Brought to you by OBS Staffer Heidi

This is the story of a group of vampires that dates from the 18th century to present day as told to a reporter by one of the vampires. The story explores love, betrayal, loneliness, vanity, and hunger and revolves around the cavalier and sometimes cruel, Lestat, the tormented Louis, and their young and very spoiled child, Claudia.

Interview with the Vampire is a classic vampire story and one of the first that comes to people’s minds when they think of vampires. Although I highly doubt the title comes to mind without picturing Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise!

The story in both the book and movie show the love that Lestat and Louis had for young Claudia and the dangers of trying to keep someone young forever. It shows how easily things can spiral out of control and how easy it is to betray and hurt the ones you supposedly love.
I personally had a lot of trouble keeping interested in the book, especially in the beginning where they kept interrupting Louis’s narration with what was going on in the interview room. I found that to be quite confusing. Therefore, I enjoyed the changes that were made in the movie adaptation and I think they really helped the flow of the movie as a whole.

This is one of the few instances that I liked the movie much more than the book. The movie seemed to flow better; it was easier to understand because it was all happening right before your eyes. And of course it didn’t hurt having some cute guys in it, although I thought Tom Cruise was a bit creepy as a blonde.

Similarities

• Lestat used Louis’s grief to convince him to become a vampire.
• Louis hated the idea of killing humans and survived off of killing rats
• Louis found Claudia and bit her, Lestat went back and they turned her, both falling in love with their new child.
• Claudia grew to hate Lestat because she was stuck in a child’s body forever.
• Claudia using the young twins to poison Lestat
• Louis and Claudia go in search for other vampires
• Louis loving Armand
• The vampires killing Claudia
• The interview scenes from book to movie were very close, in some places even having the same lines

Differences

• Some characters were omitted (I.E. Lestat’s dad and the family that lived on the neighboring plantation to Louis’s.)
• In the book Louis was grieving his brother; in the movie he grieved his wife and child.
• Shorter time to transition from human to vampire in the movie.
• The move skipped most of the legs of Claudia and Louis’s trip until they got to Paris
• The ending was the biggest change. In the movie…
  1. Lestat did not show up at the end and order the other vampires to hunt Claudia.
  2. Louis did not run off with Armand because he knew that Armand had a hand in Claudia’s death.
  3. Lestat did not turn the reporter into a vampire

Accuracy Rating: 4 out of 5. I know looking at the above lists that it seems like a lot of changes were made, but a lot of it was just omissions and minor changes that didn’t really affect the story. Overall the tale was basically the same from book to movie except the ending.