Shout Factory has recently released two Blu-ray packages featuring two movies that might be good for Valentine’s Day, but frankly they might be best for Halloween. Looking at these four films they generally fall into the broad category of “horror/comedy/romance” though that’s a pretty loose. This one features two movies that fall more into the horror/comedy category – though one is much more a comedy than the other.
As a package this is certainly worth looking at picking up. On their one each of these movies are… decent and fun, but not necessarily ones that would be a first (or maybe even second) choice for placement in a home collection. As a value package Shout Factory knows that fans of these movies will welcome what is on offer and at an affordable price they are enticing enough.
Almost the sole reason to watch Vampire’s Kiss is to watch Nicolas Cage act out as a character descending into madness. He is mentally unstable at the beginning and things only get worse for him. Did he really get bitten by a vampire or was that his derangement?
The vampire in the film is portrayed by Jennifer Beals, though her role isn’t nearly as important or pronounced as you might expect. Maria Conchita Alonso appears as Cage’s secretary who suffers from his original mental instability which only worsens when he begins to think he is turning into a vampire.
Nicolas Cage was an already established character actor with roles in such films as Moonstruck, Raising Arizona, Valley Girl and Peggy Sue Got Married by the time Vampire’s Kiss came out in 1989. And Cage’s performance here is the main attraction. It is a comedy, but darkly so, played out less for laughs and there might be a few moments that make you quite uncomfortable.
High Spirits, on the other hand, is much more of a straight comedy with a supernatural twist. Released in 1988 it stars Peter O’Toole as an Irish man who owns a castle used as a tourist trap getting Americans to stay in the “most haunted castle in Europe” to stave off his foreclosure. Enter the wacky villagers who work there, the American tourists, and then some actual ghosts show up. And there’s a romantic twist to the whole thing.
With Daryl Hannah, Steve Guttenberg, Liam Neeson, Beverly D’Angelo, Jennifer Tilly, Peter Gallagher, and Connie Booth (along with a few other recognizable faces) you might think this was going to be a laugh-a-minute affair. It isn’t. While High Spirits isn’t bad, it just sort of doesn’t capture the magic that it is trying for, despite the best efforts of the cast.
As a light-hearted comedy High Spirits works well enough to be enjoyable. It didn’t succeed at the box office, and one can see why. It’s not bad, it just isn’t too good.
Vampire’s Kiss and High Spirits make for an interesting double feature. One is dark, a sort of character study, and the other an ensemble comedy. The only special feature is an older audio commentary on Vampire’s Kiss by Cage and director Robert Bierman.