Streaming Availability: Tubi
Most writers are humans. Regrettably, even the person writing
this review is an entirely mortal non-magical bog-standard human. Therefore,
while a lot of the horror movies we’ve covered this month greatly admires
vampires, or are aroused by vampires, or even are sympathetic to vampires, they’re usually anti-vampire. Humanity triumphs, the Nosferatus are punished for their
crimes, and those tempted by the undead return to normality. Mina might get really horny about Dracula, but she goes home with Jonathan in the end. Vampires are the aberration in a human world,
and aberrations no matter how beautiful, cannot be allowed to exist.
Interview with the Vampire is unique in that while it is
still set in a world ruled by humans, it is fully about vampires. Human are not
the protagonists, not the even antagonists, they’re just incidental. This movie
only barely passes vampiric version of Bechdel Test: two humans do have a conversation
on camera that is not about vampires, but its only brief flavor, and one of
those humans will be transformed a minute later anyway. The most important human
in the story who is not food is Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater), a then-present
day San Francisco reporter who only exists in a frame story. And by
the end, Daniel is begging to be made a vampire too.
Since humans are basically irrelevant, Interview with the Vampire is not a horror movie. This is a tragic period
romance that just so happens to be about dead people who eat living people. The moments of scares are few and far between, instead replaced by handsome elegance and bitchy boys in big costumes. The
filmmakers ignore the mirror rule of vampires seemingly just so that they can decorate
drawing rooms with looking glass and candles. Interview with the Vampire wants to be about beautiful men having
feelings. They all have piercing contacts in their eyes, doll-like white skin
decorated by veins, and enormous wigs. (Louis' wig is awful and tragic and I hate it.) Maybe they'll get some blood on their chins, but they never have a grotesque form. They must always be gorgeous babes.
The cast is a who’s-who of Nineties hunks. Think of the meme of an increasingly bug-eyed Vince McMahon as I read off these names. As
mentioned, the interviewer is Christian Slater. The interviewee vampire is
Louis (Brad Pitt), who originally was a genteel plantation owner in 1791
Louisiana before being "given the Dark Gift" by the wicked libertine, Lestat
(Tom Cruise). Louis is miserable and depressed as a human, and he is miserable
and depressed as a vampire. (I get the sense that Louis would have been depressed as
a werewolf, zombie, or even a Creature from the Black Lagoon, depending on what kind of monster hottie had
come knocking.) Later in the film we’ll meet Armand (Antonio Banderas), who
tries to get Louis on the rebound. Even Stephen Rea is looking hot with long flowing hair.
I should mention the whole slavery aspect because it is a
strange idea in this movie and presumably the novel as well. I am not sure why it is here at all. There’s no comparison to the parasitic
life of the undead to the parasitic life of slaveowner. That would be an easy
metaphor and it never happens. Since humans are never characters, the slaves are not characters either, and that comes off as icky.
Fleeing from that topic: Louis and Lestat are locked together in centuries of a
vampiric marriage. This family grows to include their “daughter”, Claudia (a very
young Kirsten Dunst). Louis, who has been reluctant to feed on humans despite Lestat’s
prompting, finally bites a little girl in a plague-infected corner of New
Orleans. Lestat is so pleased he dances with her mother’s corpse. Unfortunately,
while Claudia saves their marriage for a time, babies never fix fundamentally broken love affairs. Eventually, Claudia is in her thirties, trapped forever as a child, and growing increasingly unsettled by
her twisted existence. It leads Claudia to poison Lestat
with corpse blood, turning him into a ghoulish swamp monster, who is so gross they set him on fire. For
this crime of undead violence, the vampires of Paris force Claudia to die horribly, left
exposed to the Sun to burn away, never finding a place in this world.
Louis never really finds one either. Interview with the
Vampire has something of an action climax where Brad Pitt murders vampires with
a scythe, but it has no traditional third act. It is more about a family
declining over the long torturous length of immortality. Louis finds no answer
to his grief and no great meaning to undead life. But he does gain
enough maturity to say no to older men who would use him to fill up
their own emptiness.
Speaking of that, Interview with the Vampire is extremely gay but never directly gay. It is an unavoidable thematic read that these boys are in love with each other. But no dude on dude kisses - even if they tease the fuck out of Brad Pitt maybe kissing Antonio Banderas. Oh man, do their faces ever get close, yet no cigar.
I have not read the original novel or any of the books by Anne Rice, so I can't speak to the adaptation work. Rice did write the screenplay herself so I would expect it is mostly accurate to her vision. She was furious over the casting of Tom Cruise as Lestat over her preferred Rutger Hauer, but eventually admitted Cruise was perfect.
However, I should not end this review without
mentioning what a huge influence Anne Rice has been in the world of vampires. Her
vision of unapologetically queer, emotionally vulnerable men was enormous for
setting up fifty years of vampire romances. It’s also an interesting new
creative vision on the creature. These are not lone monsters outside of time
threatening the modern world. They’re an entire secret society living an
underground life of dark pleasures (queer metaphor again) who have found a kind
of stable existence with the human world. It is hard to imagine works like Vampire:
The Masquerade or the Blade or Twilight without Anne Rice. (We also would
not have gotten the very imperfect Queen of the Damned movie, which I covered last year.)
Now how good is Interview with the Vampire? It is an compelling
drama that executes well all of its fetishes and emotions. Tom Cruise is really
the whole movie as Lestat, without him you’d be left with only Louis, the wettest of blankets. "Louis... Louis... Always
whining, Louis! . . . I’ve had to listen to that for centuries!" Brad Pitt’s role
does not give him many fun moments since Louis has one mood: dour,
but he is playing it well. Kirsten Dunst is remarkably good as Claudia. She
gives exactly the performance that Near Dark needed for its immortal child, Homer, but did not get. There’s certainly enough here in this movie I understand why teenagers saw this and made it their entire
personality.
There are worse personalities to choose from. Those kids could have become Final Fantasy freaks, a fate worse than undead immortality. If you’re a
teenager now, there’s a new Interview with the Vampire series airing on AMC right now, and I hear it’s even gayer than the original. No chattel slavery in that one either.
Next Time! Tarantino and Rodriguez team up - and unlike Grindhouse, it doesn't suck. From Dusk
Till Dawn.
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