| Queen of the Damned Released: 2002 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Vampire Nuts and Bolts: The vampire Lestat has become a rock star and has revealed his true nature to the world. Now while most of the MTV generation believes Lestat to merely be playing at being a vampire, the true vampires of the world know better, and they ain't none too happy with seeing their glam boy strutting his stuff on stage. Oh yeah…and there's also a little matter of a Vampire queen to boot. Summary: The movie opens with a monologue spoken over the molding tombs of Lafayette cemetery in New Orleans. The vampire Lestat details the malaise that has kept him stagnant for over a century. Emerging from a badass but decidedly unrealistic looking coffin, Lestat rejoins the modern world. And what was it that caused him to stir after a century of slumber? Why the coursing sounds of rap-metal of course! Lestat traces the musical sounds he hears until he finds a quartet of underfed skeletal monstrosities clamoring about their musical instruments. (Although my less than hetero buddy Jase attests that he would gleefully pork pound the group's androgynous and yet nameless guitarist). This is a modern techno-grunge-rap-Goth whatever the fuck you call it music band known as Satan's Night Out. When asked who he is, Lestat smugly replies, "I am the vampire Lestat." From that point on, he completely enraptures the group and becomes the lead singer of their group. The band changes its name to the Vampire Lestat and spends six months enjoying unbridled success. From there we cut to the future as well as California where we find the members of the Vampire Lestat as well as their road manager Roger Smythe at a press conference. Many of the fans and reporters don't really believe Lestat to be a true vampire, but they humor him nonetheless and play along with Lestat's promotional image. However, Lestat uses the media as a platform to issue a challenge to the true vampires of the world. He beckons them to come to his concert and face him. Apparently Lestat has been revealing ancient vampire secrets through his music. Tsk tsk tsk. Such a naughty boy. So now we move on to the rest of our cast. There's the character of Jesse. Jesse is a young woman who works for a British supernatural research team known as the Talamasca. Aside from her day job, Jesse also has a peculiar history. It appears that her aunt Maharet is actually a centuries old vampire. But don't worry; she's one of the 'good' ones. Through inexplicable and all-together alternate circles, both Jesse and Maharet are pulled into Lestat's sphere of influence. While doing work for the Talamasca, Jesse discovers an old journal written by Lestat himself over a century ago. By studying the journal and analyzing a song of his called Redeemer, Jesse learns that the old British pub the Admiral Arms has been renovated into a trendy new Vampire coven nightclub. Jesse's boss David Talbot warns her against investigating the coven. The two bandy about the Talamasca credo of "Study the dark realm but be not of it." Jesse could give a shit finger about all that though. Tarting herself up in an ensemble that resembles a cross between Minnie Mouse and Chun-Li from Street Fighter, she heads down to the coven. Through David Talbot, Jesse has learned that Lestat's master was a sexually questionable little sprig known as Marius. Recognizing that Marius is an ancient, she begins dropping his name at different points around the bar. This inevitably draws out Lestat. Lestat saves Jesse from being throat raped by a group of hungry vampires that collectively couldn't weigh more than 30 pounds. Truth to tell, I think Jesse could've whooped ALL their asses. Lestat interrogates her a bit and Jesse reveals that she has Lestat's violin. The vampire brushes her off however and returns to doing whatever it is that fey vampires do in the dead of night in Glastonbury England. Now at some point during all of this, we are treated to the ubiquitous flashback sequence. This is the part where we learn all about Lestat's origins, and why he has such a bug up his undead ass. In 1788, Lestat was summoned to a castle nestled within a small Mediterranean Island. Here he discovers the vampire Marius who has taken liberties with Lestat and did him the service of turning him into a vampire. Marius trains Lestat in the Do's and Don'ts of vampire life; "Don't drink the blood of the dead. Don't wear my pink chiffon" etc. etc. etc. There's even a bit where Lestat tries to hang out with a group of gypsy musicians on the beach. But that gig turns sour when one of them discovers Lestat's nature and tries to flee. Marius is forced to kill the gypsies. But the most significant part of Lestat's history involves