About 80% of the vampire genre in the past 30 years or more has focused on two aspects of the Nosferatu lifestyle: sex and violence. No surprise, since these are the two things that most male (and the cool females who always just want to be "friends") audiences look for. And, since we're the ones always busting our asses at work while our womenfolk sit at home reaping the rewards of OUR hard labor all day, it's no surprise the mass media's looking to give us what we want to pry the money from our wallets. Was I going somewhere with this? Oh yeah, sex and violence.
Anyway, amidst the sea of sex and violence orientated vamp sources, author Anne Rice is one of those people who prefers to focus on the darker, far more personal side of these nocturnal devourers of hemoglobin. Sure, there's a lot of sexuality and there's some gory violence, but the main attention is spent on the vampire as a lifestyle, as a curse and yes, as an art form... I think. Wait, "as a curse"?! Immortality, super strength, lightning fast reflexes, flight and the ability to seduce countless gorgeous women is a curse... I don't know about you, but that's a "curse" that I find to be none too shabby! But, if our champion of whining and complaining didn't do just that, it would ruin the whole idea of the film, so just sit back and do your best to sit through the melancholy and self-pity.
San Francisco biographer Malloy (Christian Slater) was contacted by a man who claims to be a bona fide vampire over 2 centuries old and eager to tell his tale to someone who can get it out in the open and let others know of his pain. Great, as if listening to him bitch and whine wasn't bad enough, now he wants to spread that melancholy to innocent literate people everywhere. Well, said vampire is Louis (Brad Pitt post Johnny Suede and pre-Fight Club), who plays narrator to our film as he regales us in what it's like to be a scourge of the night and to live 200 years of personal strife before the advent of modern medicine... like angel dust.
It all begins back in 1791, where a strapping young Louis no older than 24 is the master of a substantial plantation in the deep South, not far from New Orleans. Pretty impressive considering the majority of 24 year olds I know today are either still living in their parents' basements smoking out of 4ft bongs all day, sleeping through their community college classes on Albanian culture, or working at McDonald's and farting in the fry grease before returning to their one bedroom apartments and playing Playstation 2 all night... and that's boys AND girls mind you. Louis' life isn't all sunshine and sex with the slaves though, as his wife and only child both died on him, leaving him to fall into a downward spiral, despite the fact he's still loaded with more money than he knows how to spend and has enough GQ looks and wardrobe to woo any and all broads in a 200 mile radius... and may I remind you, this is prior to the modern age, BEFORE every pair of tits in "Nawlins" belonged to intoxicated co-ed sluts desperate to show off their new taffy sacs daddy bought for them in exchange for plastic costume jewelry and the two seconds of attention/exploitation... I hate college party girls so much... yes, tits are nice, but not when the head attached has all the properties of an over inflated party balloon intoxicated with a tequila haze.
Despite being immersed in self-loathing and depression, Louis is inherently a pussy and can't even take his life like a good little simpering 1990s high schooler. Instead he goes on to live his life to it's fullest, finding new love, learning to cope with the past without forgetting the good times and rediscovering all the sweet rewards the fruits of life have to offer... right, then we wouldn't have a movie or need for the vampire and make-up effects of Mr. Stan Winston. No, instead Louis gambled his fortune away on card games, drowned himself in cheap booze and was eaten alive by big fat French-American prostitutes. However, none of these brought him the solace he sought... until the night he met Lestat.
Lestat's a vampire and a very unlikable vampire amongst vampire society at that. He's also about the only one of his kind in the "New World", and he's looking for some company, namely Louis, whose ability to turn even the best situation into a philosophical nightmare of fear and loathing amuses him so. That, and Lestat obviously "enjoys the company of men", especially such pretty boys as his new friend. One night, just as he's about to get his throat slashed by an angry pimp (and his willy waxed by a cock hungry chubby chick), Lestat intervenes and takes Louis for a little ride.... 40 feet straight up. In the air, Lestat half-drains Louis, offers him Oblivion (a movie that I'd accept, even from a flying blond Tom Cruise), then proceeds to drop our half dead hero into the murky Mississippi. Several days later, bed-ridden and almost a corpse-sicle, Louis gets a visit from Lestat in the night.
