Reviews

If that line rings a bell, it's probably because you first heard it during the first decade of the AIDS crisis by gay activists pushing back against the Reagan Administration's attempts to use AIDS to demonize LGBTQ+ persons. It's a strong subtext through this movie, and gives it more...bite, to borrow a term, than your average vampire comedy.

Keith Szarabajka plays an American doctor working in Mexico who gets romantically involved with Maryam d'Abo's vampire who had herself buried over a century to get away from her former vampire lover, Vlad (yes, THAT one!), played with a combination of menace and tongue-in-cheek by Ben Cross. When Vlad finds out, he comes to Mexico City to take her back, and is both vexed by Szarabajka's insistence that literal bloodthirstiness need not become a lifestyle choice, and contemptuously amused that he sees vampirism as a disease rather than a curse. Well, the joke's on Vlad, since when the young doctor realizes he can't beat an old vampire as a normal human, he becomes a vampire himself to fight back!

In the end, after Vlad's heart is broken (literally!), a'Abo and Szarabajka continue their love affair as his&her matching vampires, with no more concern over it than if they were two diabetics who needed to watch their diets....

A surprisingly enjoyable movie, and just "woke" enough to REALLY enrage homophobes!

What you need to know is that this film is a mishmosh of the Anne Rice novel it's named after and the earlier book THE VAMPIRE LESTAT, and that Anne Rice has effectively disowned it -- which may be why it's so MUCH more entertaining than INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE. Also, Lestat's played by Stewart Townsend, so you don't have Tom Cruise and his Black Hole-like power to make everything about HIM to deal with.

What you have is Lestat becoming a rock star -- many of his fellow vampires want to see him dead because of that; his Sire Marius (Vincent Perez) is trying to protect him despite it; the Egyptian Progenitor Vampire Akasha, played by the late rock star Aaliyah, who's awakened from a LONG nap by Lestat's Rock&Roll and now wants him to sit by her side as her new Prince Consort... Oh, and a commune of loving, life-affirming Ancient Vampires headed up by Maharet (Lena Olin), who's as old as Akasha but isn't all evil and stuff, raised and is still watching over her human descendant Jesse (Marguerite Moreau), claiming to be her aunt!

Confused? Don't go away, it gets crazier -- Jesse works for the paranormal studies group Talamasca, headed up by one of the lesser-known actors to be DOCTOR WHO (Paul McGann), who's fascinated by Marius. That's okay, because Marius is equally fascinated by The Doctor -- I mean, "David Talbot!", and wants him to come play in the deep end with all the vampires.

Like I said in the title of this review, it's overheated (Aaliyah and Townsend don't walk so much as they writhe sinuously), the late Aaliyah's line readings are amateurish (though that could be due to her post-synch being done by her brother given she died shortly after production ended) as she projects all the Terrifying Menace of a Daddy's Princess trying to talk her way out of a speeding ticket, and the idea of New Agey Vampires (they literally have a Tree of Life in their main room!) is the stuff of camp.

But... Townsend is an excellent Lestat (even if his singing's overdubbed by Johnathan Davis of Korn, who wrote Lestat's songs), Lena Olin's maternal warmth and strength sells the absurdity of her character, Marguerite Moreau is winning as the "nice girl" drawn to Vampirism, and the music really slaps. My wife refers to it as a "rock and writhage", and she's not wrong.

If you're in the frame of mind for a gloriously silly vampire rock movie, and you don't worship at the altar of Anne Rice? This is definitely a movie you should watch at least once....