Queen of the Damned

Queen of the Damned (2002)

Directed by: Michael Rymer
Written by: Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni, based on The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice
Starring: Stuart Townsend, Marguerite Moreau, Aaliyah, Vincent Perez, Lena Olin, Paul McGann, Christian Manon, Claudia Black, Bruce Spence, Matthew Newton, Conrad Standish

Okay, so this is sort of a sequel to Interview with the Vampire, though the casting is, mercifully, different. I'm sorry, but Tom Cruise as Lestat made me nauseous. Stuart Townsend is much, much better.

This covers the first three of Anne Rice's vampire novels (Interview, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned, two of which I have read). Our hero awakens after a hundred year sleep, joins a rock band and awakens Akasha, the Queen of the Damned.

The movie really is just a bunch of stuff thrown together, but it's actually surprisingly good. So much better than Interview. God, that movie sucked.

Anyway, this one is a pretty good vampire movie, I must say. I'm not particularly fond of Anne Rice - she's so... disgustingly... adjective... and I'm sorry but I don't find homo erotica that exciting. Probably because I'm a woman (that should be a valid argument, but a lot of women do like that stuff. I find it kind of tiresome. I find erotica tiresome in general). Most of that stuff is taken out, though.

The whole thing looks like a music video - it actually kind of is a musical, though, in the most rudimentary sense. But it had good music, so what am I complaining about. Loud and obnoxious.

Surprisingly, Aaliyah doesn't get to sing. That's probably a good thing. She made a pretty good vampire, I must say. Her accent (Egyptian, I guess) kind of sucked, but she wasn't bad. Unfortunately, she was killed before the movie was completed, as most of you know. Poor girl.

Stuart Townsend was also rather good. Very vampiric. I quite like him, though I've only seen him in one other movie (The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, in which he played Dorian Gray, pretty much the same way).

And according to my favourtie website, there were a number of other people asked to play Lestat (including his ugliness, Tom Cruise) before they cast him. Thank God they turned the role down.

END COMMUNICATION

(Pretty sloppy, I know, but it was my fourth rant today. I'm running out of juice)