Lestat offers up to Louis the choice he never had: death or a brand new life. Pussying out in the face of what he's been pining for all this time, Louis rejects death and instead takes the offer of a new and eternal life as a nocturnal parasite in two legs. So, he trades plasma with the debonair dead man and takes on the constant LSD trip of vampirism, which includes statues winking at him... I hate when that happens... statues staring at me and making flirty eyes with me always fries my brain.
To help dispel some of the myths of being a bloodsucker, Louis tells Malloy what myths are real and which are bullshit. For starters, garlic, running water, stakes through the heart and crucifixes are useless against the undead. As Louis puts it in fact, "I'm quite fond of looking at crucifixes", which means they're ineffective, but it also means that Louis needs to get a real hobby if gazing upon crosses entertains him. However, in all myth there are some truths, in this case sleeping in coffins and living on blood, which includes nondescript tavern wenches with his new friend and mentor in situations that border on Nosferatu menage a'trois... though for Louis and his damned morality, the occasional vermin plucked from the floor is just as good.
While the city’s newest power couple are out for a night on the town in New Orleans, picking through the late night Bourgeoisie morsels, Lestat reveals to Louis that he has the ability to read minds too (something that not all vampires are blessed with), as he points out a bag of wrinkles that had her servant boy kill her husband and blame it on a slave so they could continue a long standing affair. Lestat also uses this scenario to appeal to Louis's sense of righteousness, as he makes them out to be night stalking vigilantes whose responsibility it is to feed on such evil people, not just to satisfy their own hunger, but to avenge those they wronged... Louis still can't kill a human though and instead feeds on the old broad's poodles... though I can't really blame him for not wanting a piece of the old bag, as she's more repulsive than an entire ugly tree and her blood's probably borderline gelatin to begin with.
Even though he's not eating people, Louis still gets in trouble for feeding on livestock and his slaves begin to suspect his accursed ways, holding voodoo rituals in an attempt to cleanse the evil from the land... namely Lestat. So, the cotton pickers siege Louis's mansion, only to be stopped in their tracks as their master emerges with his house servant in his arms, her neck bleeding profusely as he swipes a torch from one of the slaves and proceeds to torch his entire pad. He collapses in his dining room, overtaken by smoke or the heat or something, when Lestat busts in through a window like a bad Errol Flynn impersonator, says something witty, then scoops his handsome young (after)life partner into his arms and escapes into the night. Isn't love a beautiful adventure?
With their love shack (baby, love shack) toasted, the two must move into a hotel room in New Orleans, where Lestat insists on corrupting Louis and trying to get him to give up his "I refuse to kill for food" ways, but failing at every attempt. However, Louis then wanders into a wing of the French Quarter struck down by a case of the plague (I always hate those summer plagues, they just wreak havoc with my sinuses), where he finds a little girl begging her mother's corpse to wake up. Being a big empathic sissy, he enters the home, embraces the girl and tries to make her think everything is going to be alright... then he bares his teeth and sinks them in her neck... parents, never let Brad Pitt babysit for you. And who should show up but Lestat, who celebrates his boyfriend's first solo feeding by waltzing around with the mother's plague festering cadaver... that Lestat is one jovial creature of the night!
Though Louis feels repulsed by what he's done, Lestat gives him a little reward: he brings the little girl, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst before she got became a walking, cheering hemorrhoid), back as one of them. Great, this just turned into the 19th century homosexual version of “My Two Dads”... okay, the REALLY homosexual version... but which one is Paul Reiser? Anyway, Claudia's not just a little ankle biter either, she's a full on blood whore! No sooner is she turned then she's demanding more of the viscose life liquid! As the time passes, the story really does become “My Two Dads”, as Louis plays the cool dad that lets Claudia do as she pleases, while Lestat is the prim and proper teacher figure, showing her what it's all about being a proper bloodsucker. The funniest parts of this situation? Since she's still a kid, Claudia really has no inhibitions, which means that when she wants blood, she'll take it from whomever’s handy, whenever and wherever she may be, which means Lestat has to chastise her for it. I don't know, but there's something morbidly charming about Lestat saying something like, "Now now Claudia, how many times have I told you not in the house? Now, clean this mess up like a good girl and we'll get some ice cream". This movie has everything...
