A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

I have some trailer collections on Blu-ray that... well stuff.


Anyhow, Vamp is in one of those collections and everytime I see that trailer, I'm always, "I want to see this one day." That day has yet to come.


I will admit, if it weren't for it being in that trailer collection, I don't know if I'd remember its existence.
I think the trailer for Vampire's Kiss is also in the same collection.

Vampire's Kiss, 1988

Literary agent Peter (Nicholas Cage) lives an indulgent party lifestyle full of drinking and hookups, though he frequently sees a therapist (Elizabeth Ashley) to sort through his various issues. One night he is bitten by a mysterious woman (Jennifer Beals) who may or may not be real. As Peter becomes more and more convinced that he is a vampire, his neuroses escalates in conjunction with harassing and terrorizing a woman named Alva (Maria Conchita Alonso) who works as a secretary at his firm.

Um . . . huh.

This movie is like a hamburger/chocolate/lemon smoothie---it's a mix of things that are good on their own but when whirled together they just don't quite work.

Did I ultimately mind Cage's all-in bizarro performance as Peter? Ultimately, no, in the sense that there is something kind of compelling about watching someone un-self-consciously take it to 11. He mixes gestures big and small and some killer line deliveries.

But at the same time, this is a character who is seriously mentally ill, to the point that he is .

There is something incredibly disturbing about the entire subplot involving Alva and Peter's ongoing harassment of her. The intention of the film is to play this subplot for dark comedy, but for me it was too unpleasant to find any bleak humor. Like, I get the commentary as everyone knows what's happening to Alva from the other secretaries to the head of the company. We're given an anger-inducing look at Peter and some of the other top men at the company laughing about Alva's distress after Peter chases her into the women's room to berate her for not finding an elusive contract. But too often it felt as if we were meant to laugh at Alva's fear, particularly in a scene where after hours Peter corners Alva in an abandoned storage space. I'd suspected that

At its heart, I actually think that the premise is incredibly cool and interesting. It's like some weird combination of Martin and American Psycho. But the tonal difference between Cage's outlandish performance and Alva's very realistic suffering made for a frustrating combination. Alonso's distressed performance is just too impactful next to all of the other wacky shennanigans.

Shout out to Kasi Lemmons, who I love, and whenever I see her on screen I'm always like "You directed Eve's Bayou!!!"

It makes for compelling watching, but I don't know how much I can say that I enjoyed it. I did think that the direction and editing was really strong, especially things like the conversation with the therapist toward the end.

If you’re a fan of Nic Cageisms Vampire’s Kiss is brimming with them. But I agree with you Tak that it’s all over the place. It feels like they shot a drama but the editor got the footage of Nic Cage giving that performance and tried to cut it like a comedy? It’s a bizarre fascinating film.

Apparently the writer wrote it as an allegory for a toxic relationship?

Agree that it's fascinating but also, wow. Again, it's like these elements that could have been good were blended in a way that just doesn't cohere.

To me the blending of Cages almost impossible to take seriously performance, and how this leaves the audience in limbo when it is clear what the terrifying consequences of his behavior are, is precisely why I like it. It doesn't give us a clear way to react. It makes us feel bad if we laugh, but then doubt ourselves when we start viewing him as the serious villain that he is. So, yes, just like a toxic relationship, whether it is someone we are in a relationship with, or someone we have to work for.


In essence, the movie sort of gaslights its audience, no matter how they take what they see

You Are Not My Mother -

This Irish horror movie is a dour slow burn about Char, who is the unluckiest teenage girl imaginable. Not only is she lonely and targeted by bullies, but her family consists of a mentally ill mother, an aloof uncle and a grandmother with...let's just say old-fashioned beliefs. Life gets even more difficult for Char when her mother disappears without a trace. What appeals the most about this movie to me is its ambiguity. I enjoyed questioning if the cause of Char's mother's condition is actually mental illness or if the grandmother's superstitions are true. The special effects, which are few and far between but always pack a punch and the three female leads' strong performances - my favorite being Ingrid Craigie's as the grandmother, who convinced me that nothing or nobody could change her beliefs - make the ambiguity work. The movie is pretty ordinary visually, and I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of bullies used to further the plot in movies, horror or otherwise. I still enjoyed it, and whether it’s their generation gaps or the mental illnesses or dangerous belief systems they pass down through the generations, I give it credit for successfully demonstrating, as one character puts it, that "family is the scariest f***ing thing on the planet."

