Don Shanahan
The decadent 1994 hit Interview with the Vampire was a tremendous part of Brad Pitt’s emergence as a legitimate star and is remembered as a wild casting tangent for the headlining Tom Cruise. Both established icons have new movies in theaters (Pitt with Heart of the Beast and Cruise with Digger) within a week of each other, making this as good a time as any to celebrate their previous work. Boasting remastered picture and sound, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has made Interview with the Vampire available for the first time on the 4K-UHD disc format, including a limited edition SteelBook edition. Film Obsessive was generously granted a preview copy of the disc for this new entry in our “Off the Shelf” physical media review series.
THE FILM
Based on the bestselling 1971 novel by Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire depicts a melancholy man going by the name of Louis de Pointe du Lac, played by Brad Pitt, who claims to be a vampire over 200 years old. He has chosen this 1991 night to open up and tell the sordid details of his life story to a disbelieving San Francisco reporter named Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater, replacing the originally cast River Phoenix after his untimely death). Through Louis’s reminiscent narration, the film circles back to pre-Antebellum New Orleans in 1791.
That was the year Louis would fatefully meet the foppish vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise), who would turn him into the same type of fanged killer. Despite Louis’s initial resistance to the nocturnal lifestyle and merciless existence, the two eventually became confidantes, partners, and, as the novel hinted at more than the movie, some form of lovers. Answering Louis’s flickering respect for humanity, they are soon joined by a 14-year-old turned girl named Claudia (Kirsten Dunst, in her Golden Globe-nominated and breakthrough role), creating a murderous trio infiltrating the high societies of America and Europe.
Their comfort with the finer things and unchallenged immortality in Interview with the Vampire reigns until two crucial turning points. The first is Louis and Claudia’s betraying split from the domineering Lestat, born from Claudia’s ambitious mental maturity trapped in a child’s body. The second is their quest to find more vampires in the world and finally encountering an ancient Parisian brood, led by the 500-year-old Armand (Antonio Banderas), who masquerade as theater actors pretending to play vampires. Challenges of dominance and vitality curve the ensemble’s dramatic histories from there.
Interview with the Vampire was directed by Neil Jordan after years languishing in development hell between two studios before Warner Bros.’s stewardship. The Irish filmmaker was red-hot coming off his watercooler-bursting indie breakout film The Crying Game and molded Anne Rice’s script with his own inspiration of depicting deep Catholic guilt. Acknowledging and advancing the more romantic approach given to vampires a few years earlier in Francis Ford Coppola’s jaw-dropping and well-received film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jordan’s film employed Oscar-nominated art direction work from future three-time Academy Award winners Dante Ferretti and Francesco Lo Schiavo, which gave the film an extremely intoxicating level of visual lavishness. Another layer of eerie aura was amplified by the Oscar-nominated musical score by composer Elliot Goldenthal.
While the evocative theatrical settings of Interview with the Vampire drew high praise, the audience’s main draw came from the attractive assembly of existing and rising heartthrobs. At the time, both Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas were just entering their Hollywood dreamboat takeover phases. Virile and passionate, their charisma radiates in the picture, even if neither was exactly lighting the film on fire with their morose performances. From an acting standpoint, both were shown up by Kirsten Dunst, who captured hearts from virtual obscurity that ended with this movie.
As was often the case when he attached himself to a picture, the brightest spotlight for Interview with the Vampire belonged to Tom Cruise. The megastar was a controversial and initially reviled studio choice hired to put butts in seats. Despite not matching the novel’s description (which would happen again later in his career with his two Jack Reacher films), Tom made the physical and behavioral transformations to win over both author Ann Rice and audiences with his alluring and calculated performance as the anti-hero Lestat. While Pitt dominated the total screen time, Interview with the Vampire still feels like one of Tom Cruise’s grand achievements more than his, which was probably the point of bringing in the big name in the first place.
THE DISC
For years, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has been the king of double-dipping. When they transitioned films from DVD to Blu-ray, little effort was made, other than new encoding, to original DVD prints. While sound was perked up slightly to the 5.1 format of the era, the picture quality stayed stagnant. Over the years, especially since its flood of centennial anniversary re-releases, WBHE’s next step to 4K-UHD and 2160p resolution has made many overdue corrections. Interview with the Vampire, which was stuck with one of those lower-resolution treatments, is one of those lucky beneficiaries. This disc’s Dolby Vision-level transfer has visual qualities of brightness, fine detail, and HDR color that are at a restoration level, creating, for many, an entirely new experience not seen since 1994. Springing for the Dolby Atmos sound mix is a cherry on top.
Furthermore, so often with these first-time 4K-UHD releases from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the flashy new discs, while doing their part to restore and improve the picture and sound, do so at the expense of the special features from previous DVD and Blu-ray editions. In a shocking development against WBHE’s minimizing trend on a non-milestone year for the film itself, Interview with the Vampire actually arrives with a collection of new special features to go with existing ones. The carryovers from its 2008 and 2014 Blu-ray releases include Neil Jordan’s rich and all-encompassing audio commentary, a brief introduction from author Anne Rice, Jordan, and attending cast member Antonio Banderas, and two sizable half-hour featurettes—the original “In the Shadow of the Vampire” making-of piece and a 2014 retrospective titled “Lestat, Louis and the Vampire Phenomenon.” The new special features are as follows:
Deleted Scenes. One of the more infamous pre-release stories about Interview with the Vampire comes from large edits coming from tepid test audience screenings and the opinion of producer David Geffen that the film was too long and bloody. Apparently, 20 minutes got shaved and rearranged. This 4K-UHD release is the first time eight minutes’ worth of trimmed scenes have been shown to audiences. It would be interesting to see all rumored twenty.
Eternal Night and Deadly Light. Interview with the Vampire director Neil Jordan and film editor Mick Audsley are interviewed, revealing the approach to the predominantly nighttime cinematography of the film, with a focus on the gothic romanticism achieved by Oscar-winning A River Runs Through It director of photography Philippe Rousselot.
Interview with the Vampire: Creating the World. This new featurette invites viewers to step inside the darkly beautiful world of Interview with the Vampire with Jordan and production designer Dante Ferretti. The two creators unveil the art of the detailed sets, the augmented locations, storyboarding sequences, and the exquisite costumes of the film, designed by future three-time Oscar winner Sandy Powell.