30 years passes and our little parasitic family continues on with their lives. Claudia begins to mature inside, which begins to really frustrate her as she realizes that no matter how much she grows up inside, she'll always just be a little doll for Lestat and Louis to play House with. She'll never be able to love a man or explore the wonders and vaginal blood clottings of feminine life, so despite only being a little girl, she has a mid-life break down and decides she hates everybody now, especially Lestat for continuing to treat her like a child and for making her this way in the first place. I'd say she just needs to get laid, but, well, Lestat's pretty much seen to that impossibility (not only is she too young, but Anne Rice's vampires are impotent). So, with a seething hatred that's been stewing for the past 3 decades, Claudia plots to leave Lestat and escape with Louis as her own. How? Why, what's the answer to every question? No, not the square root of cosign tangent 7 (though that will cover pretty much everything, like what I'm having for dinner tonight), but Death.
Using her natural feminine wiles and deviance, the middle-aged girl suckers Lestat into drinking the foul blood of some dead boys, and anyone who knows about vampires beyond the "they drink blood and have sex with people" stuff (that films like Embrace Of The Vampire help propagate… in the best possible form… namely that of Alyssa Milano), knows that the vamps can't drink one thing: dead blood. And so, after drinking the vampire equivalent of blowfish poison, Lestat is instantly taken to the brink of eternal sleep, helped along by his "daughter", who slashes his throat at this, his most vulnerable time... typical, daughters always seem to know when the best time is to hit daddy, whether it be for money or just to kill him painfully.
After bleeding Lestat to what they think to be an utter demise, our deceitful duo dump him in a sack and toss him into the bayou, where he makes a bitter meal for some famished reptiles. Afterwards, besides Louis's disdain for what Claudia's done, the two make a new, happy little life for themselves and Claudia takes up tracing historical references in an attempt to find what she believes to be a Clandestine society of bloodsuckers, whom she plans to seek out and join with so she and "father" can be with people of their own kind and stop being outsiders for once. Convinced the answers they desire aren't to be found in the New World, but across the Atlantic, the two make plans to hop a boat and continue their search in the Old World. Sure enough, in his typically over dramatic fashion, Lestat has to show up, filthy and weak but thirsty for revenge! Fed by the blood of alligators, snakes and various other swamp vermin, Lestat's desire to get his pound of flesh drove him to this point... only to be engulfed in flames with half of New Orleans while his prey escape to their awaiting ship and set out on their journey... damn, sometimes being Lestat is like being Dick Dastardly in "Wacky Races": no matter how hard he schemes or tries, he's always fucked over in the end… only Lestat doesn't have the really fruity driving coat and goggles, phallic death car, or snickering canine sidekick... so he's really not all that much like Dick Dastardly...
Anyway, after an exhaustive scouring of Egypt, Greece and even Transylvania, the two find their way to Paris, where Louis learns the old adage, "a dick in the hand is better left in the bush"... or was it, "when you stop looking for something, that's when what you're looking for finds you"? Well, whatever the saying, Louis is confronted by a mimicking goof dressed in a fancy cape that can defy the laws of gravity...
This peculiar little spaz happens to belong to an all vampire acting troupe, led by the Rico Suave of bloodsuckers, better known to his friends as Armand (Antonio Banderas). These underground leaches put on a little avant garde, off-off-Broadway (actually, I guess it'd be pre-off-off-Broadway... errrr, you get the idea) stage show, where they're vampires pretending to be human pretending to be vampires in cheap make-up. Their show's a little tragic comedy act, but it's the finale that’s the real audience grabber, as the pigment deprived monsters actually sacrifice and gangfeast on a human woman. Of course the people in the seats think it's all part of the show, but Claudia and Louis know the real truth... and are disgusted by it... though Louis's need for male companionship is boiling in his loins once again as he takes a great interest in Armand and all the valuable information on vampire history he can offer, being the oldest living bloodsucker on the planet (over 4 centuries, not too shabby). Though the ghouls extend membership to Louis for their little subterranean commune, they do however voice their displeasure in Claudia's actions toward Lestat (remember, some can read minds), due to the first rule of Fight Club, errr, wrong Brad Pitt movie, I mean, the first rule of being a vampire: never kill your own kind... so in a sense, vampires aren't so different from those planet having apes that evolved from man... perhaps they're the next evolutionary step towards BECOMING apes?... okay, that's just fucking retarded damn it, forget I mentioned it!
