Episode 148 - Vampire's Kiss: LIVE!

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

also, i know it's just a movie poster and they don't always give a true representation of a movie but can someone explain this to me ... does it have anything to do with anything?

 

[RickeyBertram 2]

When I first show this movie on Showtime in high school I was really confused. From the trailer I thought that it would be like Once Bitten. Boy was I wrong. Nick Cage stood out as a performer to be revered and feared for me even then.

 

I work in healthcare and after thinking back to Nick Cage's symptoms in the movie, I believe that he is suffering from Neurosyphilis!! Neurosyphilis is a form of syphilis that you can develop which attacks the lining of the brain and causes all kinds of mental issues. When an elderly person presents with senility or Alzheimer the first thing the doctor will try to rule out is syphilis.

 

Cage is banging chicks left and right in the 80s and most likely raw dogging it. He was bound to pick something up and syphilis would definitely by in the top five VD to get in the 80s. This fits with the movie perfectly! You don't watch 8 years of House MD without learning a little something about medicine.

[Cakebug Tranch 6873]

also, i know it's just a movie poster and they don't always give a true representation of a movie but can someone explain this to me ... does it have anything to do with anything?

 

 

This image is seen in the film at the 1.07 mark (see link below), when Peter is lying in his couch coffin and Flashdance comes in to talk to him. I assume they liked the image of Cage below Beals's legs, so they replicated it for the poster.

 

http://imgur.com/a/gTmMN

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

 

This image is seen in the film at the 1.07 mark (see link below), when Peter is lying in his couch coffin and Flashdance comes in to talk to him. I assume they liked the image of Cage below Beals's legs, so they replicated it for the poster.

 

http://imgur.com/a/gTmMN

with all the other carnage going on i didn't even see that .. great spot.

 

to be honest with you when i looked it up i couldn't for the life of me remember seeing that scene before. i got so caught up with cage's performance i'm now wondering what else ive missed?

 

great catch though

[GiveMeYourBaby 102]

Was the therapist ever real? Once things started going full Cage I remember thinking that she had been a delusion the whole time.

[IRONicmerMAN 391]

From what I can now tell, Sir Nicolas Cage's batshitedness started long ago. I initially assumed (incorrectly) it was later in life when he went off the deep end. Vampire's Kiss was 1989, when he also starred in an Italian film called Time to Kill. It sounds bonkers, and it looks like he was up to the task.

 

https://www.wikiwand...ill_(1989_film)

 

[jarrycanada 2483]

From what I can tell, Sir Nic Cage's batshitedness started long ago. I initially assumed it was later in life when he went off the deep end. Vampire's Kiss was 1989, when he also starred in an Italian film called Time to Kill. It sounds bonkers, and it looks like he was up to the task.

 

https://www.wikiwand...ill_(1989_film)

 

I've seen Time to Kill, it's the same story but with

 

 

I can't for the life of me find a copy in English on the net. I had first seen it on cable tv. it was that good of a film that it had gone right to cable tv.

 

 

driving along in my car and had my phone on random play list and this song comes on from the Juno sound track. .

 

I am a

. I just started smiling. btw I just got done watching season 3 of "the strain", they got it right!!! "thrilling" should be labeled on the poster artwork.

[IRONicmerMAN 391]

Just saw this beauty. Tour de Force from Sir Nicolas Cage. Multiple samples from Vampire's Kiss.

 

[IRONicmerMAN 391]

I'm really upset by how many people took this terrible movie so seriously. I get it, trumpers won and its upsetting and everything is terrible and sensitivity is turned up to 11. I feel bad that some of you took alva's plight to heart but take it easy. This movie was made a generation ago. It was deliberately made as a shocking horror-comedy and it doesn't actually include or depict a rape... (see Cakebug's post above.) He rips her shirt, goes to bite her neck and she faints. He bites/hickey's her neck for another 5 seconds and then tries to kill himself. Far, far worse is shown in film and television frequently. Is he an abusive asshole to Alva all movie long? Yes. But are we supposed to be rooting for him? NO. Cage is the monster and the butt of the joke this entire movie! His decent into madness is what all the humor derives from. He's not a hero to be praised. He's a paragon of narcissism and mania... The creators and actors aren't normalizing abuse and rape. At worst they're poking fun at the mentally challenged but get over it, it was the 80's and he's a fictional character. I'm pretty sure past HDTGM movies have delved into far worse than making fun of a particularly disturbed individual and a particularly hapless, though incompetent, women being abused by her employer. I know, it's sad, she's such a typical victim and she clearly feels so powerless and ashamed. But come on, I refuse to believe that enjoying this movie makes me some kind of rape-apologist.