that which lies in the crypts below Marius' not-so-humble abode. Apparently Marius was the caretaker of two ancient Egyptian royal vampires known as King Enkil and Queen Akasha (I assume their royalty status was in relation to the vampire world, not the human world. Everybody knows there was only one Queen of Egypt and it WASN'T Akasha). Apparently Akasha and Enkil were bad mamjammas and succeeded in sucking the Earth dry. At some point, this historical aspect ties into the appearance of Maharet but that's never really explained in the movie. Be that as it may, Lestat drank the blood of Akasha and became something akin to a super vampire. Marius, ever the jealous sort could not abide such effrontery and made off with the two ancient vampire royals in the middle of the night. That was the last that Lestat had seen of either Marius or of Akasha. Let's go back to the present shall we. Lestat returns to California so that he can prepare for his big concert in Death Valley. He has his manager Roger bring him his weekly supply of groupie whores. However, one of the whores happens to be none other than Jesse the Talamasca librarian! Whore #2 is dispatched and Lestat and Jesse have another woeful heart to heart. Jesse wants to know what its like to be a vampire and she even alludes to the idea of Lestat turning her into one. This completely turns him off and he goes out and slaughters an innocent woman just to prove to Jesse how monstrous an existence he really leads. Marius also appears for the first time in the 20th century and warns Lestat about all the shit he has started. Lestat doesn't really care though and actually welcomes the pending conflict. History has a funny way of repeating itself in this flick. Remember how I said earlier that the Goth-Metal music was responsible for awakening Lestat? Well apparently these kids make a habit out of waking the dead. Lestat's vocals prove to be so alluring that they awaken Akasha after centuries of slumber. She's a total bitch and wants nothing more than to blow people up and fuck Lestat. She goes into a club looking for him and uses her powers to make a bunch of vampires explode. No one really knows why she is doing this but apparently Akasha doesn't need much of a reason to do anything. So now we come to the night of the big concert. Lestat and his uglies are doing their heavy metal thing up on stage. The crowd is filled with throngs of pasty-faced teens wearing leather, face paint and body jewelry. Also amongst the crowd are Jesse, Marius, David Talbot, Maharet and her troupe, as well as several 'evil' vampires that want to kick Lestat's ass. The big L spots them during one of his songs and calls them out. One by one they begin leaping upon the stage to attack Lestat. Marius goes up there as well and helps his old boy out. Who would've thought that a thirty-pound man could kick some ass right? Marius and Lestat pretty much whoop the shit out of all the vampires until the timely and somewhat extravagant arrival of Akasha. Both vamps are really put off as Akasha grabs Lestat and flies off into the night with him. So now Akasha drones on about how she wants Lestat to be her king and everything (During the interim she killed and drank the blood of her previous consort King Enkil). Despite the fact that Lestat is not privy to the fate that befell his precursor, he's not really down with the idea of being a king of corpses. But Akasha is pretty set in her ways and is damned and determined to keep Lestat around as he concubine. She does some mystical vampire hoodoo on him and even gives him some kinky S&M gear to boot. Now we go back to Jesse. Jesse has returned to the home of her aunt Maharet and her vampire brood. No longer concerned about Lestat, they're now concerned with the more powerful Akasha. Maharet explains that whoever drinks the last drop of blood from Akasha's body will die (You see where this is heading don't you?). Akasha and her porn star Lestat action figure bust up into the crib and start causing some shit. A few of the throwaway vampires try to lunch her, but she easily rebuffs them. When I say, "rebuff" I actually mean she blows them up into little chunks of fiery flesh. In order to prove Lestat's loyalty to her she orders him to kill Jesse. But Lestat is just playing her you see. He's not REALLY under her thrall. However, his test of loyalty proves to be an easy one since Jesse wanted to be a vampire anyway. Lestat drinks the blood from Jesse's partially exposed yet nippleless boobie and leaves her on the floor. As reward for his task, Akasha lets him drink from her thus increasing his already awesome power. Lestat signals the others to attack and they all pile on top of Akasha en masse. She fights back a few of them, but little