Review of Vampire's Kiss (1989) by Kenny W — 09 Nov 2012

Your enjoyment of this film will almost assuredly depend on what you thought about Nicolas Cage's performance. The rest of the movie could've been written by Quentin Tarantino and you'd still focus on Cage's performance.

He overshadows the rest of the film. Realistically, I don't think I can accurately describe his performance in any way that would be clear to you. You just have to see it to believe it. What I can say about the performance is that it is great and awful at the same time, but mostly awful.

I think there are some hints of greatness from Nicolas Cage here, but it is drowned by the sea of shit that his performance can become at times. I think Mr. Cage is great at looking like a psycho. There's something about his physicality and the way he walks and just little nuances to how he presents himself that make him look and feel like he's insane.

He also does a great job at being unpredictable, you never know what he's going to do next and that adds to the mental instability of this character. Where he fails, horribly, is at delivery and his facials.

He is so over-the-top, it's obvious he was trying to be as over-the-top as possible, and there are some truly awful scenes. But, while they may be horribly acted scenes if you try to look at this as an art-form, and it is, his performance is so bad that it is totally fascinating to watch and you can't, really you can't, take your eyes off of him at any point in the movie.

It is the strangest thing. It's a performance that entertains as much as it perplexes the mind. I'm having the hardest time trying to pinpoint how I felt about it, because it did entertain me, tremendously so in fact, but it entertained me at the cost of everything else in the flick.

Did I pay attention to the script and the rest of the cast? Not really, I didn't pay attention to anything other than Nicolas Cage. That's how enthralling, and that's putting it nicely, his performance was.

Hell I think 3 stars is too generous to be honest, but I did enjoy Mr. Cage's performance, it was so over-the-top awful that it managed to actually be a fun film to watch, at least for me. It is not something I would recommend, since his performance will definitely polarize people, but I think if you're looking for something so bad, so perplexing, so over-the-top that you can't look away, then this film is perfect for you.