Nicolas Cage stands for many things: cult actor, Oscar winner, trash icon. With its brightly colored filmography, one film stands out. The bizarre horror comedy Vampire’s Kiss is in a league of its own with its disgusting and gag scenes.
In it, Nic Cage snacks on two live cockroaches and today calls it the most disgusting and horrible moment of his career.
‘To shock the audience’: Nicolas Cage ate roaches instead of raw eggs
Vampire’s Kiss was a financial flop and is pretty trashy. Thanks to the 25-year-old Nicolas Cages as a crazy yuppie and vampire, he has achieved a certain cult status. At least one image from the film is familiar to everyone who spends time on the internet:
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Nicolas Cage in Vampire’s Kiss
Nicolas Cage plays Peter Loew, a literary agent who spends his nights partying in Manhattan. When a woman bites his neck one night, he starts training to become a vampire. He starts attacking women, terrorizing his employees – and eating cockroaches.
In the scene mentioned, he claws the cockroach off the gas stove so that the insect crawls around unsuspectingly. It’s part of his morning routine and not relevant to the story. Thanks to Nic Cage’s acting, the humor trumps the disgust of the scene.
Watch the movie scene where Nicolas Cage eats a real cockroach:
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Bonus material on the Vampire’s Kiss* Blu-ray includes an entertaining audio commentary. In it, Cage and director Robert Bierman talk about the entire film. The scene became shot just for shock effect and is discussed in great detail by the two of them.
I was going to eat raw eggs or something at first and I was like, ‘No, we should make a cockroach out of them to really shock the audience and give people something they’ll never forget.’
The decision to eat a cockroach came from Cage himself. He hates these insects the most and suffers from the memory to this day to it.
The cockroach scene is the scariest moment of Nicolas Cage’s career
Meanwhile, Nicolas Cage has described the scene in interviews as the most terrifying and disgusting moment of his career. He told CBS Sunday Morning:
I wanted to be noticed. (…) But I’m telling you, it is the most disgusting and worst memory i have of shooting a movie.
In addition, the shooting of Vampire’s Kiss was very chaotic and Nicolas Cage repeatedly offended director Bierman. So after the first take for the disgusting scene, he claimed that something went wrong. Cage had to plaster a second cockroach who sacrificed her life for the sake of cinema in vain.
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