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 09.18.14: Hipster vampires make immortality a drag

At first it seems as though we're meant to identify with Adam and Eve, the couple at the center of Jim Jarmusch's latest film, "Only Lovers Left Alive," new to DVD and Blu-ray.

If nothing else, we're to envy their glamorous lifestyle. They're beautiful, civilized and have impeccable taste. They've traveled the world, met famous people and done things the rest of us can only dream of. And their love is eternal.

Adam and Eve, you see, are vampires.

Many movies tell us immortality is boring, but Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive" is the first to make the audience really experience it. Putting up with Adam and Eve, played by Tom Hiddleston ("Thor") and Tilda Swinton ("Snowpiercer"), is enough to test anyone's patience.

The movies have given us goth vampires and punk vampires. They've even — heaven help us — given us WASP vampires. But Adam and Eve may be the first hipster vampires.

Eve is the literary type. When packing for a trip, she fills her luggage with a little light reading, such as the late David Foster Wallace's critically lauded doorstop, "Infinite Jest."

Adam is a musician, and a good one, too, with a growing following on the underground music scene, nurtured by his reclusiveness and refusal to perform live. Not that he wants to be popular. Far from it. Adam regards popularity as a "drag." He was a fan of himself before he was cool.

He'd much rather hole up in his home, surrounded by analog technology and vintage recordings of musicians you've probably never heard of.

Adam is also a fan of scientists, which gives him cause to vent about how humanity keeps ignoring or persecuting them. He grumbles that people still haven't come to grips with Charles Darwin, and he powers his off-the-grid house, located in an especially bleak part of bleakest Detroit, with one of Nikola Tesla's "free energy" generators. Just when you think our hipster vampire can't be any more cliché, he dabbles in steampunk.

Both Adam and Eve have plenty of money, although neither seems to have a way of earning it. Maybe they have rich vampire parents somewhere? But money means nothing to them, except when it buys vintage musical instruments or the best all-natural, free-range, organically farmed, preservative-free blood. Eve's connection for the "good stuff" is Elizabethan playwright-turned-vampire Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), who claims to have written the works attributed to Shakespeare, although I'm not sure he's trustworthy. Adam's source is a Dr. Watson (Jeffrey Wright), if that is his real name.

Stalking victims and sucking them dry is played out. After all, you don't know where they've been or what they've been eating.

Eva and Adam, we're told, are passionately in love, but passion seems the farthest thing from either of them. What they are is comfortable, like Adam's centuries-old dressing gown.

The film finally livens up when Eve's wild-child sister, Ava (a marvelous Mia Wasikowska), drops in and makes things uncomfortable. Ava is a mess, but she is the only one who sees Adam and Eve for what they are: "condescending snobs."

As far as Adam and Eve are concerned, we're the problem: you, me and the rest of humanity, whom they dismiss as "zombies." It recalls the words of the original hipster, Henry David Thoreau, who wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Adam and Eve read the right books and listen to the right music, always on vinyl. When Ava asks if she can have a download of one of Adam's songs, his contempt is palpable.

Jarmusch fills the screen with pretty pictures, and Swinton and Hiddleston are charismatic enough to command our attention, even if their characters do nothing to deserve it. It's only at the end, the final shot, that we see Jarmusch has played a joke on his lovers, and perhaps, unintentionally, himself.

Driven by hunger and desperation, Adam and Eve revert to the old ways. Their masks of refinement drop, and the vampires are just zombies, too. It's a good punch line, but it's not worth the set-up.

Culture Shock 01.16.14: 'Byzantium' gives vampires back their blood

In the 20 years since director Neil Jordan brought Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" to the screen, the vampire genre has become — forgive the pun — almost bloodless.

HBO's "True Blood" bathes in blood and sex like a Countess Bathory of self parody, but it is, nonetheless, parody. Otherwise we have endured a long "Twilight" struggle. Mopy vampires who sparkle in the sunlight? It's downright embarrassing. Nosferatu hides his rat-toothed face in shame.

And Jordan is indirectly to blame, contributing as he did to Rice's fortunes.

The Lestat of "Interview" may have been a monster, but with each subsequent installment of her Vampire Chronicles, Rice arced in an ever more emo direction, eventually leading to Stephenie Meyer and her creepy, obsessive, teen-stalking Edward Cullen — the man-child of Meyer's dreams.

