Anne Rice. Why are ‘true’ horror fans dismissive of her work?
Posted by Ms Harker | Filed under Horror Films, Horror Genres, Horror Reading
I picked up a DVD copy of ‘Queen of the Damned’ during the week at Borders for $7.95. A couple of months ago I picked up a copy of ‘Interview with the Vampire’ on DVD. I have watched both films, one has held its age well, one not so well. One stays true to the story created by Anne Rice the other not so well.
I watched ‘Queen of the Damned’, maybe I was wearing goth coloured glasses the first time I saw it? Or I allowed my fond adolescent memories of reading Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles to taint my recollection of the film. Holy flaming corpses was it bad! Especially in comparison to Interview, despite the Tom Cruise factor. So lets compare shall we? Which will help lead us to the posed question, why do ‘true’ horror fans give Anne Rice such a staking?
Interview with the Vampire stars Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, with Christian Slater making an appearance also. All big stars at the time, all not too hard on the eyes. The film true to the book follows the story of Lestat (Cruise) and Louis (Pitt) through mainly the eyes of Louis, who is ‘made’ by Lestat post the death of his wife and child. They journey together through Louis’ rejection of having to feed on human blood, Lestat’s debaucherous behaviour and Louis creating a child vampire Claudia (young Kirsten Dunst), which is against vampire lore. Claudia rebels as she is tired of being treated like a child by Lestat and believes he is dominating herself and Louis. She takes matters into her own hands , poisoning Lestat then slashing his throat, out pours enough blood to fill a small swimming pool and they dump him in the swamp outside of New Orleans.
Louis and Claudia travel to Paris in search of their own kind, where they find a kiss of vampires led by Armand (Antonio Banderas, very easy on the eyes).The kiss feel that Louis should be punished for making Claudia, Armand wants Louis for himself and the undead merde` hits the fan from there, with some thrills and chills in between.
The reason I feel this film has held its age so well is two fold. Firstly it sticks to the story and myth created by Rice and secondly the ability of the film to move through different periods in history keeps the viewer interested and again this potrays Rice’s story telling ability to emphaise the “reality” of a vampire’s life eternal.
On the other hand ‘Queen of the Damned’… as a film committed one of the cardinal sins of casting… let’s toss in a popular starlet with no acting experience, put her in as little clothing as possible to get some of the kids in ie: Aalyiah. Second sin, cast the central character differently to the first film, Lestat is played by Stuart Townsend, not Cruise (and who could blame him for saying no!) in this film. Third sin, portray badly or mock the sub-culture ie: Goth’s who are most likely to watch your film.
The film did not follow the story of Queen of the Damned, it combined plot lines from The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, Tale of the Body Thief, Merrick and Blood and Gold, oh and a couple of characters from The Mayfair Witch trilogy. The acting was really bad, the effects were terrible and by combining elements of the above novels you lost any semblance of the intricate world of the vampire, of which Rice created.
Now granted her books are more on the romance side , however the attention to detail of the mythology and history of her vampires is what made these novels so interesting. There may not always be a huge scare, however throughout some of the later novels there is some thrills to be had, and the interplay between the various kisses that form can be both vicious and predatory. I think they are on the lighter side of the horror, however I do think they hold their place in the continuum of literature within the genre.
For me I think Rice’s work is within the ‘romance gothic’ area of horror, a more classic approach to the subject matter, not high end literature such as Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, however attempts to lean that way.
This brings us to the conundrum stated at the begining of the post; why do ‘true’ horror fans dismiss the work of Anne Rice? Is it because her work went mainstream? Is it because its not ‘hardcore’ enough, not enough torture and people having their ‘parts pieces’ preserved in bottles? I am interested to hear your thoughts…
Ms Harker
Interview with the Vampire
Queen of the Damned
Tags: Horror, Horror Flms, Horror Novels, Vampire
6 Responses to “Anne Rice. Why are ‘true’ horror fans dismissive of her work?”
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hagiblog Says:
May 31st, 2009 at 9:52 pmI’m a big horror fan and I’m a huge fan of Anne Rice. I devoured these books when I was younger and I’m not really much of a book reader at all. I don’t know what it is about them but I literally couldn’t put them down, sitting and reading at least half of a book in one go before breaking to give my eyes a rest.
Maybe people find her work to be too ‘flowery’ or something. I personally thought there was some gay undertone to them and maybe that turns some people off. I thought her brand of storytelling was superb and the final book in the series, at least at that point as there’s been a few more over the years that I haven’t read, gave a really interesting take on religion.
The films are another story. Interview with the Vampire is one of my favorites and Queen of the Damned is a big pile of steamy poop. Why would you bother cramming so many book ideas into one movie is beyond me. That and you have Stuart Townsend in the lead role but when he sings they’re using Jonathan Davis’ (from Korn) singing voice. I was a big fan of Korn at the time and found it terribly distracting when his voice is coming out of Stuart Townsend’s mouth.
Maybe a terrible movie is what soured the taste in everyone’s mouth of what is a great book series. -
crwm Says:
June 1st, 2009 at 2:34 amI enjoyed Interview and Lestat, though I felt the latter was already starting to wear on me. I liked the charming but diabolical Lestat of Interview. After tall the moral ambiguity of the first novel, I didn’t like how Lestat basically became a superhero - relegating everything Louis related in the first book to the category of mistaken whinging.
At first, I managed to convince myself that Lestat was an unreliable narrator in the second book. But it was clear that I was deluding myself: Rice had fallen in love with Lestat and was retconning his history to make him a fairly straight forward hero.
I never completed Queen because the “rock star” parts struck me as so awful. The high cheese factor made me think that Lestat’s entire “rock career” was what somebody who didn’t know or really care about rock envisioned the life to be like. It ruined the book for me.
That said, I have also enjoyed some of her non-vamp stuff. The mummy book was trashing fun and I enjoyed the witch books.
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jessbo88 Says:
June 1st, 2009 at 7:59 pmThe rock star thing was a bit hard to take, your right. However when she got to the books about Marius and the older vamps, I really enjoyed them. Lestat as character is unlikeable, I suppose that’s part of his persona, part of the evil side of the ‘dark gift’ but he did get a serve in Memnoch!
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jessbo88 Says:
June 1st, 2009 at 8:04 pmI was obsessed with the books both vamps and withces, I trailed around second hand book shops to find the final book in the Mayfair Witches trilogy! Her writing is flowery and at time overly verbose, but I also think that’s part of the charm. Her descriptions of the architecture especially in Paris are spot on. Lets never mention the Queen of the Damned film ever again, I may have to hide it or balance a shelf or table with it!
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Jason Says:
June 2nd, 2009 at 6:00 amI love Anne Rice, at least her Vampire novels anyway. Who is to say what a “true horror fan” is anyway. I will say that the Queen of the Damned Movie is a piece of garbage. Any true Anne Rice fan, or “true horror fan”, would avoid that waste of a film strip anyway. As for me, I have a ultimate collection of Anne Rice books and other memorabilia.
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girlwithdarkglasses Says:
July 10th, 2009 at 7:37 pmI guess some are just not into Anne Rice’s romanticizing her vampire characters. Works for me though. Have only read a few of her vampire books. More into the Mayfair trilogy. I remember I used to make my own Mayfair Family Tree!
And I totally agree with Jason and jessbo88. That movie was sooo disappointing!
