AIDAN DAY reviews Neil Jordan's film Interview with the Vampire IT TRIED to be sombre and lugubrious, a melancholy lament of those denied the release of mortality. It ended up as Carry On Biting - but without the tongue in cheek.
Instead the tongues are dripping with blood. Gory neck chews follow superficial spectacle follow dull plot lines follow fake gothic big budget backdrops on which the characters issue lamentations at their immortal predicament.
Jordan's rendition of Ann Rice's almost-cult novel has just had too much money spent on it.
He would made a far better product with fewer dollars -the attempts at languorous frailty might have turned out less rambling, more focused.
Perhaps it's just impossible to make a horror movie that isn't a horror movie. If you're going for splatter then you do it properly - leave the lyrical gloom to others. Two hours of leaden murk is boring.
All attempts to raise the pace fail. Tom Cruise just does not cut it as a tragi-comedy actor. Unfortunately the funniest thing about him is his blond wig.
He barks his lines to Brad Pitt in an aghast monotone reminiscent of Rick Mayall in the Young Ones - "so now we're in the cemetery sleeping on graves, happy now are you?"
The first section of the film is framed around Cruise's portrayal of a lordly vampire's initiation of a younger soul mate to share his night life.
Unhappily for him his new blood brother is not so keen to go out on the town gouging jugulars.
The Brad Pitt character wrestles with his guilt, trying to avoid taking human life to feed his hunger. He must be the world's first veggie vampire.
Well hidden
Any hint of sexual attraction between the two is well hidden. Aside from a few lingering caresses - "oh, you are so beautiful" - this is a pretty dull encounter. If this is homo-eroticism then bring back Kenneth French revolutionary. An AlWilliams.
The one opportunity to introduce some genuinely interesting sexual tension arises when Claudia, played by Kirsten Dunst, is "made-up" to vampiress.
Betopped with a mop of gold ringlets, the precocious Dunst comes between the two male protagonists. She is the best character by far - as long as you can keep Bonnie Langford out of your mind.
Like all of her breed she is but not Roger Avary, who inLove in vein: they don't know much arteries but they Know what they like condemned to eternal life - but unlike her two bloodsucking friends she is stuck in a twelve year old's body. The realisation of eternal physical immaturity is devastating.
Her relationship with vampire number two is under-explored. It would have been massively laden with complications and ambiguities - precisely the sort of things that make for good drama. Which this isn't. tor bereft of any moral pur-