As if Claudia's mischief hasn't already gotten her into enough vampire shit, it's also against vampire law for one so young as Claudia to be turned, so though that's not her fault, she still exists and is therefore pulling a level 2 misdemeanor in the Nosferatu law books. One more strike and she's fucked... or she's already fucked, I really can't make heads or anuses of the Metric System and all these stupid conversions. So, two touchdowns is equal to 2 goals and a fortnight?... to think, all those expensive years of measurement conversion college right down the crapper...
Armand proclaims his interest in Louis, his love for Louis's somber outlook on being a vampire, his depression in the face of great power, his heartbroken demeanor and his reflection of the dark side of being a human parasite. Then again, vamps can't live in daylight, so I guess you'd have to say the entire existence is a dark side *rimshot*. In doing so, Armand also hints that he knew Lestat, more than likely he was the one who created Lestat, hence how he could understand Lestat's interest in Louis and why he chose him to turn. Now, will Louis decide to give up Claudia and join Armand and his cadre of blood hungry b-actors, or will his loyalties stay with the daughter he's taken care of for so long? Well, before he can make that decision he comes home to find Claudia and a new friend, a woman named Madeline, whom Claudia has handpicked to be her long desired mother figure when Louis does eventually choose mob acceptance over familiarity and she winds up exiled from the land of vampires in frilly shirts and facial pancake... mmmmm, facial pancake.
Once more pulling a diabolic and manipulative trick from her bag of female evils, Claudia guilt trips her "father" into turning Madeline into one of them (all by her own choice actually), since Claudia was turned at such a young age and therefore cannot turn people herself, again, the whole reason nature endowed her with bag of sinister chick tricks. Louis agrees, but no sooner does he do the job then in busts the Vampire Actors Guild, corralling the trio and taking them back to their lair! They seal up Louis in “Cask Of Amantiado” fashion, only the cask is replaced by a box, though the bricking him up behind a wall part still holds true. As for Claudia and her new mommy, they're locked in a cell too, only theirs has a lethal little sunroof, which turns them into sculptures of flaking ash come morning. The worst part? Like every truly pathetic mother-daughter couple, they died in matching outfits. Speaking of which, why the fuck didn't they just shield themselves with their big poofy dresses?! The way I understand it, it's the sun's rays that turn vamps into krispy kritters, meaning that by simply blocking said solar beams (like a beach umbrella or a sombrero) they would've been fine had they just taken cover beneath their damn dresses! But, when your life's at stake, I guess logic takes a backseat to mad panic and screaming... so much for fight or flight, looks like women just weren't meant to last when it comes to survival of the fittest. Oh well, at least they're still good for sex!... kidding, really.
After the girls are flash-fried, Armand unleashes Louis from his prison and the tortured hero simply checks out the scorched leftovers of his loved ones before strolling out of the theater with a blank stare on his face. Don't cry for Louis though, cuz he's about to learn how nice the delicacy known as Vengeance Au Grotin tastes. Unlike most folks, he doesn't take his served cold though, instead he prefers the opposite: blackened cajun hellfire style! Flooding the lair with strong French booze while its occupants snooze, Louis sets the place on fire and roasts the motherfuckers dead-alive! And when a few decide to make a run for it? Well, Louis's waiting with my weapon of choice: a freshly sharpened Scythe tempered with seething anger! Yes, the shit hits the fans as several vamps are not only torched, but get cut in half for trying to save their asses from trial by fire! Guys seeking heavy violence and slaughter from their vampire flicks, this is where sitting through all that self-loathing and whimpering pays off!
After turning numerous members of his own species into cutlet flambes, Louis escapes courtesy of Armand, who picks him up in his horse drawn carriage and the two go for a romantic stroll on the town by the moonlight… and inflamed vampire carcasses. We also find out that, surprise surprise, Armand knew of Louis's intentions of vengeance (remember, that whole mind reading thing) and did nothing because he had grown tired of those fanged primadonnas and all their macho posturing, exploiting their powers and getting snobby over them. Now though, when Armand offers to take Louis in and teach him what it is to be a true vampire, the pretty boy protagonist simply slaps his limp wristed hand aside, tell him he now knows what it is to be a real vampire, and sets out on his own to live the rest of his immortal life.
