A vampire tells his epic life story: love, betrayal, loneliness, and hunger.
Against the backdrop of a gloomy San Francisco, the nearly two-century-old vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac, recounts the unbelievable story of his eternal transformation and a life worse than death to the sceptic reporter, Daniel Molloy. Spanning two hundred years of cruel betrayals, extreme solitude, and unquenched thirst, Louis' grimly fascinating tale pivots around his perpetually regrettable decision to embrace the dictatorship of blood, and, above all, his maker: the seductive blonde aristocrat of death, Lestat de Lioncourt. Is Louis' mystical epic of bloodshed genuine? Is this, indeed, an interview with a vampire?—Nick Riganas
It hasn't even been a year since a plantation owner named Louis lost his wife in childbirth. Both his wife and the infant died, and now he has lost his will to live. A vampire named Lestat takes a liking to Louis and offers him the chance to become a creature of the night: a vampire. Louis accepts, and Lestat drains Louis' mortal blood and then replaces it with his own, turning Louis into a vampire. Louis must learn from Lestat the ways of the vampire.—<[email protected]>
In 1791, plantation owner Louis outside New Orleans has lost his courage to live. He gets bitten by the vampire Lestat and is himself turned into one. He hates being a vampire and refuses to kill humans. Louis and Lestat turn a little girl, Claudia, into a vampire, and together they live on through the centuries.—Mattias Thuresson
A night in San Francisco, during our time: A young journalist follows a man through the streets and they end up in an anonymous room. When the journalist starts to interview the man, the stranger tells him that he is a vampire, being over 200 years old. The journalist doesn't believe him, but after the man proves it's true, he tells his story: His name is Louis and in 18th century New Orleans he was 24, by this time owner of an estate and a widower already. One night, when he once again was destroying himself by drinking and other things, he was found by Lestat, a vampire, who bit him. But even after becoming a vampire, life wasn't fun for Louis until one night he met a little girl, Claudia, who would change his existence forever.—smoothhoney1265
In modern-day San Francisco, reporter Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater) interviews Louis De Pointe Du Lac (Brad Pitt), who claims to be a vampire. Louis describes his human life as a wealthy plantation owner in 1791 Spanish Louisiana. Despondent following the death of his wife and unborn child (Louis picks random fights with everyone in the hope that someone might kill him and release him from his misery), he drunkenly wanders the waterfront of New Orleans one night and is attacked by the vampire Lestat De Lioncourt (Tom Cruise). Lestat senses Louis's dissatisfaction with life and offers to turn him into a vampire (Lestat does so by offering his own blood to Louis). Louis accepts, but quickly comes to regret it. While Lestat revels in the hunt and killing of humans, Louis resists his instinct to kill, instead drinking animal blood to sustain himself. Disgusted by Lestat's pleasure in killing, Louis comes to suffer tremendously as a vampire.
Louis survives by drinking the blood of birds and rats, while Lestat hunts slaves and aristocrats. The slaves of New Orleans are fed up and attack the house of Louis and Lestat at night. Louis is disgusted with himself when he is compelled to kill his gentle house slave Yvette (Thandie Newton) and helps the slaves to burn down the house.Despite Lestat tempting Louis endlessly with human blood, Louis does not give in to temptation.
Wandering the streets of New Orleans amid an outbreak of plague, Louis can resist his hunger no more and feeds on a little girl whose mother died in the plague. To entice Louis to stay with him, Lestat turns the dying girl, Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), into a vampire. Together, they raise her as a daughter. Louis has a pure fatherly love for Claudia, while Lestat spoils and treats her more as a pupil (Claudia has a strong hunger for blood and kills everyone from her dressmaker, to her pianist, and takes advantage of her frail appearance to attract potential victims to herself), training her to become a merciless killer. Thirty years pass, and Claudia matures psychologically but remains a little girl in appearance and continues to be treated as such by Lestat. When she finally realizes that she will never grow older or become a mature woman, she is furious with Lestat and tells Louis that they should leave him. Claudia wants to know how Lestat turned her into a vampire, but he wouldn't divulge his power.
She tricks Lestat into drinking the "dead blood" of twin boys whom she killed by overdose with laudanum, which weakens Lestat, and then slits his throat. Though Louis is shocked and upset by Lestat's death, he helps Claudia dump Lestat's body in an alligator swamp.They spend weeks planning a voyage to Europe to search for other vampires, but Lestat returns on the night of their departure, having survived on the blood of swamp creatures. Lestat attacks them, but Louis sets him on fire and, in the ensuing blaze (which spreads through the entire town), they are able to escape to their ship and depart.
After traveling around Europe and the Mediterranean but finding no other vampires, Louis and Claudia settle harmoniously in Paris in 1870. Louis encounters vampires Santiago (Stephen Rea) and Armand (Antonio Banderas) by chance. Armand invites Louis and Claudia to his coven, the Théâtre Des Vampires, where the vampires stage theatrical horror shows for humans (where they feed on live humans on stage, but the public thinks that is part of theatre).
On their way out of the theater, Santiago reads Louis's mind and suspects that Louis and Claudia murdered Lestat. Armand warns Louis to send Claudia away for her own safety, and Louis is intrigued to stay with Armand and learn about the meaning of being a vampire. Armand tells Louis that he knew Lestat and agrees that he was not good in anyway.
Claudia demands that Louis turn a human woman, Madeleine (Domiziana Giordano), into a vampire to be her new protector and companion (as she says that one day Louis will go with Armand), and he reluctantly complies. Shortly thereafter, the Parisian vampires abduct the three of them and punish them for Lestat's murder, imprisoning Louis in a coffin and trapping Claudia and Madeleine in a chamber, where sunlight burns them to ash. Armand does nothing to prevent this, but the next day he frees Louis. Seeking revenge, Louis returns to the theater at dawn and sets it on fire, killing all the vampires. Armand arrives in time to help Louis escape the sunrise, and once again offers him a place by his side. Louis rejects Armand and leaves, knowing Armand had allowed Claudia's murder so that he could have Louis to himself.
As decades pass, Louis never recovers from the loss of Claudia and dejectedly explores the world alone. He returns to New Orleans in 1988 and one night encounters a decayed, weakened Lestat, living as a recluse in an abandoned mansion and surviving on rat blood as Louis once had. Lestat expresses regret for having turned Claudia into a vampire and asks Louis to rejoin him, but Louis declines and leaves.
Louis concludes his interview with Molloy, prompting Molloy to beseech Louis to make him his new vampire companion. Louis is outraged that Molloy has not understood the tale of suffering he has related, and attacks Molloy to scare him into abandoning the idea. Louis then vanishes, and Molloy runs to his car and takes off, while playing the cassette tapes of Louis' interview in his car. On the Golden Gate Bridge, Lestat appears and attacks Molloy, taking control of the car. Revived by Molloy's blood, Lestat offers Molloy the choice that he "never had" - whether or not to become a vampire - and, laughing, continues driving over the bridge.
