Interview with the Vampire (film)
Interview with the Vampire is a 1994 American gothic horror film directed by Neil Jordan, based on Anne Rice's 1976 novel of the same name, and starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It focuses on Lestat (Cruise) and Louis (Pitt), beginning with Louis' transformation into a vampire by Lestat in 1791. The film chronicles their time together, and their turning of young Claudia (Kirsten Dunst) into a vampire. The narrative is framed by a present-day interview, in which Louis tells his story to a San Francisco reporter (Christian Slater). The supporting cast features Antonio Banderas and Stephen Rea.
Interview with the Vampire
Interview with the Vampire
by Anne Rice
Mick Audsley
Joke van Wijk
- November 11, 1994
122 minutes[1]
United States
English
$60 million[2]
$223.7 million[2]
The film was released in November 1994 to generally positive reviews and was a commercial success. It received two Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Original Score.[3][4] Kirsten Dunst was additionally nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film. A stand-alone sequel, Queen of the Damned, was released in 2002, with Stuart Townsend replacing Cruise as Lestat.
Plot[edit]
In late 20th century San Francisco, reporter Daniel Molloy interviews Louis de Pointe du Lac, who claims to be a vampire, to Molloy's initial skepticism. Louis describes his human life as a wealthy plantation owner in 1791 Louisiana. Despondent following the death of his wife and unborn child, he drunkenly wanders the waterfront of New Orleans one night and is attacked by the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt. Lestat senses Louis' dissatisfaction with life and offers to turn him into a vampire. Louis accepts, but quickly comes to regret it. While Lestat revels in the hunt and killing of humans, Louis resists his instinct to kill to Lestat's annoyance, instead drinking animal blood to sustain himself.
Eventually, amid an outbreak of plague in New Orleans, Louis feeds on a little girl whose mother died in the plague. To entice Louis to stay with him, Lestat turns the dying girl, Claudia, into a vampire. Together, they raise her as a daughter. Louis has a love for Claudia, while Lestat spoils and treats her more as a pupil, training her to become a merciless killer. Thirty years pass, and Claudia matures psychologically but remains a little girl in appearance and continues to be treated as such by Lestat. When she realizes that she will never grow older or become a mature woman, she is furious with Lestat and tells Louis that they should leave him. She tricks Lestat into drinking the "dead blood" of twin boys whom she killed by overdose with laudanum, which weakens Lestat, and then she slits his throat. Though Louis is shocked and upset, he helps Claudia dump Lestat's body in a swamp. They spend weeks planning a voyage to Europe to search for other vampires, but Lestat returns on the night of their departure, having survived on the blood of swamp creatures. Lestat attacks them, but Louis sets him on fire, allowing them to escape to their ship and depart.
After traveling around Europe and the Mediterranean but finding no other vampires, Louis and Claudia settle in Paris in September 1870. Louis encounters vampires Santiago and Armand by chance. Armand invites Louis and Claudia to his coven, the Théâtre des Vampires, where vampires stage theatrical horror shows for humans. On their way out of the theater, Santiago reads Louis' mind and suspects that Louis and Claudia murdered Lestat. Armand warns Louis to send Claudia away for her own safety, and Louis stays with Armand to learn about the meaning of being a vampire. Claudia demands that Louis turn a human woman, Madeleine, into a vampire to be her new protector and companion, and he reluctantly complies. Shortly thereafter, the Parisian vampires abduct the three of them and punish them for Lestat's murder, imprisoning Louis in an iron coffin to starve to death slowly and trapping Claudia and Madeleine in a chamber, where sunlight burns them to ash. Armand does nothing to prevent this, but the next day he frees Louis. Seeking revenge, Louis returns to the theater at dawn and sets it on fire; killing all the vampires including Santiago. Armand arrives in time to help Louis escape the sunrise, and again offers him a place by his side. Louis rejects Armand and leaves, unable to accept Armand's way of life which involve forgetting the past and knowing Armand had allowed Claudia's murder.