So it's appropriate penance that Jordan's return to vampires is the anti-"Twilight." Gone is the overcast blah of Forks, Wash. Say hello to the full-blooded spectacle of "Byzantium" (Blu-ray, DVD).

"Byzantium" gives this undead genre more life than it has had in years.

When we meet vampire mother Clara (Gemma Arterton, "Quantum of Solace") and daughter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan, "Hanna"), they've been on the run for two centuries, moving quietly from town to town and home to home.

Forced into prostitution while a young girl during the Napoleonic Wars, Clara long ago embraced the lifestyle. She tells a disapproving Eleanor more than once that someone has to put food on the table.

But for Clara sex work is as much about empowerment as economic necessity. She uses it to lure her victims, abusive men whose deaths make the world a more beautiful place, or so she says. And she uses it to empower other women, too, giving drug-addicted streetwalkers a safe and profitable place to ply their trade away from pimps and police.

That safe place is Byzantium, a former hotel and, more recently, boarding house with rooms to spare and windows illuminated by the warm neon glow of its eponymous signage.

Byzantium is a matriarchal refuge. Although a man holds the lease — inherited from his mother — he isn't in charge. Clara is. Byzantium is her headquarters for the final campaign in her centuries-old battle of the sexes. It's also the battlefield for her more personal war with Eleanor.

Most children are ready to leave home by their teens. Imagine if you were stuck living with your mom for 200 years. So, the other half of the story is Eleanor's long-overdue coming of age.

Raised in an orphanage until Clara liberates her, Eleanor is reserved and isolated. She feeds only on the old and sick — people who are ready to pass on, anyway. She has no common ground with her worldly mom and no one in whom she can confide. That is, until she meets a kindred spirit in Frank (Caleb Landry Jones, "X-Men: First Class"), a young man who has had his own brush with death.

Jordan and screenwriter Moira Buffini, adapting her own stage production, create a vampire mythology with some new twists. Clara becomes a vampire, or "sucreant," as they're called here, by stealing a map intended for the man who forced her into prostitution. The map leads to a cave on a barren island, a cave where one can die and be reborn as an immortal.

Until Clara discovers it, the island is reserved for an all-male Brotherhood, which is none too happy when Clara forces her way into their ranks. And when Clara makes Eleanor a sucreant, too, the Brotherhood marks both for death. Creation, the Brotherhood says, is reserved for men.

In "Byzantium," sex is the ultimate weapon. Both Clara and Eleanor are rape survivors. Clara uses her sexuality to take control of her life. Male vampires jealously guard their own form of procreation, and the island and its cave birth eternal life in gushing fountains of blood.

It's as far removed from Bella Swan's passive, suicidal lovesickness as you can get. Clara and Eleanor certainly aren't waiting on any knights in sparkly armor to come along.

Culture Shock 09.06.12: 'Twins of Evil' has risen from grave

By the early 1970s, the old-fashioned gothic horror that was Hammer Films' stock-in-trade for nearly 15 years was looking dated. Period pieces about vampires and mad scientists' monsters were out.

Contemporary films about joining a satanic cult and having the devil's baby were in.

Hammer tried, unsuccessfully, to get in on the act with 1976's "To the Devil a Daughter," which is best known today for it's revealing final scene featuring a young Nastassja Kinski.

But in 1971, Hammer took one of its last stabs at the period vampire story, and the result was one of the best films of Hammer's late period: "Twins of Evil."

Long unavailable in the U.S., "Twins of Evil" has been brilliantly restored by cult-film distributor Synapse Films and released as a Blu-ray/DVD combo. It's a fair bet the finished product looks as good if not better than when "Twins of Evil" was originally released.

"Twins of Evil" is the third and final installment in Hammer's loosely connected "Karnstein trilogy," three films all based, to one degree or another, on Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla."

His tale of a female vampire stalking female victims, with its strong sexual themes lurking just below the surface, was perfect for Hammer, which was looking for stronger, sexier content in the face of lessened censorship and increased competition.

Yet, ironically, given it's Playboy Playmate leads, "Twins of Evil" is the tamest of the trilogy.

The story begins with orphaned twins Frieda and Maria (Madeleine and Mary Collinson, Playboy's first twin Playmates) arriving to live with relatives in 19th century Central Europe. But their uncle Gustav (Hammer mainstay Peter Cushing) is the leader of a Puritan sect seeking to rid the land of all forms of vice. And that doesn't sit well with the more adventurous twin, Frieda, who is quickly drawn to ribald tales of the local nobleman, the debauched Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas).

