Starring Nicolas Cage, María Conchita Alonso, Jennifer Beals, and Elizabeth Ashley, the film tells the story of a literary agent who falls in love with a vampire.

[1] Peter Loew is a New York City-based literary agent and a narcissistic yuppie, with little in his life but work, one-night stands, and frequent appointments with his therapist, Dr. Glaser.

Believing the bandage on his neck to be the location of Rachel's vampire bite, his delusions of her nighttime feedings persist, as does his unhinged behavior, including eating cockroaches.

Fully believing himself to be a vampire, Peter purchases cheap novelty fangs and catches pigeons to eat in his wrecked apartment, which he turns into a darkened lair.

Sleeping under his upturned sofa as though it were a coffin, he emerges at night and goes to a club, wearing his plastic fangs and behaving like Orlok from the film Nosferatu.

Wandering the streets covered in blood, Peter begs passersby to end his suffering with a wooden stake, while newspaper headlines confirm that the woman he attacked in the club has died.

A traumatized Alva tells Emilio about her assault, and they find Peter as he returns to his apartment with the imaginary Sharon, where his fantasy dissolves into an abusive argument.

In addition, Jessica Lundy plays Sharon, the patient his therapist sets Peter up with, Cage's brother Marc Coppola briefly appears as the joke guy, and the musical group ESG has a cameo performing in a club.

In an interview with Zach Schonfeld of The Ringer, Minion said that while on vacation in Barbados with his then-girlfriend, Barbara Zitwer, he wrote the screenplay as a response to his "toxic relationship" with her.

Known previously for having written After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese, Minion sought to keep the "grim view of the Manhattan nightlife"[1] found in the aforementioned film central to his newest work.

This sudden departure however also prompted the then-cast Nicolas Cage to drop out after his agent pressured him, stating that "this was not a good movie to make after Moonstruck".

The original script called for Loew to eat a raw egg but Cage decided a cockroach would be more effective claiming it would "shock the audience".

[4] This shock was further extended to a couple of homeless people whom Cage ran into on the streets of Manhattan as he pleaded with them to drive a stake through his heart as Bierman and crew shot from afar.

"[6] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "a sleek, outrageous dark comedy that's all the funnier for constantly teetering on the brink of sheer tastelessness and silliness.