Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

A vampire tells his epic life story: love, betrayal, loneliness, and hunger.

• Director: * Neil Jordan
  
• Genre:Drama / Fantasy / Horror
• Runtime:123 minutes

Cast

Brad Pitt : Louis de Pointe du Lac
Christian Slater : Daniel Malloy
Virginia McCollam : Whore on Waterfront
John McConnell : Gambler
Tom Cruise : Lestat de Lioncourt

In modern-day San Francisco, reporter Daniel Malloy (Christian Slater), interviews a man named Louis (Brad Pitt), who claims to be a vampire and tells the story of his past.

Louis’ story begins in Louisiana in 1791, when he was 24 and suffering from a death wish after the loss of his wife and child. The vampire Lestat (Tom Cruise) offers him a chance to be reborn and proceeds to turn him into a vampire. Lestat teaches Louis how to live as a vampire. At first Louis rebels against hurting humans, drinking animal blood instead, but he finally succumbs and kills his faithful housemaid (Thandie Newton). He tries to kill himself by setting fire to his house, but Lestat rescues him and they flee.

In New Orleans, Louis gives in to his bloodlust again, and bites a young girl, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), whom Lestat later transforms into a vampire “daughter”, to discourage Louis from leaving him. Lestat begins to teach Claudia how to live like a vampire, making her copy his actions, as to killing. As thirty years pass, Claudia becomes a sadistic killer and closely bonded to Louis and Lestat. But when she realizes that she will live forever but never grow up, she becomes furious with Lestat. By tricking him into drinking the blood of the corpses of twin boys, whom she killed by overdosing them with Laudanum, she weakens him and apparently kills him. She and Louis dump Lestat’s body in a swamp but he later returns, having drained the blood of swamp creatures to survive. Lestat attacks them but Louis sets him on fire and flees to Paris with Claudia, assuming Lestat is dead.

In 1870 Paris, Louis and Claudia live in perfect harmony but Louis is still bothered by the question of how vampires came to be and if there are any other vampires on earth. One night, while walking the streets, he meets vampires Santiago (Stephen Rea) and Armand (Antonio Banderas), who tell him that there are other vampires in Paris and that he knows the answers Louis has been searching for. Armand invites Louis and Claudia to his coven, the Theatre des Vampires, where they witness Armand and his coven dispatching of a terrified human woman before an unsuspecting human audience. Armand later takes them to his lair and offers Louis a place by his side, while secretly telling Claudia to leave him. Louis refuses to leave his beloved Claudia, however, and leaves the lair. As he does, Santiago warns him that his vampire coven knows about Lestat’s murder and that it is forbidden for vampires to kill another vampire. Louis returns alone to Armand’s lair, where Armand proceeds to reveal that Louis is a unique vampire as he possesses a human soul and is connected to the “broken-hearted” spirit of the 19th Century. Louis becomes thoroughly smitten by Armand and resolves to leave Claudia at long last. Read more

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