This is on Hulu, which has a decent selection of indie horror movies from the last few years.

I agree and that's why I said it still felt exploitative to me, I just also understood some of the details. Did we need such clear shots of her boobs and other parts? We did not. Did it help sell the home video? Absolutely.
As for the other, I put that down to the way family clings to itself. People making excuses for the past bad behavior of a loved one and clinging to them, particularly a parent, does not surprise me, having lived in a highly dysfunctional family. How many times have people made excuses for an abusive partner or parent trying to cling to the relationship they know rather than leave? It's the rule more than the exception, IMO.
I guess, to me, once he went to the prostitute any intended redemption was pretty much over.

September is nearly upon us, and that is a month where I like to start getting in the horror-adjacent movies (or maybe the adjacent-adjacent).


For anyone doing likewise, I would submit Bunny Lake is Missing (it's in the adjacent-adjacent category of classic thriller, I think) as a suggestion.


I know it got some good talk in the past month in the Rate the last movie thread, and I think Tak was one of the people.


A critic I follow has been constantly recommending for the past 4 or 5 years it feels like, and after finally catching up with it, I wholeheartedly follow that.


The brief pitch is, a woman, just arrived in England, goes to a boarding school to pick up her daughter, Bunny, from her first day of class, but she isn't there. No one's seen her, and as the police get involved, it can't even be confirmed she exists. What follows... well, that's for the viewer to see and enjoy.

Interesting. I do do a sort of "Horror Adjacent" thing in September, which includes everything from Dark Fantasies to Giallo and Slashers (which are mostly not Horror to me).

Yeah, I think this is about 1/2 layer to 1 layer away in terms of adjacency than something like a giallo (which is probably the best reference, since there is a mystery at the heart of this one).


Bringing it up so it doesn't become another Messiah of Evil where I just sit on it for 10 years not realizing everyone else hasn't already seen it.


It's an interesting one!

I had a different reaction to the dissonance you're describing, which is that I felt resentful about the way that I was being asked to find humor in what was happening. Alva's suffering was too strong a counterpoint to Cage's performance. I really get what you're saying, though, about the conflicting emotions we have toward Peter. I guess it's a case of being able to admire something academically but not emotionally.

Maybe. The film increasingly sets him up as being righteous, especially in the final act with the stuff at the police station and then what happens at the very end.

While I don't know if I've talked about it recently, I am definitely a fan.

If you've seen it, it's has a ton of similarities to the more modern plot of

Recent horror viewings:



Nope gets a big yup.


X gets a big nope.


That is all.

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Currently playing the old "how did this get on my watchlist?" game with The Lodgers.

Does it star someone I really like? No.
Directed/written by someone whose work I like? I mean, it is by the director of Let Us Prey, but I don't think I knew that before checking just now.
Did someone in here recommend it? I don't think so.

My current theory is that I came across it on IMDb while looking up The Lodge.

Are you talking about this one?


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4399952/



If so, I remember seeing it at TIFF and thinking it was pretty bad, but don't remember why. I don't plan on revisiting it to find out why.

That's the one.

So far we've had an exposition dump in the form of an overly contrived and specific children's song, so not a promising start.

finally somebody who dislikes X.

Oh goody, I liked it too; what'd you think of it specifically, Rocko?

I don't have too many interesting thoughts about it, just that I liked the performances and thought Peele was able to pay homage to his inspirations while still making the movie tense on its own terms.


Also, it's been a few days and I'm still chuckling about Yeun's assessment of Chris Kattan on SNL, so I thought it was pretty funny as well.

Hmm... well, it's possible I'm just not remembering as clearly as you, it's been a few years. I thought his only redemption

I half agree with you.