[The following review was my very first published in The Kansas City Kansan on Nov. 8, 1994. Since the now long gone Kansan was a local newspaper, the editor included the fact that I was also teaching at a local high school.]

By Steve Crum

Not far into Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, one realizes that a more apt title would be Therapy Session with the Vampire. For here is a bloodsucker in deep depression with a number of connected problems.

Using Anne Rice’s popular novel, director Jordan and screenwriter Rice open the story in a modern day San Francisco hotel room where a newspaper reporter (Christian Slater) has been “summoned” to document the last two centuries of Louis Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt). A plantation owner in 1791 New Orleans, Louis’ life is shattered when his wife and child die in childbirth. He then succumbs to vampirism as “a release from the pain of living” when Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise) sells him on the idea of a happier, and eternal, life. Louis becomes a team player, er, biter. 

During the course of the “interview,” we see the perverse Lestat teach Louis the skills of vampirism. But Louis has an aversion to human targets, preferring rats, chickens, and in one very darkly comedic scene, an elderly lady’s poodles. 

When Louis finally victimizes a human, it is 12 year-old Claudia, brilliantly played by Kirsten Dunst. Her Claudia evolves into a truly tormented soul—intellectually a woman forever trapped in a child’s body. Dunst’s performance is Oscar caliber. 

So is Cruise’s. His vampire is really wacko. Always flamboyant, Lestat is way over the top…like his dancing with Claudia’s long-dead mother’s corpse in a Beetlejuice/Fred Astaire parody. He is the mentor-friend who keeps popping in and out of Louis’ life. 

Lately, much has been said about the overt sexuality with this “family”of three vampires. There are moments of near homosexual embrace (Louis and Lestat) as well as a liaison between Claudia and Louis. 

Certainly, director Jordan’s previous work in The Crying Game had similar dealings, minus vampires. Vampirism in film and literature has always included lustful implications, homoerotic and otherwise.

Interview includes great gothic sets, marvelous period costumes and chilling vampire makeup. (Check out those varicose-like veins in Cruise and Pitt’s pallid faces.)

One of several memorable fire sequences occurs during the time Louis and Claudia spend with a decadent theatrical troupe of vampires, led by Antonio Banderas. It is unforgettably surreal.

Interview with the Vampire is the film Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities left in in shock and disgust. Be forewarned that it is deservedly rated “R” for violence and nudity.

Maybe Oprah thought that “interview” meant “talk show.”

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GRADE on an A-F Scale: B+

(Steve Crum is the journalism teacher at Washington High School.)