 

There's so much more to this movie than that... It's surrealist and Cage-insanity at it's peak. Every scene and acting decision not involving Alva is hysterical. All the background details and extras are phenomenal. His whole lifestyle post-insanity is amazing. The couch-coffin? Genius. Catching and eating a pigeon, feathers strewn about the apartment? Love it. Shouting 'I love you' and immediately retching. Made me spit-take. Et Cetera. (I realize this basically reads like a 2nd opinion)

 

I never imagined I'd have to defend this crazy bad movie here. I loved it, and I'll leave you all with a hearty 'Boo-HOOOO'

Any other week, and I think you'd have a valid argument. However, the orange-hued embodiment of some of this film's sentiment just won arguably the most powerful position on the planet. While I can't say it struck the same chord with me, I can see how this was a difficult one-two punch last week.

 

One odd point from the Time to Kill, which I mentioned in another post. It's from the same year and also features a Cage rape. Very strange.

[RyanHorn 31]

One part of the commentary I found interesting was that Cage was impersonating Mick Jagger during the alphabet scene. Can somebody sync the clip to a Rolling Stones song? Please.

[RyanHorn 31]

The pigeon that he catches was "humanely drugged" according to the commentary. How the hell do you drug a pigeon?

[CeeJayL-RocketshipWalker 2]

I don't know if anybody else made this comment but nobody even humored the idea that there was a real vampire playing off of his emotions driving him crazy so that in the end he actually ends up crazy he was never a vampire but there was a vampire that existed gas lighting him.

[ElieB 238]

Hahaha I think King of Spayeds just cracked the case. Our poor lovelorn, oddly accented and self-righteous "hero" was just being trolled by some bored vampires in the big apple. So all the time he's giving Alva the worthless garbage treatment, he's on the receiving end of lady vampire's similar treatment. The big hint being the nightclub scene where one second lady-vampire is pretending to be concerned that he's legit crazy, and as soon as he's out of sight she shares a mischievous look with her vampire-Bo and they both laugh hysterically. I mean, they could just be laughing at a crazy person, it's not out of character with the movie, but I'm on board with the gas-lighting vampires theory.

[ElieB 238]

The pigeon that he catches was "humanely drugged" according to the commentary. How the hell do you drug a pigeon?

 

I wanna know how the pigeon's feathers ended up scattered all over his apartment. I mean, if he's just being a vampire, all he's gotta do is bite it and suck out the blood but it's as if he shook it around in his teeth like an attack dog or shot the pigeon with a shotgun and it exploded.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

To anyone that follows wrestling, the "Broken" Matt Hardy character IS Nicolas Cage in this movie, right?

[RyanSz 3140]

To anyone that follows wrestling, the "Broken" Matt Hardy character IS Nicolas Cage in this movie, right?

I'd say Broken Hardy is more in line with Cage's character in Deadfall action-wise, while his speech is patterned similar to this character.

[tomspanks 9039]

The pigeon that he catches was "humanely drugged" according to the commentary. How the hell do you drug a pigeon?

 

Bird Benadryl?

[Cam Bert 8145]

First off just a warning this post will be a bit long and image heavy. Sorry for making you scroll through it all in advance.

 

How Did This Get Named?

When movies come to Japan sometimes they change the name to make it easier to understand, if the name is a play off a saying or idiom that is not the same in Japanese, or to be more in line with the international name. However, a majority of the time it's just simply a phonetic retooling of the name. So in this case the Vampire's Kiss simply became バンパイアキッス (Banpaia Kissu) which is a fascinating story if you are a linguistics nerd because both words have other phonetic spellings which are used in different situations. However, this week this not really a story of how did this get named. Rather it is a case of how did this get marketed.

 

So as some of you might be aware Japan can be particularly tardy with getting movies. For example, I have to wait until January to see Doctor Strange. However this isn't always the case because we got Civil War a week earlier than America. The reasons why some movies are delayed is complicated. Sometimes it is so it can align better with Japanese public holidays or vacation periods, and sometimes it's to leave room for bigger Japanese movies. Such was the case in the summer of 1989. There was one movie that had a lot of buzz around it, and when it was released on June 23 it smashed records at the time. That film was Tim Burton's Batman. In Japan however Batman was not to be shown until December but the hype was there. Now, comedies are hard to market internationally. Humor is not always universal, and dark humor especially not. However high-concept horror movies are marketable, but Vampire's Kiss is a low-concept horror story mixed with dark humor. A hard sell to be sure but the most hyped movie of the summer also involves bats and a big city and they ran with that. I give you the first poster for the film.

