INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE - DVD review

I love vampire flicks, all the way from the silent "Nosferatu" through Lugosi and Lee to "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and "The Lost Boys." But I can't begin to tell you how tedious I found "Interview With the Vampire," despite my regard for its look, feel, costumes, sets, and atmosphere.

Adapting the screenplay from her best-selling novel, writer Anne Rice along with director Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game," "Michael Collins," "Mona Lisa") have concocted a kind of vampire soap opera and filled it with enough high-powered stars--Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Christian Slater, Antonio Banderas, Stephen Rea, Kirsten Dunst--to ensure a degree of success. The story is told in flashback as two-hundred-year-old vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Pitt) tells his life history to interviewer Daniel Malloy (Slater) in a seedy little apartment in San Francisco.

The first forty minutes are given over to Louis's seduction into the allures of vampirism by Lestat de Lioncourt (Cruise), an older and remarkably persuasive vampire.In 1791 Louis was a rich, young plantation owner in the Deep South before succumbing to the dark side. Once a vampire, he must be convinced of certain necessities like killing human victims and drinking their blood, which he steadfastly refuses to do, preferring rats instead. When he finally comes to accept who and what he is, however, he goes about his business with relish.

Louis's first human victim is a little girl named Claudia (Dunsten), who is subsequently turned into a vampire by Lestat. (It seems a vampire can turn anyone into a creature of the night by first sucking the person's blood and then combining it with his own.) Lestat, you see, is lonely and in order to make Louis stay with him, he gives him Claudia. She becomes the two male vampires' adopted "daughter" and, by implication, Louis's lover. (Like most vampire movies, this one doesn't openly explore the sex lives of the creatures, but it's clear that sucking blood is exhilarating in more ways than one. Later in the story, another vampire, Armand (Banderas), is seen to have a young boy vampire in tow, so I guess these creatures are not so different from humans in the diversity of their preferences.)

Anyway, because they never age, the world grows old around them, and before more than a few decades have come and gone the happy little family members are at each other's throats, literally. Claudia gets ticked off not being able to grow up and become a real woman, blames Lestat for her condition, and winds up slitting his jugular. Not to worry; vampires are resilient. Temporarily left to themselves, Louis and Claudia seek their roots in the Old World, going to Paris and joining up with a whole tribe of blood suckers led by Armand, supposedly the oldest living vampire on earth. The group earns its keep by performing in theater, pretending to be humans playing at being vampires. That's a cute twist. All of this goes on without end until we reach the present, where the interviewer gets more than he bargained for in one of the dumbest endings in recent cinema.

The film tries its best to be taken seriously, but it comes off as part pretentious, pseudo, pop psychology and part parody. Yes, parody. I mean, how else can one interpret bits like the little girl being told not to play with her food or the girl's demand that she be given her own little coffin in sleep in or the trio devouring whole families of humans at a single meal? Is that Mel Brooks smiling in the wings? As far as the psychology is concerned, do we really need a two-hour treatise on the ethos and animus of vampirism? It rather takes the fun out of the proceedings, you know?

Ultimately, the movie fails to achieve what it strives so hard for--to make us feel any sympathy whatsoever for Louis. We may pity him, yes, but we cannot be sympathetic. The situation is not helped by everyone speaking in an exaggerated, overly precise, stylized, and hugely melodramatic manner that makes them all sound too unreal to worry about. Worse, we are given absolutely no one else in the film to care about, either. The vampires are the only characters in the plot, the humans mere fodder, and these beasts are cold-blooded murderers who have no concept of right or wrong. How can we feel for them?

Unlike conventional vampire movies where there's a hero and a heroine to root for, this film gives us nothing but empty-headed monsters who care not a whit for their prey and even less for one another. The movie generates no tension, no suspense, no fright, and no thrills. Not even the presence of Tom Cruise can save the day as he goes missing for half the film! Is it any wonder we wind up not caring about the story or any of its participants? The whole thing is overly long, overly dreary, extraordinarily redundant, and unremittingly dull.

Video:
The picture quality in Warner Brothers' 1.75:1 ratio anamorphic transfer is understandably dark (vampires only come out at night, after all), and as such the colors are less than bright or vivid. Nevertheless, noted effects wizard Stan Winston ("Terminator 2," "Jurassic Park," "Predator") did the makeup and it is convincingly reproduced. The little veins on the vampires' faces show up surprisingly well, if that's your idea of a good time. Most scenes are intentionally murky and obscure, but the dim hues are well balanced, if sometimes rough and grainy.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is so nondescript I hardly noticed it, which is perhaps a good thing. The sonics should never call attention to themselves at the expense of the story line. Let it suffice that the audio does its job in all five channels, with the .1 subwoofer getting its share of duties along the way. Warner Brothers also provide DTS 5.1 audio as an option for those with the equipment to play it back, but as usual they only mention the fact in type almost too small to read on the bottom back of the packaging.

Extras:
The disc comes with several bonus items, most significantly a full-feature commentary by director Neil Jordan. There are also some production notes; a thirty-minute documentary called "In the Shadow of the Vampire," where the cast and crew typically hype the film; a brief introduction to the movie by Anne Rice, Neil Jordan, and Antonio Banderas; twenty-nine scene selections; and a theatrical trailer. Oh, and there's also a cheat; an item called "History of the Vampire" is listed on the menu, but all that comes up is a Warner Bros. Web site address. It's like they were planning to put something on the disc and then at the last minute decided against it. English and French are the spoken language choices; English, French, and Spanish the subtitles.

Parting Shots:
I can see how a lot of people would love this film. After all, it has a little something for everyone: heterosexuality, homosexuality, murder, mayhem, pedophilia, necrophilia, nudity, torture, gore, dismemberment, and abuse, to say nothing of vampirism. Combined with its high-profile cast and excellent production values, it would seem a surefire proposition. But, ultimately, it's an empty, anemic exercise. Louis spends over two hundred years being a vampire and regrets it. I spent over a 120 minutes watching this film and regret it. Maybe we're even.