Vampire's Kiss - or: Why Nic Cage shouldn't be allowed to do voices in his films

Sometimes when you watch a film it leaves you speechless - utterly at a loss for how to express the emotions that it stirred up in you. Movies like Requiem for a Dream shock you into silence and leave you grasping for what's left of your faith in humanity and the good in the world. Movies like Pan's Labyrinth conclude with the audience basking in the wake of a truly memorable and momentous fairy tale, told like no other, and bathing in its light and warmth.

Then there's 1988's Vampire's Kiss, which leaves you gasping for air and frantically clawing at your vocabulary for a way to express how - there's no other word for it - inexpressibly terrible it was to go through that long watching that movie.

It's a bad movie.

And what's worse, it's also the first example of what many people have come to identify inextricably with the acting talents of Nicolas Cage.

Worse still? The only answer I can give those people is "fair enough." He's really, really, really bad in this movie.

However, (what? you didn't expect me to offer at least some defense?) I'd propose an alternate reason for his general stinkiness in this role, and that's terrible directing, and writing that's possibly worse.

This movie's dialogue makes Moonstruck look like Shakespeare. It's appalling.

The special effects, though, are AWESOME!

Beyond that, though, what's an actor to do in a role like this, in a movie that cannot make it clear in one hour, 43 minutes whether it set out to be a comedy or a horror, with a director that looked at every one of the following scenes and said, aloud or to himself, "GOLD! Nice job, Nic!"

Disclaimer: The following YouTube clip, made by me, is 2:12 long. There will be no refund - you will not get that time back.

So after seeing those scenes, bearing in mind that - at the very least - he was told that those were the ways the director wanted them to play, can you still blame Cage for this performance?

Probably. But at least he's not entirely at fault.

So that's that, then. We're almost out of the '80s, and we've encountered the first truly terrible performance by Our Hero.

What's next? Well, if I can find it on Netflix, a comedy where Nic Cage is simply "man in a red convertible". Time will tell what that little number has in store for us.