Interview with the Vampire - The Vampire Chronicles (1994 )

I haven't read Anne Rice's "Vampire" books, but I've heard they're pretty good. They're definitely popular. None of their greatness is reflected in this dull, elaborate landscape that barely passes as a film though. It's hard to believe that Rice wrote the screenplay. It's equally disheartening that Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game") directed. This overblown, stupid, pointless film is well beneath the talents of everyone involved - but we'll get to the acting later.

Jordan brings us a never ending pageant of elegance and grandeur for no real reason here. We never know or care how the main characters can afford the luxurious lifestyle they lead. It's just assumed that vampires must be wealthy. They apparently have a knack for making money. Jordan films all of this extravagance as if he were filming a romance novel. The film practically glitters with all the gold trimmings we get here. It gets rather monotonous after a while.

Meanwhile, Rice's script seems to support all this extravagance. It's the only thing the script has going for it. There's certainly no plot or character development. The script here, written more like a novel, has endless voice-overs from Louis, the main character. This exposition is explained by the fact that Louis is supposedly telling his story to a journalist - actually a radio journalist, who makes his living recording and then replaying people's life stories on the radio. Yeah, right. Anyway, Rice doesn't bother to explain much of what we see here. And it never gets better. The action in the whole second half of the film remains a mystery to me. Louis ends up in Paris with a troupe of vampire actors who wrong him for no discernable reason. Then, back in America, the film ends by coming full circle in a finale that is stupid and contrived as well as being totally unbelievable. Nothing rings true here. No one's motivation is ever disclosed. We glean nothing from the events displayed to us. Jordan tries desperately to hide all of this nothingness behind huge sets and glittering props but it doesn't work. Boredom eventually sets in with no plot to help us here.

The film also has an underlying theme of pedophilia that is as disturbing as it is utterly boring. Children are treated as pincushions here with little rhyme or reason. This isn't some grand statement but rather a feeble attempt to depict evil. It doesn't work because Rice is too lazy to make it work. At one point, Louis has to look all over a small boy's arm (he's apparently a vampire groupie or something) for an untapped vein to take a bite from. It's disturbing but it doesn't say anything. On this same level, the homoerotic element of the plot, which is apparently a big part of the book, seems phony and postured here. This is as much the fault of the actors, who wouldn't know homoeroticism if it bit them on the ass, as it is of Rice and Jordan. There is nothing erotic here on any level. Not a single frame elicits any feeling of lust or romance. Instead, it seems stagey and stilted. Posed.

The actors involved should have all passed on the project. Tom Cruise's fey posturing as the vampire Lestat is embarrassing. Cruise tries desperately to play his character off as a fop more than a homo so it is all sadly disappointing. He walks the fine line between portrayal and parody and ends up looking too scared to do anything. It doesn't help that his main source of chemical reaction is Brad Pitt. "The Sexiest Man Alive" plays Louis here as if he really was the walking dead. Pitt couldn't emote his way out of a funeral procession. He stands silent and stoic without once ever showing any feeling whatsoever. This is obvious when we're told that his character is supposedly struggling with his feelings as a vampire/killer. Pitt, playing a man here, apparently think men emote by not emoting at all. It's plastic and boring. He looks like a character from an Ed Wood movie.

Meanwhile Christian Slater takes over a role that was supposed to be played by River Phoenix before his untimely death. This is the role of the reporter. Stuck in the middle of Cruise and Pitt's flaccid chemistry, Slater opts to look like a reporter and decks himself out in horn-rimmed glasses and a short hair-do. He's really trying to disguise himself from the critics. When he informs us that Pitt has accosted him in the film's beginning, we can't imagine why. He's got to be the ugliest guy on the strip. Then, seemingly as an afterthought, Antonio Banderas and an unrecognizable Stephen Rea (held over from Jordan's "Crying Game") enter the film mid-stream. The undertow immediately drags them down with the picture and we watch them flail helplessly against the current. Like the film, they lose their way in very short order.

Kirsten Dunst tries her best to save the film but what can one pre-pubescent girl do? Her hypnotic appeal is blasted clean out of the water any time Pitt or Cruise enter the frame with her. To be honest, she only has one truly dynamic moment here where she delivers the line: "I want some more." After we've seen this in trailers and TV commercials, it loses it's impact. Reduced to the level of the material, Dunst spends the remainder of her screen time screaming at the top of her lungs in a futile effort to breath life into this undead film.

The film's worst problem, however, is it's sound quality. Desperately quiet at one moment, Jordan pumps up Elliot Goldenthal's overly dramatic score the next, sometimes emphasizing nothing at all. At home, with the remote, one must constantly adjust the volume between this loudness and the whispered dialogue. I think all the actors just whisper because acting or emoting this lifeless material would be futile anyway.

Watch the beginning of the film. As Jordan dollys through a San Francisco city street scene, we see puddles on the ground; It's obvious that it has just rained. At the film's end, Slater runs outside to his convertible which has the top down. Why would he have the top down on his expensive classic Mustang convertible during a rainy night? Because it has to be so for the final scene to work. "Interview with the Vampire" is like that. it does whatever it has to do to make it's silly plot unfold, whether it makes sense or not. This isn't a film but a feeble attempt to cash in on the millions of people who bought Rice's novels. Avoid this film like the plague.

Note: Filmed in New Orleans, Paris, San Francisco, and at Pinewood Studios in London. Director of Photography is Phillipe Rousselot. Produced by Stephen Wooley ("The Crying Game") and David Geffen.

Vampire Effects and Make Up by Stan Winston.

For some silly reason, over the final credits, Guns and Roses cover The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil."

The final title screen reads: "In Memory of River Phoenix 1970-1993."

Rice disowned the film once Cruise was cast as Lestat. She relented when the film was about to be released and gave it her blessing. This was probably due to the fact that she had a financial stake in the film.

Review written in 1995

Report Card

Script: F

Acting: F

Cinematography\Lighting: C-

Special Effects\Make Up: B

Music: F

Final Grade: F