Culture Shock 03.19.15: 'Vampire's Kiss' brings us peak Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage in "Vampire's Kiss."

If you've ever seen a YouTube montage of Nicolas Cage's most over-the-top performances, you've already seen many of the choice cuts from "Vampire's Kiss," Cage's 1988 dark comedy directed by Robert Bierman and written by Joseph Minion.

Stripped from its context, Cage's performance is unreal. In context, it's almost equally so.

With any other actor in the lead role, Bierman and Minion's film likely would be, at best, forgettable or, at worst, a confused misfire. With Cage at his most bug-eyed and manic, "Vampire's Kiss" is impossible to turn off. Like the vampires of myth, it's almost hypnotic.

Shout Factory now brings "Vampire's Kiss" to Blu-ray as part of a comic horror double feature, paired with Neil Jordan's 1988 supernatural rom-com "High Spirits," starring the equally '80s pairing of Steve Guttenberg and Daryl Hannah.

In "Vampire's Kiss," Cage plays Peter Loew, a womanizing publishing executive who spends his nights cruising clubs and his afternoons confessing his feelings of ennui to his therapist (Elizabeth Ashley). In between he spends most of his time at the office making life miserable for his put-upon secretary, Alva ("The Running Man's" Maria Conchita Alonso).

During one night of carousing, Peter picks up a gorgeous woman named Rachel (Jennifer Beals of "Flashdance") who, in the middle of their passionate encounter, bites him on the neck.

From there, Peter, who already was an eccentric, becomes more and more unhinged as he comes to the conclusion that he is turning into a vampire.

At first we think Rachel might really be a vampire and Peter might really be her victim, slowly transforming into a creature of the night. But it's soon clear all this is Peter's delusion and he is descending into madness. And madness is where Cage excels.

In Victorian vampire literature, such as Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla," vampirism represents a release from one's inhibitions. The proper Victorian heroines of Stoker's novel become depraved temptresses after they're bitten by Dracula. In "Carmilla," virginal women succumb to lesbianism. Vampirism in 19th century literature is, more than anything else, an assault on propriety.

When we meet Peter, he's already a jerk and more than a little odd. Even before the  "transformation," Cage gives Peter a strange, unplaceable accent. But after Rachel bites him, Peter ascends to a whole new level of weird. Cage breaks free of his inhibitions and any sense of propriety, and the audience comes out the winner.

Cage's Peter rants, he moans, he twitches — all the while, his mood swings between existential despair and a kind of malevolent glee. When the "vampirized" Peter really gets his freak on, he resembles a comic version of Max Schreck's ratlike Count Orlok in the 1922 version of "Nosferatu." We laugh at Peter, but we wouldn't want to run into him alone in a dark alley.

Vampires in folk tales display obsessive behavior, and so does Peter. He becomes obsessed with a client's contract, which has disappeared from the office files. The notion that something could simply be misfiled makes no sense to him: You put the contract in the file where it belongs. Simple, right?

The missing contract leads to two of Cage's most delirious rants, one to Peter's therapist and the other to Alva, who by this time has become the primary target of Peter's now overt hostility.

Alonso is Cage's perfect foil. Her Alva is every bit as grounded as his Peter is extravagant. Seen from her point of view, "Vampire's Kiss" isn't a dark comedy at all, but a straight-up horror movie about a woman terrorized by a boss whose behavior becomes increasingly erratic until he finally becomes a danger to her. Alva's perspective keeps us grounded, too, lest we buy into Peter's fantasy.

Cage's filmography is filled with off-the-wall roles, from Werner Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" to the 2006 remake of "The Wicker Man." But none of them is quite as outrageous as Cage is in "Vampire's Kiss." This is where we reach peak Nicolas Cage.

Culture Shock 01.08.15: Nicolas Cage gets 'Left Behind'

There was a point in his career when one could have bought Nicolas Cage as a man going through a crisis of faith during a time of global turmoil. But not this point in his career, and not in this movie.

In and out of theaters in the twinkling of an eye, Cage's end times snoozer "Left Behind" has landed on DVD at a rental kiosk near your, where it sits side-by-side with the Syfy original movies it resembles.

Based on the first volume of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' best-selling "Left Behind" series, the movie follows those "left behind" after the rapture of the Christian faithful to heaven, in accordance with premillennialist interpretations of the Bible. As such, it's one of many recent low-budget movies aimed primarily at an evangelical Christian audience. But Cage's participation sets this one apart. Despite a recent string of bad movies, Cage still qualifies as A-list talent, which makes his name above the "Left Behind" title a novelty, to say the least.

It's certainly a step up in star power from the first time someone adapted "Left Behind" for the screen, the 2000 version starring former child actor and would-be Christmas savior Kirk Cameron.

Yet novelty aside, Cage brings nothing to the screen that can salvage this "Left Behind." As Christian outreach, it's tepid at best, falling back on canned platitudes about why God allows bad things to happen to good people. And as an apocalyptic thriller, it's light on both apocalypse and thrills.

