Neil Jordan’s “Interview with the Vampire” (1994) begins with dreamy aerial pictures of San Francisco, drawing us in with Elliot Goldenthal’s lovely, melancholic rating (much like his music for “Alien 3”) and Phillipe Rousselot’s lush cinematography.
We push in on an empty room, inhabited by a bespeckled Christian Slater, enjoying the Interviewer, about to bear witness to the story of the lifetime from the longhaired determine staring out the window.
It’s Brad Pitt enjoying a vampire named Louis.
So begins “Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles” (the complete onscreen title), probably the most anticipated movie of its yr and simply among the many most controversial. The latter high quality got here from its casting, the outcry from its writer and screenwriter Anne Rice and the expectation that the movie would betray its supply materials.
Extra on that later.
Louis recollects how he grew to become a vampire in 1791, whereupon his sorrow-drenched life took a flip for the more serious as soon as he obtained the fateful chew of the vampire Lestat (Tom Cruise). Throughout their years collectively as a pair of murdering night time prowlers, they “undertake” Claudia, a toddler, performed by an 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst.
Evening after night time, they drink the blood of the harmless with the intention to survive, a tediously cyclical life-style that Lestat relishes, however Louis rapidly finds horrible.
The second act portrays a hidden world of vampires as thespian monsters, dwelling in a theater that bears an superior underground world. This prolonged part appears like a very totally different film, although spectacular moments carry it by to a putting end.
The casting is vital to the place the movie each succeeds and stumbles.
Cruise was nobody’s first decide for Lestat. Certainly, Rice claimed she wished Cruise for Louis and, at one level, Rutger Hauer for Lestat, although she defended Cruise’s efficiency after seeing the movie.
There was even the Innovation comedian guide adaptation, which started in 1991 and, by the tip of its run, had Louis showing precisely like Cruise. Everybody conversant in the novel had an opinion on the topic.
Fact be informed, Cruise will get into the spirit of the movie, giving his all to a vile, privileged, and hateful character. The actor has given higher performances, however he goes all in right here.
I want I might say the identical for Pitt, whose efficiency is just half-there. I believe the actor could be higher at enjoying Louis at the moment, whereas Cruise would probably nonetheless be a spot-on Lestat (Cruise’s ageless zeal with every passing decade is, in spite of everything, type of vampiric).
It wouldn’t be an issue that Cruise is so strong right here, and Pitt, nicely, isn’t, if Cruise’s efficiency weren’t simply an prolonged cameo. That is Pitt’s movie, and his efficiency is just too much like his equally uneven flip in “Legends of the Fall” (from the identical yr). Pitt has humbly admitted through the years that he wasn’t in an excellent head house when he performed Louis (months of night time shoots will do this to you).
Contemplating how gleefully nasty and humorous Cruise is right here, and the way nicely he collaborated with older actors (similar to Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman), I can think about Rice’s dream imaginative and prescient of this film with Hauer and Cruise being much better.
Regardless of the shortage of chemistry between Cruise and Pitt, Dunst’s scenes with Cruise are electrical and Antonio Banderas is so hypnotic as Armand the vampire, it’s sufficient to make me want the studio had saved going with The Vampire Chronicles. Stephen Rea, in a bizarre flip that couldn’t have been extra not like his prior lead in Jordan’s “The Crying Sport” (1992), strikingly resembles Lon Chaney Jr. from “London After Midnight” (1927).
Additional movie and vampire historical past will be present in an excellent reference to Bram Stoker (“the vulgar fictions of a demented Irishman”) and I like how Louis is lastly capable of witness a dawn, by the miracle of cinema. There’s additionally a humorous reference to “Tequila Dawn” (1988), just for its title (ah, to think about Mel Gibson paired as Lestat to Cruise’s Louis- one other preferable fantasy pairing).
Regardless of Pitt’s sleepy flip, the remainder of the ensemble and Jordan’s robust route preserve it shifting. Dunst is wonderful in her first starring position. Slater is superb, ideally solid and filling in for the late River Phoenix, who was scheduled to play the position earlier than his tragic dying.
