Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson, Jennifer Ehle, Eric Bogosian, Ryan Kattner, Seamus Patterson, Sarah Swire, Assad Zaman, Joseph Potter, Delainey Hayles, Gopal Divan, Sheila Atim, Christopher Heyerdahl, Damien Atkins, Vince Kesavamoorthy, Justin Kirk, Amaka Umeh, Shepherd Munroe, Jeanine Serralles, Noah Reid, Andrew Musselman, Guy Maddin.
Arguably Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat is one of the finest examples of the modern gothic horror to exist from the 20th century, and to attempt to capture it in a form that does it justice could be beset with issues that might not be apparently noticeable until one finds themselves completely absorbed into the world of 1980s excess and the glut of superfluity that resonated and was heavily underscored by the literature of the time.
The Vampire Lestat may have had to move its timeline away from the surplus indulgence of its original era to a setting that feels more damned, more accumulated in its insufficiency, but it manages to satisfy the flood of emotional supply that it creates following on from the two series of Interview With A Vampire, and with the vast majority of the cast crossing over from the initial series to this one, the sense of permanence is guaranteed and observed with detail.
Sam Reid’s intense manner as the aforementioned vampire, his willingness to delve deep into the mythos and sexual luxury that the novel creates is filled with tension, a conflict of beauty and fear that underpins the sexual revolution and fantasy that the author was aiming for with sincerity and with a wonderful amount of flamboyant ease.
The joy of the novel is that of the undressed removal of ambiguity, the truth of the relationship between Lestat and Louis de Pointe du Lac and that of the other vampires who have crossed the path of the morally flexible rockstar, and it carries on through to the television series with a flourish, and with the superb Jennifer Ehle making her mark as Gabrielle Vece, and the returning Eric Bogosian as the journalist Daniel Molloy adding wonderful detailed pressure to the series, what is soon understood that excess is seen only through the eyes of want, when what it is the poverty of desire, a human trait wrapped in the glitz of vampiric eroticism.
The Vampire Lestat series is one that typifies the age for a reason, it frames the deceit that the 80s was holding up as a virtue and to which the third decade of the 21st Century is paying for in large unbankable cheques.
Ian D. Hall