In 1994, "Interview with the Vampire" was released as a Warner Brothers movie starring Tom Cruise as Lestat and Brad Pitt as Louis. The movie, like the book, enjoyed great popular success, although critics often gave both mixed reviews. All the elements in the book that captured the public imagination in 1976 excited the same interest in the movie in 1994. In the same vein, many literary and movie critics deplored Rice's overripe writing and the movie's sodden pacing.

The movie follows the book's plot line and characterization closely. Tom Cruise plays an utterly decadent Lestat, who relishes his own handsomeness, charm and power. Brad Pitt's Louis is true to the morose and miserable character in the book. The sets are faithful to Rice's detailed descriptions of eighteenth-century New Orleans and nineteenth-century Paris. An atmosphere of decay and morbidity surrounds Louis's plantation; the Theater of Vampires exemplifies turn-of-thecentury Paris at its...