Many complained that the movie dialed down the novel’s eroticism, significantly between Lestat and Louis and that the movie was too tame. Each complaints are ridiculous, as Rice’s novel and this adaptation are about coping with loss and guilt, not the enjoyment of intercourse.
The erotic pressure between the characters is addressed within the dialogue however by no means made express.
Rice’s novel was famously a way of mourning her personal devastating private loss – the movie matches the guide’s tone. Stories of a few of the bloodier moments being minimize to take care of an R-rating don’t seem to have softened the movie, because the gore is frequent and disgusting.
So is the ethical dilemma at hand – Louis can’t consider he has to turn into a killer, not to mention bear witness to Lestat’s informal slaughters on a nightly foundation.
Brad Pitt apparently wished Daniel Day-Lewis to star reverse him in “Interview With a Vampire,” however Tom Cruise was solid as a substitute. Filmmaker Neil Jordan remembers “the outrage that adopted.”
“The whole world mentioned, ‘You might be miscast.’ He’s an excellent actor. If [Tom] says he can do… pic.twitter.com/szcAVVtgA0
— Selection (@Selection) June 14, 2024
Jordan’s movie is overloaded with visionary moments, similar to Louis’ preliminary glimpse of the world by “vampire eyes,” permitting him to see a beautiful statue in a cemetery seem to evaluate him with a fearful look. There’s additionally the repeated, knockout spectacle of vampires flying whereas engulfed in flames, and the staircase to Armand’s lair is jaw dropping.
Each time Cruise seems beneath piles of make-up to convey Lestat in a susceptible state, the ambition of the make-up and in Cruise’s strong efficiency join. Stan Winston offered a few of the movie’s grosser moments, of which there are lots of.
Like a Hammer horror movie however offered as Masterpiece Theater and with an enormous finances, Jordan provides it a cultured presentation however, even with a pruned operating time to satisfy the R-rating, it’s nonetheless a grisly work. That’s significantly true for a mainstream studio movie opening round Christmas (!).
FAST FACT: “Interview with a Vampire” cracked the $100 million mark on the U.S. field workplace in 1994 – $105 million. That’s good for tenth place on that yr’s field workplace listing.
Rice’s screenplay generously truncates a busy story and helpfully leans into the morbid humor. In any other case, it’s a darkish, unsettling story from begin to end.
Regardless of the power of this achievement, Jordan’s “Mona Lisa” (1986) and “The Crying Sport” (1992) are nonetheless his finest movies and superior works on household items that kind from outsiders searching for consolation in an surroundings of ethical rot.
As for the ultimate scene, it’s lots just like the “Sympathy for the Satan” cowl by Weapons N’ Roses that performs over the credit.
It’s amusing however just a little off.
The failure of the one sequel to this point, “Queen of the Damned” (2002), which featured not one of the unique workforce, and the success of the 2022 AMC TV collection changing into a beloved adaptation, has made Jordan’s movie a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly.
Whereas different lavish, star-studded vampire epics have emerged subsequently, Jordan’s proposed movie collection by no means received previous the primary entry (a minimum of, not together with his involvement). Whereas a giant hit on the time of launch, it stays a divisive work and, due to how good the AMC collection is, it’s not the definitive adaptation of the supply materials.
There are issues with Jordan’s movie, particularly Pitt and the pacing. But, what does work (nearly all of the performances, the facility of many scenes and the manufacturing itself) is sufficient to overcome the shortcomings.
Whereas an eternally divisive subject, Cruise’s extremely debated efficiency holds up higher than anybody remembers. Dunst, Banderas and Slater are terrific and the heartbreak and reflection on the worth of life from Rice’s defining novel are readily available.
“Interview with the Vampire” isn’t enjoyable (although it isn’t presupposed to be, not likely) however it’s full of life and maintains its means to shock. It additionally permits the one-time-only spectacle of an emaciated, aged Cruise enjoying a piano sonata and informing Dunst that she’s been “a really unhealthy lady.” Jordan’s movie has a pointy set of fangs – I want we had gotten the sequels this teased us with.
Fangs for the recollections.