The Three Interviews With The Vampire| Clash of the Adaptations!
An introduction to how every Interview With The Vampire adaptation stacks up compared to Anne Rice’s novel.
Preamble
My first experience of Anne Rice’s Interview with The Vampire was Neil Jordan’s 1994 adaptation, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
At the time of viewing, it was a revelation.
All the queer/queer coded television and film content I had watched beforehand had been tragic in that the protagonists had been destined for a miserable ending. But this film was ahead of its time, using vampires and their mythology to present queerness, and ultimately depression, as a human condition deserving of serious storytelling. At leasts that’s how I interpreted it.
Then came the 2022 television adaptation, which made creative decisions that altered Louis’ race to African American, and moves us forwards in time from the novel into 20th Century New Orleans. The purpose being to explore how race changes the power dynamics that are inherent to an almighty, immortal vampire and their prey.
It is almost comical, tragically, the way in which Jacob Anderson’s Louis de Point du Lac has powers that in any other story would give him leave to act in any which way he pleases, but in early 20th Century New Orleans, he is subject to the same social pressures as any other African American in Louisiana, that renders him fangless. And so, much of the conflict comes from Louis being pitted against powerful figures that encumber him in typical ways of the era, and in which you sometimes forget you’re watching a vampire show at all.
Fantasy Eras
As I progressed through Anne Rice’s novel, I wondered how and why her masterpiece is not more popular beyond the vampire aficionados. This is only anecdotal, but I’ve found that it takes up little space in fantasy conversations.
But perhaps the allure of vampires is more niche than I imagined. Of all the “fantasy eras” (as we can call them) of the past three decades, vampirism does not fall neatly into any of them.
Here, I will list these so called “eras” and their most popular works:
High Fantasy - The Lord of the Rings
Portal Fantasy - The Chronicles of Narnia
Urban/Hidden World Fantasy - Harry Potter
Dystopian Young Adult Fantasy - The Hunger Games
Grim-Dark Fantasy - A Song of Ice and Fire
Romantasy - A Court of Thorns and Roses
If vampirism were to be grouped into any of these, it would be Grim-Dark Fantasy, but I think even then, it would struggle.
With all of these sub-genres, redemption is a key to the catharsis of their works; and there is something inherent about vampires, that simply cannot be redeemed.
Demonstrated as Armand asks, “Is evil a great perilous gulf one falls into with the first sin?”
Here, Louis and Armand have a long philosophical discussion about the guilt that has wracked Louis since he first became a vampire. In the end, Louis resolves that the answer is yes. And the one unforgivable sin is the taking of a human life.
Taking a human life, not in self-defence, not in a noble war, or even with murderous intent. Those, the church can forgive.
But to take a human life in order to sustain your own being, Louis regards as an evil that one cannot recover from.
This is all to say, vampires are inherently transgressive, and too dangerous to be admitted into general society. They are predators who have both intellectually ascended from their base desires in order to morally question them, but also need those desires to survive.
The best sub-genre to categorise them in, then, is horror/gothic-fantasy.
Universal Studios once tried to build a cinematic universe with The Invisible Man, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and other fantastical gory creatures, but it fell apart very quickly due to bad audience and critic receptions.
But I wonder, even if those movies were exceptional, whether the general public would have entertained them for very long.
The latest successful horror/gothic fantasy film to emerge was Robert Eggers’ 2024 adaptation of Nosferatu, which was a commercial success grossing over $150million worldwide. The film deals with loneliness, desire, and oppressive forces that manifest in the titular Nosferatu. And usually, these kinds of monsters are at their best when exploring topics that scratch at the hidden anxieties of a society.
Can Frankenstein’s monster simply be another creature an assembled squad of heroes needs to defeat, or even an anti-hero in his own right? Well, yes. But that strips away humanity’s wrestle with god that gave birth to Frankenstein’s very conception. And that conception is not “four-quadrant” storytelling.
A “four-quadrant” film being a narrative that appeals to the four major demographics of movie goers: Men, women, over 25s, and under 25s.
But I think a better way to consider these demographics is as men, women, teenagers, and families. As it brings clearer images to mind about the kinds of media those groups would consume.
All the previously stated eras of fantasy have the ability to appeal to all four quadrants, but horror is generally prohibitive to families and young teenagers, which makes telling a gripping narrative without those aspects difficult to accomplish.
Specifically with Interview With The Vampire, this is a work that had revolutionised the vampire genre, but even in its case, was not able to lodge itself into the popular psyche.
Vampires were no longer subject to the same lust as human beings. They did not share our desires; our wants and needs. They became, as Lestat de Lioncourt put it, “creatures made in the closest imagine of God.”
Review
Anne Rice’s vampires are intelligent creatures with philosophies and worldviews of their own.