Unknown to the villagers, Karnstein is a vampire, and he easily entices Frieda with the promise of an eternal life away from her strict uncle, setting up the inevitable conflict with her virginal sister, who, we must not forget, is also her twin. So you know where this is going.

What sets "Twins of Evil" apart is its rejection of simple, either/or dichotomies. Earlier vampire films, including Hammer's, paint vampires as a threat to good and decent Victorian morality. Many of Dracula's female victims only come alive, metaphorically speaking, as vampires — Barbara Shelley's Helen in "Dracula: Prince of Darkness" is a prime example. But then it is up to strong, heroic, Victorian menfolk to put stakes through their hearts and save their souls.

For much of "Twins of Evil," however, it's hard to tell who is the real villain, the moralist Gustav Weil or the immoralist Count Karnstein. Fortunately, this time they don't represent the only options.

Although overshadowed by Cushing's other Hammer roles, notably Baron Frankenstein and Professor Van Helsing, Weil is a brilliant performance. Cushing plays him with unquestionable conviction. Even if he is a misguided crusader with a simplistic view of what is righteous, one thing Weil is not is a hypocrite. And he is never such a caricature that it's impossible to feel sympathy for him. For fans of the horror master, this is an essential performance.

For fans of classic horror, Synapse's restored "Twins of Evil" is an essential release, not the least for the bonus documentary feature "The Flesh and the Fury: X-Posing Twins of Evil." At 84 minutes, it's nearly as long as the film itself, and it covers everything from Le Fanu's original story, to the first two Karnstein films, "The Vampire Lovers" and "Lust for a Vampire," to the final days of the original Hammer Films.

"Twins of Evil" is one vampire movie that has been left in the crypt far too long.

Culture Shock 06.24.10: Summer brings not-so-scary monsters

If summer 1967 was the Summer of Love, then summer 2010 is shaping up to be the Summer of Blood.

With the June 13 premiere of its third season, "True Blood" has cemented its place as HBO's must-see successor to "The Sopranos." 

On Sunday, ABC rolled out "The Gates." Think of it as "Desperate Housewives" meets "Dracula," set in a private gated community where everyone has a dark secret. And you can already hear teenage girls and their moms squealing with anticipation as Edward, Bella and Jacob get set to return Wednesday in "Eclipse," the third installment in the inexplicable yet unstoppable "Twilight Saga." Wherever you turn, you can't help but run into vampires, werewolves and, sometimes, even a witch or two.

Never ones to be left out, zombies are on the prowl, too. AMC has already geared up its publicity campaign for its new series, "The Walking Dead," which debuts in October. Filmed in Atlanta and based on the acclaimed Image Comics series written by Robert Kirkman, "The Walking Dead" follows the survivors of a zombie outbreak as they try to avoid becoming dinner for the undead.

Vampires, werewolves and zombies — between them, monsters are having a major resurgence, not unlike the blossoming of horror movies during the Great Depression, when Universal Studios unleashed Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolf Man on unsuspecting theatergoers. According to the conventional wisdom, there is something about hard times that makes people turn to the macabre.

But the "conventional wisdom" is seldom right, and "macabre" doesn't really describe this new batch of "monsters."

Werewolves are no longer tortured souls condemned to turn into ravenous beasts during every full moon, posing an unwitting danger to those they love. Instead, they can transform from human into wolf at will, while still retaining their human intelligence.

Meanwhile, not all vampires are destined to lurk forever in the darkness. Some can venture out into the daylight and lead largely normal lives, apart from slipping off for an occasional bite. They run multinational corporations, have spacious homes in the suburbs and jet around the world to meet with the head vampire, or whatever. Some of them even sparkle in the sun, but the less said about that, the better.

Zombies are a bit harder to tame, but you can at least make fun of them. Except for "The Walking Dead," which plays the zombie genre straight, most recent zombie stories have played zombies for laughs. Whether it's "Zombieland" or "Shaun of the Dead" or "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," it's getting really difficult to take those shambling, brain-craving corpses seriously.

Sure, vampires and werewolves still come down with a case of bloodlust from time to time, especially when they are fighting each other during one of their interspecies turf wars (see: "Twilight" and "Underworld"). But for the most part, they have gone from being bloodthirsty monsters to romantic heroes, or at least anti-heroes.