by little her powers begin to fade. Lestat bites down on her again weakening her significantly. Maharet steps up to the plate and decides to play the sacrificial lamb. Pulling Lestat off of Akasha, she bends down and bites her on the neck. This finishes Akasha off and the Nubian Queen turns into dust. However, this also spells doom for Maharet. She turns into a statue trapped in a position of endless slumber. Lestat then feeds some of his super-blood to the dying Jesse thus turning her into a vampire as well. The following evening, Lestat and the vampire Jesse return to Talamasca headquarters to tell David that she is no longer going to be able to work the day shift in the Talamasca library. She even offers David the chance to be a vampire but he politely declines. Jesse and Lestat walk away into the London night. As an epilogue, we see Marius entering the Talamasca headquarters. He barges into David Talbot's office and we are led to believe that David becomes a vampire after all. Acting/Dialogue: Irish nancy-boy Stuart Townsend is the bread-n-butter of this film. Although his dialogue is kind of hokey and forced at times, he does a good job at bringing the Anne Rice character of Lestat to life. Stuart puts a sensuality into the character that Tom Cruise was hard pressed to do in chapter 1 of the Vampire Chronicles. To his credit, Cruise tried but I think Townsend realized the concept of Lestat for the new millennium. Late actress/pop star Aaliyah played the title role of Akasha. Akasha doesn't get a whole helluva lot of screen time and most of it was spent doing some funky dance at a European Goth Club and blowing people up. Aaliyah didn't put a lot of oomph into the role and to be honest, I really would have preferred had they chosen someone with a bit more of an expansive acting pedigree to play the part of the Queen of the Damned. Now I know what you're thinking. You're probably saying to yourself, "Gosh Headhunter, give the girl a break. She's dead!" But hey, the way I see it: Death is a poor excuse for shitty acting. Her tragedy is our loss, but I'm not going to fabricate a sense of depth for her character where there is none. Note: For all of those that have no clue what I'm talking about…Aaliyah was killed in an airplane crash sometime after the making of Queen of the Damned. The remainder of the cast was rather uninspiring. Jesse had zero going for her and did absolutely nothing for me. Her placement in this flick seemed to serve little more than a sounding board for Lestat. I also thought the casting of Marius was poorly conceived. In QOTD Marius is played by Vincent Perez. Some of you may remember him as the title character from that shitty ass film Crow: City of Angels. He is a bit more aloof in this than he was in the Crow, but although he inserts a bit of quaint levity into the part of Marius, he still comes off as a snobbishly unlikable character. Gore: The gore is rather subdued in this movie. I guess since they were aiming this flick at a mainstream pop culture audience and not the vampire demographic, they felt it necessary to tone down the gore so as not to frighten the N'Sync fans. Pussies. Director Michael Rymer decided not to take as many chances with QOTD as Neil Jordan did with Interview with the Vampire. Whereas IWTV teetered on the brink of risqué, QOTD is chilled and served under glass complete with safety warnings and HASMAT goggles. No worries here; watered down vampire fluff just the way you life it. Admittedly though, the concert scene featured a quasi-cool impalement and a rather groovy beheading. Guilty Pleasures: Sigh. It's a sad thing that in this day and age, we are shown a vampire film containing an ultra trendy chic Goth club and yet…no boobies. Has director Michael Rymer forgotten that VAMP is the root word in VAMPire? Ladies and poofs however will likely squeal as Stuart Townsend goes shirtless several times throughout the course of this film. The Good: If you have made it this far and have even a passing interest in the vampire genre, then you are probably at least passably familiar with where this film draws its resources from. BUT, if you are in fact a homeless child from Mozambique whose only exposure to vampire mass market media comes in the form of a box of Count Chocula, then this little preamble may be of interest and aid to you. Queen of the Damned was originally the third installment in a series of novels by Anne Rice known as the Vampire Chronicles. The first installment was made into the 1994 Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise film Interview with the Vampire. Now while Queen of the Damned is initially intended to run as a leapfrog sequel to IWTV, it primarily exists as a stand-alone film with no ties or bearing