Vampire's Kiss

  Blender Dumbass
October 06, 2023

👁 57

Francis Ford Coppola, a director behind things like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now did not direct Vampire's Kiss. It was directed by Robert Bierman. A director who did mostly work for TV. And who's directing style is not necessarily bad. I don't think he is bad. The movies do not feel terribly directed. It's just it seems that as a director he is not necessarily exciting.

The shot choices and camera moves in Vampire's Kiss are rather standard and basic most of the time. There are interesting comedic compositions here and there, which proves that Robert is not a bad director. But he is not Spielbergian and not showy. Which makes his directing style kind of underwhelming. But Vampire's Kiss is not a director's film. It's an actor's film.

Francis Ford Coppola, on the other hand, directed a different movie called Peggy Sue Got Married in which Nicolas Cage plays alongside Jim Carrey, often in the same shot. Which is an absolutely genius decision. The two actors complement each other very well.

A lot of people say about Vampire's Kiss that if not for Nicolas Cage, it would not have worked. I'm of an opinion that the only person that could change Nick in the movie, would be Jim Carrey. If you like movies where Jim Carrey goes bananas and you want to see a very similar level of bananas but from a different actor, watch Vampire's Kiss. Nick acted his ass off in this film.

It's a movie similar in concept to something like American Psycho where a business person starts slowly going more and more insane, to the point that he starts committing murders and being all kinds of silly. But while American Psycho is more of psychological thriller, Vampire's Kiss is straight up black comedy. It's a story about a guy who slowly comes to an idea that he is a vampire, while he is not. And the movie has a lot of fun with this concept.

Nicolas Cage starts the film relatively normal. Still a bit Nick Cagy. But normal enough to see him as just a guy. Toward the end of the movie he goes completely bananas. And I love it.

Some visuals in the movie are quite awesome. While most of it was shot as if just to cover the craziness of Nick Cage, there were a scene or two where the director actually got a little creative. Though with a lot of help from Cage. There is a reference to Nosferatu, a silent, black and white, 1922 German expressionist horror film about a vampire. A scene from the movie is shown on the TV. And then Nick Cage desperately tries to look exactly the same while walking around in a night club. And it's just the most ridiculous thing ever.

If you are watching this film with somebody, give them something to punch. The character is not likable in any way. I saw it with my girlfriend today, and she nearly broke the screen in one scene because she punched it so hard. So I gave her a random notebook to punch instead every other time that he does something unbearably punch-worthy.

Some critics criticized the movie for lacking empathy to the main character. Something similar with empathy to the main character is called The House That Jack Built and it's a very hard movie to watch just because of it. So the lack of empathy towards the character makes Vampire's Kiss a lot easier to swallow. Yes, technically Nick Cage's character is the main character, but you can also just view it as something like a story told about a serial killer or something, empathizing more with the victims than with the killer. We follow this guy around in the movie. We perhaps shown various ways he thinks, or ways he sees the world. But we care not about him, but about those he attacks instead. While we laugh at him and his stupidity.

Happy Hacking!!!

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