MovieChat Forums > Vampire's Kiss (1989) Discussion > Oh, the irony of stupid people calling p...

Oh, the irony of stupid people calling people stupid for not getting it.


Back in the 1980s, we had a massive homeless problem. Many of the homeless were mentally ill people who had no resources to help them, because of policies in the 1980s in which social programs for the mentally ill were cut.

This movie was attempting to highlight the problem, to show how a person who lives a perfectly ordinary and even successful life could end up on the streets due to mental illness. The reason why this film was made was that at the time, people were still copping an attitude about the homeless, writing them off as either druggie losers or lowlifes who chose to be panhandlers rather than work. The truth is that many homeless were simply mentally ill people who couldn't function in society anymore, some of who were leading successful lives.

So Vampire's Kiss is a tragedy about a high powered executive who "has it all" and joins the ranks of the homeless when he develops schizophrenia. The delusion he has in the beginning of being bitten by a vampire is the start of his illness, and it becomes full blown schizophrenia in the end.

Unfortunately, because Nicolas Cage is a self-indulgent ham, he ruined what was supposed to be a tragic story and turned it into something else entirely. It's why people hate this film. They saw it for what it was, and that was Cage ruining a movie with his performance.

So the people who don't like this film aren't "stupid." They get it. They see that it was a badly executed film. It's the people calling others out for being "stupid" in not seeing how "funny" it is are the ones who are stupid. What they think passes for "brilliant comedy" in this film was really bad acting from Nicolas Cage and poor direction. But leave it to hipsters (who live by the credo, "unintentionally hilarious") to think this was some kind of comic masterpiece and then trash others for being stupid in not "getting it."

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Well, you clearly misunderstand this movie if you think it was supposed to be a drama about mental illness.

It's a surrealistic horror comedy with an amazing performance by Cage. That's the tone of all of Minion's movies. It succeeded brilliantly at what it meant to do.

You're discrediting the movie, the actors, everyone who worked on it, and the people who truly grasp what it was meant to be by claiming it was botched. Just because you don't like it and wanted something else, doesn't mean it was a failure.

I must be a hipster because I laugh at the well written and performed COMEDY in this movie. It's so ironic to like a movie un-ironically nowadays!

Shaka Da Gnu

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How does that apply though? Sure he descends into madness from whatever reason but where do you get the homeless angle from?

At the end of the movie he was not out on the streets, he was still in his swanky apartment using what was probably a high end coffee table (futon?) as his coffin and then he gets impaled. Homelessness does not enter into it at all from what I remember.

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