he turns into a darkened lair. Sleeping under his upturned sofa as though it were a coffin, he emerges at night and goes to a club, wearing his plastic fangs and behaving like Orlok from the film Nosferatu. He tries to seduce a woman before attacking her with his real teeth, leaving her unconscious and bloody, and hallucinates a disdainful Rachel abandoning him for another man.
On the dance floor, Peter finds the real Rachel, who appears to recognize him from a past date. He attempts to manhandle her into revealing her fangs, but is dragged out of the club. Wandering the streets covered in blood, Peter begs passersby to end his suffering with a wooden stake, while newspaper headlines confirm that the woman he attacked in the club has died. He hallucinates a therapy session with Dr. Glaser, who dismisses his crimes and introduces him to “Sharon”, another patient and his romantic match.
A traumatized Alva tells Emilio about her assault, and they find Peter as he returns to his apartment with the imaginary Sharon, where his fantasy dissolves into an abusive argument. Emilio forces his way inside and confronts Peter, who offers up the shard of wood, and impales Peter before fleeing. A dying Peter envisions the vampire Rachel one last time.
Cast
Nicolas Cage as Peter Loew, a literary agent whose outlandish descent into madness leaves him increasingly isolated
María Conchita Alonso as Alva Restrepo, secretary to Peter and constant victim to his rants and impatience
Jennifer Beals as Rachel, the seductive vampire that initially haunts Peter and pushes him into his vampire-like state, eventually falling in love with him
Kasi Lemmons as Jackie, a romantic interest of Peter which he later stands up in favor of a night with Rachel
Bob Lujan as Emilio, the protective brother of Alva who supplies her with a gun and blank ammunition
Elizabeth Ashley as Dr. Glaser, the therapist in Peter's real and imaginary worlds
In addition, Jessica Lundy plays Sharon, the patient his therapist sets Peter up with, Cage's brother Marc Coppola briefly appears as the joke guy, and the musical group ESG has a cameo performing in a club.
Production
Joseph Minion wrote the film as he grappled with depression. In an interview with Zach Schonfeld of The Ringer, Minion said that while on vacation in Barbados with his then-girlfriend, Barbara Zitwer, he wrote the screenplay as a response to his "toxic relationship" with her. Zitwer, who would come on as a producer for the film, found the final product to be "horrifying". Minion's depiction of Zitwer as a "vampire and destroying him"[1] foreshadowed the ending of their relationship during production. Known previously for having written After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese, Minion sought to keep the "grim view of the Manhattan nightlife"[1] found in the aforementioned film central to his newest work.
Originally intent on directing the project, Minion soon gave the position up stating that the "darkness of it"[1] was too much for him to bear. Instead, the film was led by British newcomer Robert Bierman, who held previous experience working on commercials and short films such as The Rocking Horse Winner (1983) and The Dumb Waiter (1979). This sudden departure however also prompted the then-cast Nicolas Cage to drop out after his agent pressured him, stating that "this was not a good movie to make after Moonstruck".[4] His departure was short-lived however, and Cage's "outrageously unbridled performance"[5] was destined for the screen. Cage described the story as being about "a man whose loneliness and inability to find love literally drives him insane".[1]
The role of Peter Loew was originally given to Dennis Quaid, then passed on to Cage after the former dropped out to do Innerspace.[1] Cage and Beals reportedly did not get along on set, with their friction most likely stemming from the part of Rachel going to Beals rather than Cage's then-girlfriend, Patricia Arquette.[1]
Going purposefully against the method acting technique, Cage "took a highly surrealistic approach"[1] to Loew. Apart from his "pseudo-Transylvanian dialect",[6] scenes of Cage screaming the alphabet, eating cockroaches, and ranting "I'm a vampire!" shocked viewers and critics alike. The original script called for Loew to eat a raw egg but Cage decided a cockroach would be more effective claiming it would "shock the audience".[4] This shock was further extended to a couple of homeless people whom Cage ran into on the streets of Manhattan as he pleaded with them to drive a stake through his heart as Bierman and crew shot from afar. Physicality played a central role in the creation of this character for Cage, who sought to see "how big [he] could get [his] eyes" in order to appear terrifying.[4] This was then furthered with scenes of Cage jumping on tables, sprinting across the office, and many frantic hand gestures which he claims were "extremely choreographed".[1]
Release
Vampire's Kiss was released June 2, 1989. It grossed $725,131 in the U.S.[2] It was released on home video in August 1990.[7]MGM released it on DVD in August 2002,[8] and Scream Factory released it on Blu-ray in February 2015.[9] It was subsequently re-released on Blu-Ray through the MVD Rewind label in June, 2022.[10]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 65% of 31 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6/10. The website's consensus reads: "He's a vampire! He's a vampire! He's a vampire!"[11]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 30 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[12]
Variety wrote, "Cage's over-the-top performance generates little sympathy for the character, so it's tough to be interested in him as his personality disorder worsens."[13]
Caryn James of The New York Times wrote, "[T]he film is dominated and destroyed by Mr. Cage's chaotic, self-indulgent performance."[6]Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "a sleek, outrageous dark comedy that's all the funnier for constantly teetering on the brink of sheer tastelessness and silliness."[14]
Hal Hinson of The Washington Post called the film "stone-dead bad, incoherently bad", but said that Cage's overacting must be seen to be believed.[3] Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer called it an "imaginative, if warped, black comedy" that "succeeds as a wicked allegory of What Men Want".[15]
Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers wrote that the film needs "a stake through the heart".[16] Reviewing the film on Blu-ray, Anthony Arrigo of Bloody Disgusting wrote, "The film may not work very well as a comedy, but there's enough of a dark derangement present to make it almost unsettling."[17]
