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John Travolta hoped to star in it to shatter his Grease image, and Elton John was even asked to turn it into a Broadway musical, but when this highly anticipated movie version of Anne Rice’s cult novel finally came to the screen it was a decidedly anaemic affair. All sumptuously dressed up with nowhere really interesting to go, director Neil Jordan’s lavish adaptation is a stylised horror tale that lacks the emotional depth and jet-black darkness of the doom-laden tome. Too many other similar ideas have since come down the undead path, seriously undermining this stark vision of the hellish torture of being cursed to live for ever. Still, Tom Cruise is fine as the vampire Lestat, whose close relationship with handsome Brad Pitt forms an erotic twist on the Dracula legend. Kirsten Dunst impresses as the child adopted by the pair, but it’s Antonio Banderas who gives the most full-blooded performance as the bisexual Armand. This is a beautifully mounted production that’s low on divine decadence and Rice’s celebrated charnel house morbidity, but high on glossy Grand Guignol and evocative elegance.
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