Dir: Robert Bierman

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals

1h 43min. Cert 18

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It was only a matter of time before Nicolas Cage cropped up in Shit Film Sundays. He seems to do about one good film for every five bad ones. And even the good ones aren’t great*. Yet he keeps getting work. It’s one of the biggest mysteries of the film industry that I’ve never understood. While it’s a well-known fact that Nicolas Cage loses his shit on a regular basis, I’ve never seen anything quite like his performance in Vampire’s Kiss.

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For those of you lucky enough not to have seen Vampire’s Kiss, here’s the lowdown. It’s basically about Peter Loew; a young hot-shot who loves women and, in true Nic Cage fashion, is starting to lose his shit. Most of this shit-losing is directed at his long-suffering secretary, Alva. Loew is bat-shit crazy (hur hur), he already sees a therapist, and when he gets bitten by a vampire his life starts to spiral downwards.

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SPOILERS AHEAD, VERY LITTLE TO BE SPOILED BUT STILL, THERE’S YOUR WARNING.

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Except he doesn’t get bitten by a vampire. None of it ever happens. And this is heavily suggested in the beginning, but doesn’t become completely clear until later in the film. It’s kind of confusing, and I don’t think it was intentional. We regularly jump between what he sees and what the rest of the world sees. It’s annoying.

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SPOILERS ALL DONE NOW.

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I’ve seen people refer to Cage’s acting in this as ‘unbridled’ and ‘mesmerising’, and I will admit that I couldn’t stop watching him. But it was like watching your angry uncle at christmas. No one ever liked him. Auntie Linda left him five months ago and your whole family can see why. But no one says it. And as he knocks back beer after beer and gets steadily more aggressive, there’s nothing you can do but hope you get placed at the other end of the table when lunch is served. Maybe you could even go back to the kid’s table and watch from a safe distance. Listen to him spew racial slurs in silence as you wait for the inevitable explosion when bacon-wrapped cocktail sausages start flying.

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But back to the film. Cage’s performance was truly unbelievable, and I’m pretty sure that when it comes to acting that’s rarely what you’re going for. His accent was unrecognisable, yet I’ve seen people comment on how he nailed it. To me it sounded as if Bill and Ted had grown up to wear suits and work in publishing. But however hard they try to leave their past behind, every fifth word they say the teen-stoner they tried to bury slips out.

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Yet for all Cage’s faults, as he screamed repeatedly at his poor secretary Alva I couldn’t help but think that we don’t need Jared Leto. We never did. Just stick the Joker make-up on Cage and let him do his thing.

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The more bad films I watch, the more I’m starting to see themes. One I wasn’t expecting is reused sex scenes, where both actor and actress are wearing the exact same underwear. It was the same in last weeks Shit Film Sunday The Room.

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Another similarity is the ridiculous amount of establishing shots they have, most of which are completely unnecessary. In Vampire’s Kiss it feels as if they were aiming for a specific run time but couldn’t use one of the scenes, probably on account of Nicolas Cage’s ad-libbing getting a bit too wild as he squatted down on Alva’s desk and took a big old shit on her keyboard, before proceeding to mash his faeces into the keys as he shouted at her to FIND THE FUCKING FILE ALVA. Which turned out to be a bit too far even for the director Robert Bierman, who seemed happy to let Cage do whatever he wanted most of the time. That must be the reason they decided to fill so many minutes of this film with wide shots of bridges and bustling city streets. Only reason I can think of.

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And as you’d expect there’s also an awful 80’s soundtrack, which starts off like something from a Seinfeld scene-break before morphing into a gothic and orchestral monstrosity. It’s pretty weird but not that unusual for the 80’s. We also can’t forget the terrible special effects, namely a ‘bat’ that looks quite a lot like a toilet roll dipped in glue and rolled around the floor of a busy hairdressers.

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With everything considered, if you’re interested in watching Cage’s performance so you can decide for yourself if it’s brilliant or terrible**, then maybe it’s worth your time. Or you could watch a best bits video on YouTube and save yourself some time. It’s not quite bad enough to be brilliant, but Vampire’s Kiss has taught me a valuable lesson. And that lesson is this. When it comes to acting, you can’t keep Nicolas Caged.+

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RATING:

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BONUS NUGGET: the director Robert Bierman has spent the last 12 years directing episodes of British classics such as Holby City, Casualty and The Bill. So at least his career didn’t go downhill after Vampire’s Kiss.

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*Adaptation and Raising Arizona are the only two I’ve seen that are brilliant. But films like Face/Off are pretty good fun.

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**It’s terrible.