A tortured world in which the central conflict arises when Louis cannot reconcile his natural vampiric urges with his human ideologies and prejudices. He must kill and devour the human life-force in order to live, but his catholic morality dictates that killing one human being is enough to throw a being into the depths of sin. And his cowardice is so all-consuming, that he has not the courage to kill himself - as he often reminds us.
Ultimately, I have found myself at the end of my Interview With a Vampire journey, finally, by experiencing Anne Rice’s source material - which immediately made an impression on me by how different the adaptations turned out to be.
Rice’s prose is rich and elaborate without being too ornamental.
The two opening characters of The Vampire and the Boy create an uneasy dynamic that increasingly has us fearing for the Boy’s life, whilst sympathising with Louis’ life-long dilemma.
Lestat, noticeably, has a much more diminished role in Louis’ sense of himself than the film or television versions ever did.
Rather, Louis does not only despise Lestat, but thinks him a moron. Only tolerating him for as long as he does, because he believes Lestat has something - some inherent and beautiful truth - to teach him about vampire-hood. This never materialises. And so, when Claudia hatches a plan to rid themselves of him, the catharsis I felt was only marginally that of viewing the television show’s version of these events.
Here, I must interject a point praising Sam Reid’s portrayal of Lestat de Lioncourt in the 2022 television show. Instead of Louis merely being a financial convenience for him, Lestat falls deeply in love with Louis, and Louis with Lestat.
Louis’ guilt is still carried over from the novel, but it is greatly alleviated by the affection and camaraderie Lestat shows him. In giving Louis the gift of eternal life, (TV) Lestat did not just create another vampire, he created a companion. And in this version, Lestat is charismatic, and flamboyant, and has insights which Louis listens and adheres to.
It is also because Lestat transforms Louis at his lowest moment, in an emotionally compromised state as he grieves his dead brother, that we can foresee a relationship that will soon turn sour and intoxicating once Louis realises the true manipulative nature of Lesat; who, once he can no longer persuade or cajole Louis into submitting to him, turns to violence which far exceeds that of Anne Rice’s book.
Anne Rice’s Lestat had to create Claudia in order to emotionally blackmail Louis into staying by his side; Sam Reid’s version forbids it, fearing another vampire coming between them, but relents after Louis begs him. But as with the book, it is Claudia who first gleams the true nature of Lestat, identifies Louis’ dependence on him, and is the one who makes the attempt on Lestat’s life.
In the novel, it was Louis’ cowardice that prevented him from killing Lestat; in the show, it was his love.
Anne Rice’s Claudia is imaginatively tragic: a being gifted (as she comes to see it) with immortality, but is trapped in the body of a little girl forever.
There is a particularly mocking passage where upon finding the vampire coven, Théâtres des Vampires, other vampires fondle Claudia’s hair and pull her cheeks as though she were a child. Even Louis remarks how he too would often treat her as much, forgetting that within the fragile frame of Claudia’s body is the mind of a fully formed, intellectual woman. But perhaps this too is a quality of humanity that is sacrificed for immortal life. As we so often say in this modern age of cosmetic surgeries, there is a grace to aging which increasingly we are attempting to bypass. If we are to accept and revel in the blooming of our bodies into adolescence, and eventual adulthood, it is a poor thing to mourn that same ticking clock that takes us to old age.
Claudia is also unique in her obsession of finding other vampires. But it is not just other vampires she wants to find, she wants a companion of her own. She eventually fulfils this herself when she persuades Louis to create Madeline. Her humanity wins out in the end; her need for a companion overwhelming her.
And perhaps this would have been a happy ending… if not for Armand.
And what is there to say of Armand but that in him, Louis finally found a teacher, a lover, and an accomplice, in a way Lestat and Claudia could never be for him. A vampire who above all wants peace and society, but who is held captive by it as much as he cultivates it. Armand sees, in Louis, his freedom.
In achieving this freedom, by murdering Claudia and Madeline, he inflicts the same nihilistic lethargy on Louis that he himself has long been suffering from.
As we know, Anne Rice was suffering the grief of losing her daughter, Michele Rice, when she wrote Interview With The Vampire. The grief bleeds through into this work of fiction.
Depression eats away at Louis after the death of his brother, and rather than alleviating the pain, vampirism exacerbates it. Vampirism does not make him lose his faith in god, it amplifies it.
Claudia finds no comfort in being young forever, and Armand ultimately destroyed what is left of Louis’ spirit when he manipulates him into being his companion.
My reading of Anne Rice’s version of vampirism, is that it is the very foil to the virtues of depression - and many other a human condition.
The questions that come to me are:
Wouldn’t Armand have had sweeter admiration without all that power; Claudia, fulfilling companionship without all that youth; and Louis, a profound process of mourning his brother without the burden of immortality?