VAMPIRE'S KISS (1989)
Directed by Robert Bierman
Starring Nicolas Cage and Maria Conchita Alonso
Awesome!
Cage plays a New York, yuppie literary agent who suspects he was bitten by a vampire (Jennifer Beals). You get the idea, however, that he may just be going insane. As he goes further and further down a path toward either insanity or undeath, he begins sadistically harassing an office worker (Alonso).
Produced nearly a decade before Cage became a mega-star, "Vampire's Kiss" was a great forum for his over-the-top acting ability. The message of the film is clear and one that we can all agree with: yuppies suck and their superficial values only lead to self-destruction.
But the film also a turning point in the horror genre. It was ambiguous, gory, funny and well-done. In the late 1980s, "horror" was generally synonymous with the terms "camp" and "stupid." "Vampire's Kiss," which was marketed as a comedy (even though it isn't), was as much an art film as it was a fear flick. Later, big-city vampire films would owe a lot to it, among them "The Addiction," "Nadja" and "Habit."
Highly recommended.