What kind of masochists would attend an all-night Nicolas Cage movie marathon? What kind of sadists would program seven of his films in a row? If one wants to observe the famously extravagant American actor for 14 hours straight, why not do it from the comfort of your own home?

I ponder these questions en route to the Melbourne international film festival’s overnight Cage-a-Thon, and think about how I might answer them myself. I have always been a fan of Cage’s work, perhaps even a big one, but did I really understand the reverence he elicits from his fans? I did not. Any casual observer can see that Cage is entertaining, charismatic and wildly flamboyant, but what is it about the 54-year-old performer that deserves seven movies, played back-to-back?

Five years ago, in a Reddit AMA, Ethan Hawke described Cage as “the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art”, by taking audiences “away from an obsession with naturalism into a kind of presentation style of acting that I imagine was popular with the old troubadours.”

Nicolas Cage in the phantasmagoric revenge thriller Mandy. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The description stuck with me. Cage, who was raised in a well-cultured family (his father was a professor of literature, his mother a dancer, and his uncle is the great director Francis Ford Coppola) is clearly attracted to grotesque characters and is celebrated for his wild and unhinged approach to them. He has the presence of a leading man, and the eccentricities of a character actor. What else will I glean from an all-night marathon?

I imagine the audience at the Cage-a-Thon will be a small group of weirdos who all look like Max Schreck from Nosferatu, or extras from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I am instead surprised to discover a crowd of around 700 normal-looking people gathered at Melbourne’s famous Astor theatre. When the words “Nicolas Cage” appear during the opening credits of the first feature to be screened, the phantasmagoric revenge thriller Mandy, the crowd goes ballistic.

Fast-forward 13 hours. I’ve consumed lots of coffee, a little whiskey and a can of Red Bull the size of a car battery. The audience – thinned to around 100 diehards determined to stay to the end – are exhausted but jubilant. The whooping and cheering that began in Mandy has continued all the way to the grand finale: the 1997 action blockbuster Con Air.

When Cage delivers a memorable line of dialogue (such as “I said put the bunny back in the box”), we cheer. When he winks or runs or jumps or fly kicks, we cheer. When he grabs a ladder attached to a fire engine and holds on for dear life, by God do we cheer.

The first time the crowd truly loses it – erupting into the kind of hullabaloo I imagine the Romans made for gladiators – arrives about halfway through Mandy. Covered in blood and dressed in briefs and a shirt, Cage gulps vodka straight from the bottle and pours it over a gaping wound. He then sits on a toilet seat and pants as if possessed, inhaling and exhaling like some kind of horrible mythical creature. The crowd cannot get enough of it.

The second feature film is the Coen brothers’ zany 1987 comedy Raising Arizona and the third, the director John Dahl’s 1993 neo-noir Red Rock West. This film begins with a topless Cage doing exercises on a wide open road – eliciting hearty applause and the first (but not the last) sustained round of wolf whistles. But it is during the fourth feature – the 1989 black comedy Vampire’s Kiss – that all hell breaks loose.

Vampire’s Kiss is the movie you recommend if Cage’s greatness is ever called into question. His performance as a maniacal literary agent perfectly encapsulates why David Lynch described him as “the jazz musician of American acting”. Or, less charitably, why Sean Penn once famously called Cage “no longer an actor” and “more like a performer”.

You could deride Cage for over-acting, as many have, or you could say his performance in Vampire’s Kiss is so exquisitely eccentric – so wild and restless and imaginative – it virtually defies description. I’ll have a crack anyway: it’s German expressionism meets Monty Python absurdism meets contemporary dance. The legendary alphabet scene generates a response so loud and enthusiastic I can feel my seat shaking.

By the time the fifth film begins – the director Neil LaBute’s critically maligned 2006 remake of The Wicker Man – it’s around 5am. With utter horror I realise there are around five hours left. Advertised as a 12-hour event, the schedule – which includes short breaks and a dozen or so trailers for Cage’s lesser-known works – has blown out to 14.

The grindhouse-style B movie Drive Angry is the second-last on the bill. It contains a scene featuring Cage having sex with a woman in a cruddy motel while simultaneously shooting an influx of bad guys entering their room. He is thrusting and penetrating and spinning around their conjoined bodies while taking down his oppressors one by one. This fascinating and ghastly display – a gun-slinging moment from a western, crossed with a tantric sex routine – wakes me up more than the coffee.

The audience is smaller but louder than ever during Con Air. When we whoop as Cage swings from the ladder attached to the fire engine, it occurs to me that we are not applauding individual moments but an entire career.

I arrived at the Cage-a-Thon a fan of Cage’s work. I left it with a new-found respect, and now consider him one of my favourite actors. Is there another actor anywhere in the world as original and distinctive?

In Cage’s hands, cartoonish moments are imbued with real emotion and real emotions become cartoons. Everything – from individual scenes down to single lines of dialogue – feel like they have been embraced as opportunities for creation. Cage is usually interesting even when his films are not. He is erratic and unpredictable; he is captivating and he is capricious. He is a performer. He is a troubadour. He is a jazz musician.

When I leave the Cage-a-Thon, dimly remembering a time when I watched movies that didn’t star Nicolas Cage, I resolve to never ever attend another movie marathon. Two days later I make a slight adjustment. If it’s another one with Nic Cage movies, I’ll think about it.

• Melbourne film festival continues until 19 August

• This article was amended on 15 August 2018. An earlier version ordered the films which screened incorrectly.