‘Vampire’s Kiss’ Proves Nicolas Cage Was Always Perfect for Horror

Nicolas Cage is enjoying a renaissance right now; an Age of Cage, if you will. Sure, to a great many of his fans who pledged fealty back in the days of Face/Off and never looked back, Cage never really left, but the prolific and versatile actor seems to have found another gear to the kind of controlled lunacy we’ve come to expect from his performances. It’s clear from films like Panos Cosmatos’ acid-dripped gorefest Mandy and Richard Stanley’s much-anticipated and gloriously eldritch Color Out of Space that Cage is carving out a new niche for himself. As he approaches four decades of film acting, he’s becoming a Scream King in a way that only Nicolas Cage can.

Cage is not new to horror, of course. He’s made films like Season of the Witch and the much-memed remake of The Wicker Man, but both Mandy and Color Out of Space combine a certain kind of directorial artistry with Cage’s bonkers emotional sorcery in a way that makes both the individual performances and the overall films shine. Both films are perfectly framed to allow him to map a slow descent into the kind of madcap expressionistic work he’s so well suited for, and by the end of them he’s completely transformed into…well, into a Nicolas Cage character of the type that even his most devoted impersonators could never dream of realizing. Both films make him look like he’s been a horror master for decades, though the genre only makes up a small fraction of his filmography.

Longtime Cage fans, though, know that this side of him has been lurking, waiting to be unleashed for a very long time. We can see it in his dramatic work (certain parts of his Oscar-winning turn in Leaving Las Vegas are, in their way, quite horrific), but it’s also very evident in a cult classic from the first decade of Cage’s career. 1989’s Vampire’s Kiss features an essential Cage performance and mesmerizing proof that he was always perfect for horror films, and if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s just a click away over on Amazon Prime right now.

Though it’s ultimately more of a macabre comedy than an all-out horror film, Vampire Kiss is a showcase for Cage to play someone who is slowly descending into the depths of a darkness he doesn’t quite understand. He plays Peter Lowe, a literary agent who wears slick suits, talks with an accent that aims to project sophistication, and seems more interested in sexual conquests than professional ones. He carries a sense of bloated, theatrical self-importance with him everywhere, from interactions with his long-suffering assistant (Maria Conchita Alonso) to sessions with his patient, bemused therapist (Elizabeth Ashley). Then one of his one-night stands (Jennifer Beals) turns out to be a vampire who bites him, sending Peter into a spiral of madness, fear, and obsession that seems destined to wreck his life.

The pacing of Vampire’s Kiss brilliantly frames the first part of this tale purely through Peter’s hungry, amoral eyes, but as the film starts to turn less comic and more horrific, the point of view shifts. We see the world around Peter more clearly, see the impact he’s making, and realize that the vampiric mistress he’s come to worship may have just been a figment of his imagination the entire time. It’s a tough thing to sell – particularly with the deliberately over-the-top tone of Joseph Minion’s script to consider – but Cage makes it look easy by completely throwing himself into Peter’s insanity.

Horror often works best when a clear metaphor is present in the storytelling, tying the exaggerated elements back to some primal human fear, and the metaphor often lands better when everything in the frame is dialed up. Vampire’s Kiss isn’t just a story about a man tormented by a vampire. It’s a story about the often catastrophically destructive power of toxic masculinity, and we know that because Cage plays pre-vampire Peter with same frantic, exaggerated energy as post-vampire Peter. From the very beginning, Cage is keenly aware that he’s not just playing an entitled jerk. He’s playing the biggest entitled jerk of the 1980s, a guy who oozes yuppie privilege and self-satisfaction. It’s so on-the-nose that, when the vampiric parts of the story arrive, we feel a natural inclination to watch this guy completely crack up, until the by the end he’s literally running through the street screaming, makeshift wooden stake in hand. The descent works because Cage understands Peter has to fall from a great height. It’s a performance that dances between two extremes with the kind of nimble, impressive abandon that has served Cage so well in more recent horror efforts.

It’s Cage’s sense of abandon, and willingness to hurl himself into the performance that makes him so well-suited to horror films. Like Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee before him, there’s a sense of commitment that drips right off the screen; because he’s so committed, so are we, as viewers. To watch an all-out Nicolas Cage performance is to buy a ticket to a very specific ride, and by the time it’s over you always feel like you’ve witnessed something no other actor could do. Vampire’s Kiss is like that.

Plus, you will never hear a more impassioned, dramatic recitation of the alphabet anywhere else in cinema.

Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire whose work has appeared at Syfy Wire, Mental Floss, Looper, Playboy, and Uproxx, among others. He lives in Austin, Texas, and he’s always counting the days until Christmas. Find him on Twitter: @awalrusdarkly.

Where to stream Vampire's Kiss