Taglines: Seduction. Romance. Murder. The things one does for love.
Vampire’s Kiss movie synopsis. Peter Loew (Nicolas Cage) is a driven literary agent, who is slowly going insane. He works all day, and club hops at night, with little in his life but one night stands and the pursuit of money and prestige. He sees a therapist (Ashley) frequently, and during these sessions, his declining mental health becomes clear through a series of increasingly bizarre rants that eventually begin to scare even his psychiatrist. After taking a girl he met in a club named Jackie (Kasi Lemmons) back to his place, a bat flies in through his window, scaring them both.
At his next session he mentions to his therapist that the bat aroused him. After visiting an art museum with Jackie the next day, he ditches her and she leaves an angry message on his phone. Loew meets Rachel (Beals) at a night club, and takes her home. She pins him down, reveals fangs, and feeds on him. He soon begins to believe that he is changing into a vampire. He stares into a bathroom mirror and fails to see his reflection; he wears dark sunglasses during the day; and, when his “fangs” fail to develop, he purchases a pair of cheap plastic vampire teeth. All the while, Rachel visits him nightly to feed on his blood.
He experiences mood swings and calls Jackie back apologetically, asking to meet her at a bar. As he is about to leave, a jealous Rachel appears and beckons him back inside. A dejected Jackie eventually leaves the bar and leaves an angry note on his door asking him to leave her alone.
A subplot concerns a secretary working at Loew’s office, Alva Restrepo (Alonso). Loew torments her by forcing her to search through an enormous file for a 1963 contract. When she fails to find the contract, he at first browbeats and humiliates her, then visits her at home, and finally attacks and attempts to bite her at the place where they both work.
She mistakes the attempt to drink her blood as a rape attempt, causing her to pull out a gun, and Loew begs her to shoot him. Since it is only loaded with blanks, she fires at the floor to scare him off. He eventually overpowers her and mocks her rape-assumption by ripping her shirt open and knocking her down. He then takes the gun and attempts to fire it in his mouth, but after doing it twice, the blanks do not kill him.
He goes out to a club wearing his vampire teeth, and begins to seduce a woman, but when he gets too grabby she slaps him off, but he then overpowers her and bites her neck, having taken out the fangs and using his real teeth. He then puts the plastic fangs back in. Leaving the club, Loew has a brief, ambiguous encounter with Rachel: she admits to knowing him, but gives the impression that they have not been in contact for a long period. He accuses her of being a vampire, and is expelled from the club.
Vampire’s Kiss is a 1989 American black comedy horror film, directed by Robert Bierman, written by Joseph Minion, and stars Nicolas Cage, María Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, and Elizabeth Ashley. The film tells the story of a mentally-ill literary agent, whose condition turns even worse when he ends up thinking that he was bitten by a vampire. It was a box office failure but went on to become a cult film.
Vampire’s Kiss (1989)
Directed by: Robert Bierman
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Maria Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, Elizabeth Ashley, Kasi Lemmons, Robert Lujan, Jessica Lundy, Jodie Markell, Johnny Walker
Screenplay by: Joseph Minion
Production Design by: Christopher Nowak
Cinematography by: Stefan Czapsky
Film Editing by: Angus Newton
Costume Design by: Irene Albright, Terry Mainord
Set Decoration by: Jacqueline Jacobson Scarfo
Art Direction by: Ruth Ammon
Music by: Colin Towns
Distributed by: Hemdale Film Corporation
Release Date: June 2, 1989
Visits: 586