to its precursor. Whether that is for good or for ill is for you to decide. One thing I really get a kick out of with this flick is its overall marketing allure. The character Lestat masturbates on the audience in order to sell more concert tickets and to pimp out his vampire brethren. Michael Rymer masturbates on the movie going audience in order to sell more soundtracks and pimp out aspiring pop star Aaliyah. If nothing else, the film has symmetry. As I've alluded to earlier, the movie's greatest asset is Lestat himself. He really is the motivating factor behind everything that occurs here and he hungrily steals the spotlight from anyone who would dare to step on his toes including Akasha. What I dig most about this guy is the fact that he LOVES to fuck with people. He gets off on seeing their reactions to him. There's an especially poignant scene where he has two groupies over at his house. He begins crawling across the floor backwards baiting them to follow. As such, these two dumb whores actually get on their hands and knees and begin following him across the room. And not in a sexy way either; more like a "I'm a dumb bitch and I'll do whatever it takes so long as you make me squeal" sort of a way. He then proceeds to climb the wall like friggin' Spiderman before pouncing down on them. It's funny watching their stupefied reactions as he crawls up the wall. The irony being, Lestat TOLD these idiots he was a vampire. It's not his fault that they didn't believe him. And in the end, that's what Lestat is all about: Exploiting the masses for the maximum entertainment value with the minimum amount of effort. What's not to love? But there's more to the Lestat character than simply fucking with people and hanging out with ugly Goth chicks. He values the freedom of life so much that he would rather risk ending it all than to remain a sheltered waste hidden away from the eyes of the world. This pretty much forms the crux of all of Lestat's motivations. Life is about quality not quantity so far as he's concerned. Maybe that's why he doesn't feel threatened when he discovers that the Talamasca are keeping tabs on him. There's a part of Lestat that enjoys the cat-n-mouse games. This would also go a long way towards explaining the dynamic between Jesse and he. In a small fashion, he sees her as a mirror version of him. And come the end of the picture, she seems to imbibe the Lestat characteristics with much more verve than she did prior to becoming a vampire. There are some ironic parallels between Queen of the Damned and the Crow; some of which I've already mentioned. Lestat's intro into this flick is extremely reminiscent of the character of Eric Draven from the first Crow movie. Whereas Draven was often seen carrying a guitar with him however, Lestat is shown slinging around a violin and a bow. Then of course there's the matter of the constantly throbbing backbeat grunge metal music, which seems to permeate the soundtracks of both films. The character of Marius is played by Vincent Perez who also played Ashe Corwin in Crow: City of Angels. And of course both movies have a veritable mystique about them in so far that they both feature lead actors who died tragically during the postproduction of their respective films (Brandon Lee and Aaliyah). Queen of the Damned is faulty in many ways. But there's enough meat on these old bones to keep one satiated and yet meager enough to leave them hungry for more. The Bad: Queen of the Damned works as a nice allegory for unfulfilling sex. Great premise, adequate build up, artful execution, poor climax. And right about the time when the guy is standing over his impatiently prone mate, the last vestiges of the past twenty minutes dripping off the end of his member, both mate and he are fated to stare doe eyed at one another and say, "Huh?" Although QOTD makes a big noise, there is really little in the way of heart and soul whereas this flick is concerned. As you watch it, it is practically impossible not to compare it to Interview with the Vampire. For all that IWTV may or may not have been, it at least had a consistent mood and a haunting ambiance. The characters were very real and their situations were very palpable. Not so with Queen of the Damned. The more I think about it, the more perplexed I become at trying to gauge exactly who the target audience for this flick is. In one hand, it seems tailor made for fans of the Anne Rice novels. Which is to say, many of the elements introduced into this story lose all significance if one is not already familiar with the source material. Take for example the conflict between Maharet and Akasha. These are two bitches that have a long and hateful history between one another. But the movie only dedicates a fraction