After dropping Armand like a bad prom date, our hero goes about traveling the world for the next century or so in search of excitement and something to fill the hole left by Claudia and Lestat's mutual passings. His travels eventually lead him back to good ol' cajun country in 1988, where he rediscovers, yep, you guessed it, Lestat. Curled up and whimpering in the corner of an abandoned house like an abused rabbit, overcome by the changes the world has undergone in the last century, a broken and pathetic shell of his former self. But then, the '80s had that effect on all of us I think.
He just sits around all night now, like a washed up Hollywood starlet, pissing and moaning about how "I used to be so great, everybody loved me, everybody wanted me, everybody wanted to be me!" and further rhetoric. So, it's no surprise Louis opts to continue his life as a bachelor as opposed to taking back Lestat for further relationship woes. Same thing I'd tell all my ex-girlfriends... provided they ever called me back after the first date... just one call... why won't they call me!?... I try to call them, I try to call their parents, I try to call their places of employment... what's their fucking problem!?!?
So, anyway, Louis then moved to San Francisco (again, likely to pursue his homoerotically inclined bachelorhood to it's fullest) and that brings us up to date. So intrigued by the tale is Malloy that he begs, damn near INSISTS that Louis turn him into his new vampire boyfriend, his connection to the human world, his "little buddy" as the Skipper might say.
Louis's reply is one of utter disgust, as the biographer completely missed the point of his story. All the talking about how life sucks and all the bitching, not one ounce of it sank through Christian Slater's thick skull. So, to further drive the point home, Louis nearly strangles the guy to death to give him an idea of the pain he'd be subjected to as a vamp. That's enough convincing for Malloy too, as he scuttles away like that hermit crab I farted on at the beach. While driving like a madman over the San Francisco Bridge (or whatever it's called) in his adrenaline rush, who should pop out of Malloy's backseat just in time for a Guns 'N' Roses rendition of The Rolling Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil"? Yep, its Lestat again, who somehow managed to make it all the way to San Fran despite his weak and cowardly state. And from the sounds of it, he's decided to hand Malloy the relationship Louis wouldn't... well, provided he still wants it of course... unless he'd rather bleed to death from his neck. And thus ends a veritable cornucopia of styles and flavors as one of the screen's most interesting vampire films to date comes to a close.
When you think about it, it's really no surprise this film was a project of Neil Jordon, director of The Joy Luck Club and The Company Of Wolves considering all the emotion, drama and other things the majority of the male population wouldn't touch with a 10 foot clown pole. Why do I dig it so much? I'm just in touch with my feminine side... which helps me get in touch with other feminine sides... like feminine backsides... and topsides... heh heh.
Jordon's camera didn't exactly pull any fancy stupid pet tricks for us, but the atmosphere, sets, costumes, acting and just the damn lighting were plenty to convey the tale, so it's not like we really needed any shiny eye candy camera angles, zooms, pans or loops to keep the pace. Interview is definitely a character and story driven movie. Then again, for anyone looking for carnage and intensity, other critics have made numerous references to the movie being brutal in it's explicitly bloody depiction of the vampire lifestyle, so who knows, maybe there is enough for the gore whores out there to enjoy too. Yeah, it's kids' stuff when compared to such guts strewn sagas like Re-Animator or The Gates Of Hell, but it's still a quality pic none-the-less and probably one of the best flicks out of Hollywood in the last decade. Now, if only all bid budget movies could have this much substance...
The Moral of the Story: Immortality is wasted on the pissers and the moaners.
H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating: 
- Not a party movie. It's too long, too serious and too "polished" to fit comfortably into the party atmosphere... unless you're talking about a party of easily swooned women and gay men, in which case by all means have at it.
DVD X-tras: standard issue trailer; a couple of little bios for Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and director Neil Jordon; somewhat bland commentary track with Jordon (Neil again, not Michael); a lame little intro to the movie that the DVD hypes, but simply has Jordon, Rice and Banderas; the 30 minutes behind-the-scenes featurette "Shadow of the Vampire" and the internal weblink to the Warner Bros. home video website, where you can access another little extra chronology for the bloodsuckers called, appropriately, "History Of The Vampire".
Sequel: Queen Of The Damned
If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: Tale of a Vampire or Bram Stoker's Dracula
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