INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (Directed by Neil Jordan. Starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Christian Slater, Antonio Banderas, Stephen Rea, Kirsten Dunst)

In Frankenstein, Kenneth Branagh put on some muscles, stripped down to his waist and ran about his gothic sets like he was starring in a sports movie. In Interview With The Vampire, Tom Cruise puts on some frills and a wig and delivers lines prefaced with phrases like “needs must” and “methinks” in a mock English accent. Both of these notions sound horrific for all the wrong reasons, yet the fact that Interview is everything Frankenstein wasn’t simply goes to demonstrate once again the simple, yet oft ignored rule, that, with the right script and direction, you can teach a hunk to act (why, even Rock Hudson and Victor Mature put in some good performances in their ham ridden careers) but you can’t teach an actor to be hunky.

Neil Jordan, in his richest and most fully realised film, has done wonders with not just one but a whole handful of hunks, drawing finely measured performances from Cruise, Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas, and making the most of Christian Slater’s irritating mock-cool attitude by casting him unkindly as a kind of pseudo- clever nerd. With pale make up, visible veins, blonde hair, blue contact lenses and a set of teeth even more impressive than usual, Cruise mines a vein of ice cold anger and carnivorous appetite to effectively shed his cinematic past, burying even a hint of his all-American cocktail waiters and running lawyers. As the predatory vampire Lestat, Cruise has the flashier but thinner of the two starring roles, with sharp lines of dialogue and lashings of physical action. It is Brad Pitt as his victim and reluctant vampire companion, Louis, who holds the centre of the film with an impressively quiet and steady melancholy. Both, however, are in danger of having the thespian honours stolen by 12 year old Kirsten Dunst as the doll-like Claudia, who ages for a century in a child’s body. It is possibly the most difficult role in the film, with its initial combination of innocence and evil extending to archly seductive adulthood, and yet Dunst waltzes through it like a baby Bette Davis.

Anne Rice’s original novel reinvented vampires for a new generation, inspiring an abundance of other books and films and yet has itself struggled to reach the screen, although her sensual evocation of blood lust and philosophical meditations on the nature of life, death, evil and guilt could be detected as tangible influences on Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. Possibly the book seemed too sweeping in scope, dense in imagery and lacking in narrative drive for film-makers, or perhaps Hollywood was simply shy of the homoeroticism in its core relationship.

Jordan’s masterful adaptation, which evokes the visual riches of the book while seamlessly removing many extended sequences, is far removed from Coppola’s theatrical sense of guignol. This is film-making on an immense scale, with enormous sets and an abundance of quietly integrated effects shots creating an impressive historical background to the action. But, for all its magnitude, it is a character driven story, and Jordan involves us with his vampires and their lives (or deaths) by subtly shifting mood, and effectively conjuring up and playing around with an abundance of dazzling ideas.

By relating the story from the vampire’s perspective, it escapes the usual genre traps (there is little empathy with the victims here) and instead becomes an inventive drama of a monumentally dysfunctional family. Jordan even confidently pitches into black humour that wouldn’t seem out of place in the Addam’s family, as Lestat and Louis become surrogate parents to Claudia, who they have to advise in Vampire manners (like not eating the home help). And just when you might be beginning to worry that it is turning into a Vampire sitcom, Jordan leads us around the corner, employing the humour to set up an emotional confrontation and a sudden outburst of carnage.

It is, after all, a horror film, with enough blood letting and gore to upset the squeamish (are you sure you’re ready to see Tom Cruise do his best Freddie Starr/Ozzy Osborne impression, biting open the neck of a rat and draining its blood into a wine glass?) and a genuinely creepy ambience, but it rarely relies upon shock cuts and monster effects for its effectiveness, and almost never makes the mistake of indulging in the popular trend towards tongue-in-severed-cheek post-modernist humour (I use the words rarely and almost because of a transparently studio tampered with, contrived ending which lacks the courage of the rest of the film’s conviction, pitching it for the first time into B-movie terrain).

This is a film of many parts, each as impressive as the other. There is Stephen Rea’s and Antonio Banderas’ astonishing set-piece enactment of a vampire murder in a theatre house that provides dazzling entertainment while musing on the very nature of death. It is easy to see Neil Jordan’s connection to this material. Once again he is dealing in an area of perverse, forbidden or perhaps misunderstood eroticism, and, through the central character of Louis, he is able to reflect on the very catholic concerns of good and evil, guilt and retribution. This is a Vampire on a spiritual quest, searching for the very reason for his existence, the story of a man perplexed by the question of who will punish him for his sins in a Godless universe.

I could make minor quibbles (the ending, a couple of dubious or over clever lines of dialogue – “you fiend!” and “I had to listen to him moaning for centuries!” – and a perhaps unnecessarily overstated score) but the quality of the material, the superb production values, the unusually restrained and always appropriate horror effects, the measured performances, all weaved together by a director stretching his own abundant talents, have resulted in a rare kind of movie, a large scale blockbuster with emotional and philosophical depth, a genuinely inspired crowd pleaser. I usually detest critics who make such pronouncements right at the beginning of the year, but Interview With The Vampire is, I feel certain, the first great movie of 1995.