As decades pass, Louis never recovers from the loss of Claudia and dejectedly explores the world alone. He returns to New Orleans in 1988 and one night encounters a decayed, weakened Lestat, living as a recluse in an abandoned mansion and surviving on rat blood as Louis once had. Lestat expresses regret for having turned Claudia into a vampire and asks Louis to rejoin him, but Louis declines and leaves. Louis concludes his interview with Molloy, prompting Molloy to beseech Louis to make him his new vampire companion. Louis is outraged that Molloy has not understood the tale of suffering he has related and attacks Molloy to scare him into abandoning the idea. Molloy runs to his car and takes off while playing the cassette tapes of Louis' interview. On the Golden Gate Bridge, Lestat appears and attacks Molloy, taking control of the car. Revived by Molloy's blood, Lestat offers him the choice that he "never had"—whether or not to become a vampire—and laughing, continues driving.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
The rights to Rice's novel were initially purchased by Paramount Pictures in April 1976, shortly before the book was published. However, the script lingered in development hell for years, with the rights being sold to Lorimar before finally ending up with Warner Bros.[6] Director Neil Jordan was approached by Warner Bros. to direct after the huge success of his movie The Crying Game (1992). Jordan was intrigued by the script, calling it "really interesting and slightly theatrical", but was especially interested after reading Rice's novel.[7] He agreed to direct on the condition that he be allowed to write his own script, though he did not gain a writing credit. The themes of Catholic guilt which pervade the novel attracted Jordan, who called the story "the most wonderful parable about wallowing in guilt that I'd ever come across. But these things are unconscious, I don't have an agenda."[7]
With David Geffen producing, the movie was given a $70 million budget, unprecedented for a film in the vampire genre. Jordan stated that:
Release[edit]
Box office[edit]
Interview with the Vampire was a box office success. The film opened on November 11, 1994 (Veterans Day) and opening weekend grosses amounted to $36.4 million, surpassing Home Alone 2: Lost in New York to achieve a November record, and placing it in the number one position at the US box office above The Santa Clause, which opened with $19.3 million.[32][33] However, some in the industry disputed the figure and the range of estimates by others were from $34 to $37 million.[34] At that time, Interview with the Vampire had the fifth-highest three-day opening weekend of all time, behind Jurassic Park, Batman Returns, The Lion King and Batman.[35] Its opening was at that time the biggest non-summer opening and the biggest R-rated opening weekend ever, with the latter surpassing Lethal Weapon 3.[36] The film would hold this record until 1997 when it was surpassed by Air Force One.[37] Moreover, Interview with the Vampire held the record for having the highest opening weekend for a Brad Pitt film until it was taken by Ocean's Eleven in 2001.[38] In subsequent weeks, it struggled against Star Trek Generations and The Santa Clause. Its total gross in the United States was $105 million, while the worldwide gross was $224 million, with an estimated budget of $60 million.[2]
Critical reception[edit]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 63 reviews, with a rating average of 6/10. The site's consensus reads: "Despite lacking some of the book's subtler shadings, and suffering from some clumsy casting, Interview with the Vampire benefits from Neil Jordan's atmospheric direction and a surfeit of gothic thrills."[39] On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 62 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[40] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[41]
Critics praised the film's production design, cinematography, and special effects, as well as the performances of Cruise and Dunst. Of Cruise, Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote the actor "is flabbergastingly right for this role. The vampire Lestat, the most commanding and teasingly malicious of Ms. Rice's creations, brings out in Mr. Cruise a fiery, mature sexual magnetism he has not previously displayed on screen. Except for a few angry outbursts here, there are no signs of the actor's usual boyishness. Instead, adopting a worldly manner and an exquisite otherworldly look, he transforms himself into a darkly captivating roue who's seen it all".[42] The Washington Post's Rita Kempley said "Cruise brings a wicked wit to the ghoulish role" of Lestat.[43]
The Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, writing "the movie never makes vampirism look like anything but an endless sadness. That is its greatest strength. Vampires throughout movie history have often chortled as if they'd gotten away with something. But the first great vampire movie, Nosferatu (1922), knew better, and so does this one."[44] He opined production designer Dante Ferretti "combines the elegance of The Age of Innocence and the fantastic images of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen into a vampire world of eerie beauty", and called the Paris catacomb sets "one of the great sets of movie history".[44] He also praised the casting of Cruise and added, "Dunst, perhaps with the help of Stan Winston's subtle makeup, is somehow able to convey the notion of great age inside apparent youth."[44]
Desson Thomson, also of The Washington Post, was not as enthusiastic about Cruise's performance.[45] He added, "The humor, more subtly embedded in the book, has been brought to the surface as if this were a weekly sitcom called 'Pardon Me but Your Teeth Are in My Neck.'"[45] More critical reviews noted the compressed nature of the film adaptation "left out information crucial to understanding the characters' behavior".[43] In Variety, Todd McCarthy wrote while the film "has its share of riveting moments" and bears a "wonderfully evocative mood", what is "missing is a strong sense of emotional exchange and development among the main characters. The intense bonds of love, resentment and hatred that arc through the centuries among Lestat, Louis, the vampire he creates, and their 'daughter,' Claudia, are only lightly felt".[16]
Of Pitt's Louis, McCarthy said "there is no depth to his melancholy, no pungency to his sense of loss. He also doesn’t seem to connect in a meaningful way with any of the other actors except, perhaps, to Slater’s interviewer. This is unfortunate because his profound feelings for Claudia, Lestat and Armand are meant to be among the primary driving forces of the story."[16] Critics also pointed out the film loses narrative steam in its third act,[43][46][45] though Maslin commented that the film's final scene provides some rejuvenating thrills.[42] Ebert conceded his only criticism of the film was its thin plot, but concluded that the movie is overall "a skillful exercise in macabre imagination".[44]
Oprah Winfrey walked out of an advance screening of the movie only 10 minutes in, because of the gore and dark themes. She considered canceling an interview with Tom Cruise promoting the film, stating, "I believe there are forces of light and darkness in the world, and I don't want to be a contributor to the force of darkness".[47]