of screen time to focus on it. In fact, they probably could have edited out the Maharet character entirely and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference. But I guess the flick needed the sacrificial lamb, so they threw her in there to take the fall. Now while fans of Anne Rice may appreciate these elements with greater vigor than the Anne-less movie viewer, I'm pretty sure they were likely pissed off at the film as well. I myself have never read Queen of the Damned, but I've seen enough movies to know that this one probably deviates GREATLY from the novel. First off, Lestat plays for the pink team. Now while the movie shows him to be the epitome of a ladies' man rock-n-roll grunge star, the true Lestat would likely prefer to spend his evenings pink-poling some meaty biker over top the gas-pan of his Harley Davidson. But I guess that sort of deviant social behavior is too icky for the MTV crowd. I guess the Talamasca has a "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" policy in effect when it comes to investigating cases of the supernatural. And speaking of the Talamasca…they were handled pretty shitty as well. At their core, they exist as a long-standing cabal of supernatural researchers who dedicate their lives studying things such as vampires and so forth. These guys are the progenitors of like-minded organizations that have popped up in various media such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander and Poltergeist the Legacy. And yet, Rymer fails to really give us any more than a cursory glance into the lives of these people. The Talamasca (and more specifically David Talbot) figures prominently into the Vampire Chronicles, but here they are given very little aplomb. Very wishy-washy. They could have done this better. The second thing that really pickles my sphincter is that they utterly and completely disavow the first movie. In QOTD, Lestat asserts that he has slept in his crypt for over a century and only awoke when he heard the sounds of those three malnourished bleating rock musicians. This flies in the face of continuity, as we already know that Lestat was awake and active in the 20th century. QOTD also makes no mention of Claudia and Louis from the first film. Louis was a fairly intricate part of Lestat's life, and I find it difficult to believe that he wouldn't even spot the guy free tickets to his concert. Not only that, but what about the character of Daniel? If you watched Interview, you know that Daniel was the journalist (Played by Christian "Damn my career is plunging faster than Jennifer Lopez' neckline" Slater). At the end of the flick, Lestat jumps his bones and turns him into a vampire. But as you notice in Queen of the damned, there is absolutely no follow up to that. Would it have broken their budget to hire Christian Slater back to reprise his roll? Hell, give him five bucks and a bar of soap and I'm sure he would have been happy as hell to do it. Considering all of that, I really put no expectations towards the similar ending featured in QOTD (The scene where Marius walks into Talamasca HQ to turn David Talbot into a vampire). Don't worry though kiddies, I'm sure if this film spawns another sequel there will be absolutely NO follow up to that. In fact come to think of it, if there is a sequel, Lestat will likely be a sheet metal worker from Jersey played by Chris Tucker, so I wouldn't take anything this film provides to heart. There's also the matter of the concert battle. This really makes little sense. The vampires of the world want to kick Lestat's ass up through his throat for revealing their secrets (Never mind the fact, that nobody believes him with the possible exception of those pesky yet impotent Talamasca chaps). However, they're not really all that discrete themselves. Rather than subtly take Lestat out of the picture Corleone-style, they wait until they are in front of 3,000 people before making their move. Then all at once, they begin flying and leaping and bearing their fangs. Well, the modern audience may have thought that all that vampire stuff was a bunch of hooey before, but I bet they believe in it now. With scenes like this, I really have to question the motivations of many of these characters. Great Lines: "How did you manage to slip through the '50s in red velvet?" -Lestat referencing Marius' out-dated fashion sense. "Come out, come out, wherever you are." -Lestat teasing the vampires of the world to try and fuck with him. "Better to be dead than alone." -Lestat to Jesse. "Hullo David." -Marius the poof. "I am too old to live forever." -David refusing Jesse's offer to be made into a vampire. Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. |
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