Even viewers looking for unintentional camp value will be sorely disappointed. For once, Cage's performance is restrained. His histrionics, which enliven such dire fare as "Ghost Rider" and "The Wicker Man," are nowhere to be found. Cage says he made "Left Behind" in part at the behest of his brother, pastor and radio disc jockey Marc Coppola. But in playing the role of commercial pilot Rayford Steele straight, Cage may have succeeded in pleasing only his brother.

One problem with "Left Behind" is screenwriters/producers Paul Lalonde and John Patus think too small.

Say what you will about LaHaye and Jenkins' book, one thing it has is an epic scope. Owing both to budget and time constraints, the movie limits its action mostly to Steele's airplane, which is in midair halfway across the Atlantic when millions of people — including the copilot and several passengers — disappear from the face of the Earth. When we're not with Rayford and his troubled jetliner, the action shifts to his daughter (Cassi Thomson) back on the ground, where she dodges falling planes and driverless cars. For most of the film, she's the "Left Behind" version of Kim Bauer.

As Rayford's devout wife Irene, Lea Thompson ("Back to the Future") vanishes after just a couple of scenes, making her one of the lucky ones. Stuck with Cage is Chad Michael Murray ("One Tree Hill") as unfortunately-named cable news reporter Buck Williams.

Missing from the film is everything that distinguishes premillennialist sci-fi, such as the previous "Left Behind" and "The Omega Code," from run-of-the-mill disaster movies. There's no hint here of LaHaye and Jenkins' antichrist figure, Nicolae Carpathia.

Also missing is any sense of internal logic. After the rapture, Rayford is unable to make radio contact with the outside world, as if everyone with a radio were among the spirited away.

What remains is a bargain-basement "Airport" knockoff, shellacked with a coat of premillennialist theology so thin no one even uses the term "rapture." The target audience must have sensed the watered-down message and stayed away from the theatrical run in droves. "Left Behind" grossed just $19.7 million worldwide, while another preaching-to-the-choir movie from the same distributor, "God's Not Dead," did $60 million in domestic business alone.

For everyone else, "Left Behind" is weak tea even when compared to other end times movies, never mind when compared to secular disaster flicks. Its characters exist in a world of PG-13 explosions and G-rated language. Worst of all, "Left Behind" is the one thing you'd least expect of a Nicolas Cage movie about the end of days: It's just plain boring.

Culture Shock 05.06.10: Nicolas Cage flirts with insanity in New Orleans

Directing "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans" is not the greatest challenge of Werner Herzog's film-making career. He did not, after all, have to drag a steamboat over a mountain. He just had to direct Nicolas Cage.

Since winning his Oscar, Cage has turned in a number of lackluster performances. The less said of "Ghost Rider," the better. But in New Orleans police Lt. Terence McDonagh — the titular bad lieutenant — Cage has found a role that suits his eccentricities.

Perhaps that is what drew Herzog to make a film that, at first glance, doesn't seem like a Herzog film. The title suggests either a remake of Abel Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant," which starred Harvey Keitel, or a sequel. But it is neither.

Herzog has long gravitated toward obsessed or deranged characters, finding more truth in them than in mundane reality. How else could he have survived his long partnership with Klaus Kinski, which he documented in the film "My Best Fiend"? Now, with Cage, Herzog has formed a new partnership. But the insanity remains in front of the camera. This time, there are no urban legends of the uncompromising German director threatening his star with a gun.

Lt. McDonagh, however, threatens many people: young couples, drug dealers, elderly women tethered to oxygen tanks. Relentless insanity bubbles beneath his surface, rising violently only to recede again like the ocean tide.

New Orleans, through Herzog's lens, is similarly relentless, a near barren post-Katrina wasteland. We see the French Quarter from its edges, but we see the Lower 9th Ward in full view.

Cage's McDonagh is strangely mesmerizing, hunched over like Richard III and fueled by Vicodin and cocaine. Ironically, the bad lieutenant's bad habit is the result of a good deed. He injures his back while saving a jail inmate from drowning during Hurricane Katrina. Afterward, he must pop pills and snort lines merely to function.

"Bad Lieutenant," however, is not a brief against drug abuse, although it portrays it as anything but glamorous. McDonagh is a high-functioning addict. He juggles gambling debts, a high-class prostitute girlfriend (Eva Mendes), the mob, a drug lord (Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner) and a murder investigation involving a slain family. All, however, threaten to fall, and in so doing alert his fellow officers to his illegal doings.

Was McDonagh a bad cop before his injury and substance abuse? We do not know. Is he truly a bad cop afterward? By all legal and moral standards, yes. Yet he is still more ethical than his partner, played by Val Kilmer.

Herzog does not offer easy answers. What, after all, is the significance of the alligator and the iguanas who, shot on a shaky video camera by Herzog himself, appear as mute spectators to the proceedings? Are they merely McDonagh's hallucinations? Or do they hold greater significance?

And what are we to make of the dead man's soul, which McDonagh sees still dancing even after its corporeal home has been shot full of holes? Is it just another sign of his insanity?

In the end, perhaps there are no answers, merely a punch line, but a punch line well worth the telling. For Herzog and Cage, all is a dark comedy, and the joke is on humanity.

"Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans" is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.