#329. Interview With the Vampire (1994)

Directed By: Neil Jordan

Starring: Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas




Tag line: "Drink From Me And Live Forever"

Trivia:  Johnny Depp was offered the role of Lestat

What makes Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire so unique is its point of view. Throughout the history of the cinema, the majority of vampire films (at least those that achieved any level of success) have been presented solely from mankind’s perspective. F.W. Murnau’s 1922 horror classic, Nosferatu, wasn’t so much the story of the evil Count Orlok as it was that of Hutter and his long-suffering wife, Ellen, who suddenly had to cope with the threat of living across the street from a monster. Tod Browning’s 1931 version of Dracula possessed a dual personality, mixing in equal parts the tale of Mina Seward’s fight for survival with that of Dr. Van Helsing’s quest to defeat the Dark Prince. Despite the fact that the vampires themselves were usually the title characters, their existence in these films was little more than a means by which to challenge the human condition. This is one reason I was so utterly fascinated by Interview with the Vampire, a film in which the bloodthirsty undead finally get their chance to take center stage. 

Louis (Brad Pitt), a 200 year old vampire, wants to tell the world his story, so he grants an interview to reporter Daniel Malloy (Christian Slater), during which he conveys the dramatic details of his plunge into darkness. The year was 1791, and Louis, a New Orleans plantation owner whose wife had just passed away, decided, in despair, to take his own life. Before he has a chance to end it all, however, he meets Lestat (Tom Cruise), a vampire who grants Louis the gift of eternal life with a solitary bite on the neck. Shortly after his transformation, Louis begins to question whether such an existence is, indeed, a gift…or a curse. Plagued by the memories of his life as a mortal, Louis can’t bring himself to kill another human being, and chooses instead to feast on the blood of rats and other small animals. Lestat taunts Louis for his “misguided” morality, yet Louis never forgets what it was like to be human, leaving his ‘life’ as a vampire depressingly unfulfilled. 

Brad Pitt delivers an extraordinary performance as the monster who can’t escape the memory of his life before the darkness. His Louis despises the fact that he must draw the blood of innocents in order to survive, a direct contrast to Tom Cruise’s treacherous Lestat, who takes pleasure in the kill. When Louis lures a wealthy socialite (Lyla Hay Owen) out into the darkness with the intention of attacking her, he instead winds up murdering the woman’s two poodles, drinking their blood as his intended victim screams for help. While the failure to ignore his own humanity works against Louis at the outset, this very quality will eventually make him the envy of others of his kind, including Armand (Antonio Banderas), the leader of a band of vampires whom Louis encounters one year in Paris. Armand recognizes that Louis, despite his feelings of inadequacy, is, in fact, the perfect vampire; a being who has achieved immortality, yet continues to maintain a very mortal frame of mind. 

When it comes to cinematic monsters (in particular, any of the ‘classic’ creatures), it’s usually the sad, pathetic ones like Frankenstein’s monster who gather up most of the audience’s sympathy. Vampires, on the other hand, are symbols of the true harbingers of evil, and are thus reviled the world over. In Interview with the Vampire, we get to know these children of the night who were once, and not long ago, mortals just like us. We discover that the craving for blood does not entirely wipe away the guilt for having to spill it, and that, even among the eternally damned, there remains a glimmer of humanity, no matter how many hundreds of years may pass.