 

Based on the imagery and words this is clearly an attempt to cash in on the hype and word of mouth of Batman. First in the upper left corner the "bat symbol" saying "Bat & Girl" with the ampersand being almost too small to see. Then at the bottom is a woman dressed up as a poor Ben Cooper-esque Batman costume. So to translate the poster. Again reading right to left I will bold the purple text. "By day a beautiful working girl, by night a cool vampire, from the country having a bat boom, comes a bat & girl! Get ready narcissistic New Yorkers with alliterative motives!" The second part is a bad pun. It says "one thing in their heart and a second thing in hand" which is an expression meaning to have alliterative motives. However the pun is that the second part can also be read to mean "a bulge in their pants." Now, yes it was a "bat boom" with Batman and all but also the mid to late 80s had tons of Vampire themed movies as well. After all that in the bottom left hand side it says Vampire's Kiss and above it, it is billed as a slightly naughty horror comedy.

 

Well this is all fine and well but when the movie comes out on VHS this doesn't make for a good covers. Too wordy and people will have forgotten Batman by then. So then when released on VHS they went with the left cover which was also an alternative movie poster. Just the bat symbol with Jennifer Beals in it. Years later when Nicolas Cage became more well known it was changed once more to this cover.

 

And finally years and years later when it was released on DVD they decided one more time to try and shake up the cover.

Notice the clearly added in after the fact fangs on Nicolas Cage.

 

I know this was long and picture heavy, but I found the original poster so fascinating I just had to dig into it and the subtle evolution over time was also worth pointing out. Also when I wanted to find more information out about the original poster I ran across a Japanese guy who runs a blog called "とってもニコラス!" or "Very Nicolas!" which I found to be very funny and charming.

[Cakebug Tranch 6873]

Wow! Cam Bert, you win the no-prize this week, I don't care what Scheer decides. Amazing post!

[NathanGordon 1096]

Hi guys! I've been so distracted and distressed by the US election that I haven't been here in a couple weeks. This movie has helped me heal a little bit; I'm still smarting. I believe in the restorative powers of comedy podcasts.

 

My favorite part from this episode:

 

[tomspanks 9039]

How Did This Get Named?

When movies come to Japan sometimes they change the name to make it easier to understand, if the name is a play off a saying or idiom that is not the same in Japanese, or to be more in line with the international name. However, a majority of the time it's just simply a phonetic retooling of the name. So in this case the Vampire's Kiss simply became バンパイアキッス (Banpaia Kissu) which is a fascinating story if you are a linguistics nerd because both words have other phonetic spellings which are used in different situations. However, this week this not really a story of how did this get named. Rather it is a case of how did this get marketed.

 

 

 

Very interesting read.

So in Japanese, it's just Vampire Kiss, not Vampire's Kiss?

And why bat & girl, instead of bat girl? I'm loving that bat's tail with a bow on it. What a feminine bat!

[RyanSz 3140]

I'm going off topic here but I've been listening to old episodes of the show and now strongly feel that if the makers of the upcoming Gilmore Girls restart, they need to cast superfan of the show Zouks...as Rafi. If I can hear this line: then the show will be incredible and forever amazing.

[JammerLea 2070]

 

Very interesting read.

So in Japanese, it's just Vampire Kiss, not Vampire's Kiss?

And why bat & girl, instead of bat girl? I'm loving that bat's tail with a bow on it. What a feminine bat!

If you wanted it to follow Japanese grammar it would need a possessive particle の (no) between the words to show the Kiss belongs to the Vampire, but being that it's just a basic phonetic conversion, I guess it's not necessary. If you wanted the "'s" part it'd need a ス (su), but bampaiasu doesn't sound as nice? lol

 

"とってもニコラス!" wwww I kind of want to look that up.

 

ちょっとエッチなホラー・コメディ Oh my god.

 

Bless you for sharing Cam Bert. My Japanese is not good, but that was totally enjoyable!

[Cam Bert 8145]

 

Very interesting read.

So in Japanese, it's just Vampire Kiss, not Vampire's Kiss?

And why bat & girl, instead of bat girl? I'm loving that bat's tail with a bow on it. What a feminine bat!

 

First off, thank you and thank you CakeBug.

It is Vampire Kiss but this is largely due to grammatical issues of Japanese. Possessive is determined by the marker の (no) which functions like " 's " in English. In addition Japanese there is no distinction between plural and singular. So "There is a cat on the table" and "There are cats on the table" are the exact same sentence. So often when foreign worlds are translated with the plural they put ス(su) or ズ(zu) are the end. So to phonetically put the possessive in could make it mistaken for a plural. As to why the possessive の wasn't added, I can only assume because of the direct phonetic translation.

 

As for Bat & Girl, I would have to assume because Batgirl is already a character. Also considering how much it was focused on the Jennifer Beals character is probably why they went with "girl" and not "man." There is a bat and a girl in the movie, so it's not an untrue statement.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Hi guys! I've been so distracted and distressed by the US election that I haven't been here in a couple weeks. This movie has helped me heal a little bit; I'm still smarting. I believe in the restorative powers of comedy podcasts.

 

My favorite part from this episode:

 

I mean...we're all gonna say this every time we see the Thriller video from now on, right?