And they fall for the dullest women. Seriously, are there two more boring fictional characters than Bella Swan and Sookie Stackhouse? I haven't read the books, but if the movies and the TV series are any indication, they're the least interesting characters in their own stories.

So, what does it mean that vampires and werewolves are now romantic leads? For one thing, I suppose it means people don't mind May-December romances anymore, even if December is in an entirely different century. Also, excess body hair is apparently no longer a deal breaker, which is good news not only for werewolves but for Robin Williams, too.

Or, maybe it means that the suave romantic vampire represents bloodsucking capitalists who sell themselves to the masses via slick marketing, while the werewolf represents the oppressed working class trying to strike back at its centuries-old oppressors, only to lose its shirt and the girl in the process.

Or not. I'm pretty sure you have to be a Marxist college professor to buy all of that, but you never know.

George Romero's zombie movie "Dawn of the Dead" is supposedly an allegory for mindless consumerism. But what I learned from it was that the mall has everything I need to fight zombies.

Culture Shock 07.09.09: 'Twilight' is the Lifetime take on vampire movies

There are things worse than "Twilight." Root canals, for instance. But when it comes to major Hollywood productions, "Twilight" is amazingly, stupendously awful.

How awful is that? It's somewhere between "Ishtar" and "Battlefield Earth" on the scale of movie awfulness. It's like a Lifetime Television made-for-cable version of a vampire movie, except it doesn't star Tori Spelling.

By this point, I realize, I've offended a lot of people. Millions, probably.

"Twilight" was the No. 7 theatrical release of 2008, grossing more than $191 million domestically. More than 3 million copies of the DVD sold on its first day of availability. And the four books that comprise Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" saga to date have sold a combined 7.7 million copies in just the United States.

The movie version of the second book, "New Moon," is scheduled for release Nov. 20, and it will probably be one of the year's top-grossing movies, too, because it seems a lot of people really, really love "Twilight," in all of its incarnations.

Now, I'm not one to idly engage in fomenting panic and hysteria. I'm the guy who usually uses this space to tell you not to worry, because video games, trashy TV, popular music and comic books will not turn your children into juvenile delinquents, teenage mothers or that most pathetic of social outcasts, game show hosts.

But I do worry that America is raising a generation that will think vampires sparkle in the sunlight.

Whenever I see some teenage girl reading one of Meyer's books, I feel like yelling, "When I was your age, our vampires didn't sparkle in the sunlight! They shriveled up and died! Why, some of them even caught fire! And the ones who didn't at least had the common decency to lose their powers during the day! And we liked it that way!"

Then I shake my fist and tell the girl to get off my lawn.

But not to be an old fogey, I recently subjected myself to "Twilight" — after putting it off as long as I possibly could.

Reading the book was out of the question. I skimmed a few pages, and that was about all I could take. People on the Internet are churning out Kirk/Spock fan fiction written with more style. So, I watched the movie, instead.

Did I mention the movie is awful?

Still, I learned a lot by watching "Twilight." For example, I learned that vampires are basically just superheroes who crave blood, except they don't have to drink the blood of humans. Only bad vampires do that, and the bad vampires don't show up — bringing the plot along with them — until the end of the movie. Also, vampires love baseball, which gives them a chance to show off their superpowers.

Is this a vampire movie or an episode of "Smallville"?

The rest of "Twilight" is like one of those Lifetime movies in which the girl is stalked by some creepy guy who turns out to be a serial killer. Only this time, the guy is the hero, and I'm supposed to like him because he's dreamy, plus he's a vampire. And the girl is, like, totally cool with him stalking her and watching her while she sleeps. Ick.

Did I mention the girl is a teenager and the vampire was born in 1901? But that's OK, because "Twilight" is the most sexless vampire movie ever. This is the only time that drinking blood hasn't been a metaphor for anything. Besides, the lead actors, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, have all the chemistry of a lump of lead.

Immediately after watching "Twilight," I felt like I needed to crack open my skull and scrub my brain with bleach. But instead, I watched a real vampire movie, "Dracula A.D. 1972," starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as the vampire-hunting Professor Van Helsing.

Dracula hates sunlight, and when he stalks you, it's not because he has a bad case of puppy love. Now that's a vampire.