Jennifer Beals
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| + | '''Jennifer Beals''' (born December 19, 1963) is an American actress and a former teen model. She made her film debut in ''[[My Bodyguard]]'' (1980), before receiving critical acclaim for her role in ''[[Flashdance]]'' (1983), for which she won [[NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture]] and was nominated for a [[Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical]]. | ||
| - | '''''Vampire's Kiss''''' is a 1989 American [[black comedy film]] directed by [[Robert Bierman]], written by [[Joseph Minion]], and starring [[Nicolas Cage]], [[María Conchita Alonso]], [[Jennifer Beals]] and [[Elizabeth Ashley]]. The film tells the story of a mentally ill [[literary agent]] whose condition turns even worse when he believes he was bitten by a vampiress. It was a box office failure but went on to become a [[cult film]]. | + | Beals appeared in several notable films including ''[[Devil in a Blue Dress (film)|Devil in a Blue Dress]]'' (1995), ''[[The Last Days of Disco]]'' (1998), ''[[Roger Dodger (film)|Roger Dodger]]'' (2002), ''[[The Book of Eli]]'' (2010), and ''[[Before I Fall (film)|Before I Fall]]'' (2017). On television, she starred as [[Bette Porter]] on the [[Showtime (TV network)|Showtime]] drama series ''[[The L Word]]'' (2004–2009) and later went on to star in the series ''[[The Chicago Code]]'' (2011), ''[[Proof (2015 TV series)|Proof]]'' (2015), and ''[[Taken (2017 TV series)|Taken]]'' (2017). She reprised her role as Bette Porter in ''[[The L Word: Generation Q]]'' beginning in December 2019. |
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| - | == Plot == | + | |
| - | Peter Loew ([[Nicolas Cage]]) is a driven [[literary agent]] and an example of the stereotypical narcissistic and greedy [[yuppie]] of the 1980s: he works all day and club hops at night, with little in his life but alcohol, [[cocaine]], [[one-night stand]]s and the pursuit of money and supposed prestige. However, he is slowly going [[insanity|insane]] and sees a therapist ([[Elizabeth Ashley]]) frequently. During these sessions, his declining [[mental health]] becomes clear through a series of increasingly bizarre rants which eventually begin to scare even the psychiatrist. After he takes home a girl he met in a club named Jackie ([[Kasi Lemmons]]), a rotund bat flies in through his window, scaring them both. At his next session he mentions to his therapist that the struggle with the bat aroused him, and after visiting an art museum with Jackie the next day, he ditches her, and she leaves an angry message on his phone. | + | |
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| - | Loew meets Rachel ([[Jennifer Beals]]) at a [[night club]], and seemingly takes her home. As they make love, she pins him down, exposing vampire fangs and biting him on the neck. The following morning, Loew is shown with an uninjured neck, serving coffee and making conversation with a non-existent Rachel, casting doubt on the reality of the previous night's events. | + | |
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| - | Loew cuts his neck shaving and applies a bandage to the spot, thereafter believing it to be the location of his vampire bite. He soon begins to believe that he is slowly turning into a [[vampire]]. He stares into a bathroom mirror and fails to see his reflection, he wears dark sunglasses during the day indoors and, when his "fangs" fail to develop, he purchases a pair of cheap plastic vampire novelty teeth. All the while, he has delusions of Rachel visiting him nightly to feed on his blood. Shortly after, Loew experiences severe mood swings and calls Jackie back apologetically, asking to meet her at a bar. As he is about to leave, a jealous Rachel appears and beckons him back inside. A dejected Jackie eventually leaves the bar and leaves an angry note on his door asking him to leave her alone. | + | |
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| - | A subplot concerns a secretary working at Loew's office, Alva Restrepo ([[María Conchita Alonso]]). Loew constantly torments her by forcing her to search through an enormous paper file for a trivial 1963 short story contract. When she fails to find the contract, he at first browbeats and humiliates her, then visits her at home and tricks her into coming back to work, and finally attacks and attempts to bite her at the workplace after hours. She pulls out a gun, and Loew begs her to shoot him. Since it is only loaded with blanks, she fires at the floor to scare him off. He eventually overpowers her, ripping her shirt open, pinning her to the floor as he attempts to bite her neck, while hallucinating that she is now Rachel. Afterwards, overcome by despair, he takes the gun and fires it into his mouth, but is not harmed by the blanks. | + | |
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| - | Thinking he has metamorphosed into a vampire, Loew goes out to a club wearing his novelty vampire teeth and moving around erratically like the character [[Count Orlok|Orlok]] from the film ''[[Nosferatu]]'' with a crazed look in his eyes. He begins to seduce a woman, but when he gets too grabby she slaps him off, making Loew even more unhinged: he overpowers her (in the same manner as he did earlier to his employee Alva) and bites her neck, having taken out the fangs and using his real teeth, leaving the woman unconscious and bloody. He then puts his plastic novelty fangs back in and hallucinates an encounter with a distainful Rachel. | + | |
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| - | Afterwards, Loew encounters the real Rachel dancing with another man on the dance floor. She appears to recognize him, but gives the impression that they have not been in contact for a long time. Loew attempts to manhandle her into revealing her fangs as her date fights him off. He screams that he loves her and accuses her of being a vampire as he is dragged off and expelled from the club by security. | + | |
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| - | Alva wakes up with her shirt ripped open, possibly thinking she was raped, and eventually tells her brother Emilio (Bob Lujan) about the sexual assault, who is enraged and goes after Loew with Alva to seek revenge. Meanwhile, Loew is wandering the streets, disheveled in a blood-spattered business suit from the previous night, excitedly talking to himself. In a hallucinatory exchange on a street corner, he tells his therapist that he raped someone and also murdered someone else. Based on a newspaper, the latter appears to be true, as the girl he bit on the neck in the club is pronounced dead. As Loew returns to his now-disastrous apartment (which he'd been using as a sort of vampire's lair) Alva points out Loew to a waiting Emilio, who then quietly pursues him inside the apartment block with a tire iron. | + | |
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| - | In the midst of an abusive argument with an imaginary romantic interest (supposedly a patient of his psychiatrist) Loew begins to retch again from the blood he had swallowed, and crawls under his upturned sofa on the floor, which he sees as his "coffin". Emilio hears flatulent noises, finds him and upturns the sofa, and Loew holds a large broken piece of wood to his chest as a makeshift stake, repeating the gesture he had made earlier to strangers on the street when he had asked them to stake and kill him with the piece of wood from a pallet. Emilio, in a rage, pushes down on the wood and it pierces Loew's chest in a gruesome manner. Realizing he has committed a crime, a scared Emilio flees the apartment. As Loew dies, he envisions the vampiress Rachel staring at him one last time. | + | |
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| - | ==See also== | + | |
| - | *[[Vampire film]] | + | |
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Jennifer Beals (born December 19, 1963) is an American actress and a former teen model. She made her film debut in My Bodyguard (1980), before receiving critical acclaim for her role in Flashdance (1983), for which she won NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.
Beals appeared in several notable films including Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), The Last Days of Disco (1998), Roger Dodger (2002), The Book of Eli (2010), and Before I Fall (2017). On television, she starred as Bette Porter on the Showtime drama series The L Word (2004–2009) and later went on to star in the series The Chicago Code (2011), Proof (2015), and Taken (2017). She reprised her role as Bette Porter in The L Word: Generation Q beginning in December 2019.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Jennifer Beals" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
