Queen of the Damned *** (2002, Stuart Townsend, Aaliyah) – Classic Movie Review 1787

Director Michael Rymer’s richly enjoyable 2002 horror thriller stars Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, taking over from Tom Cruise in this sequel to Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994).

Lestat arises from a century-long slumber in his coffin and starts a career as a rock star in the very different world he wakes up to. Through his charisma and sex appeal, he gathers a large band of followers. But there are terrifying consequences when his music arouses the Queen of the Damned, Akasha (played by the singer Aaliyah), who wants him to become her king.

This flashy horror follow-up to Interview with the Vampire lacks its quality, but substitutes zest, throbbing rock music and eye-catching effects. Screenwriters Scott Abbott and Michael Petroni make a good job of distilling the essence of the next two books in Anne Rice’s bestselling novels The Vampire Lestat (1985) and Queen of the Damned (1988) in The Vampire Chronicles collection.

Both Townsend and Aaliyah prove surprisingly ideal. And Vincent Perez as Marius de Romanus, Paul McGann, Lena Olin and Bruce Spence co-star, along with Christian Manon, Claudia Black, Marguerite Moreau and Matthew Newton as Armand (Antonio Banderas in the original).

Warner Bros was in its last year of owning rights to the first three Vampire Chronicles books which would then have transferred back to Rice, so they hired writers to condense the second two books into one movie. Tom Cruise disappointingly declined to reprise his role as Lestat, and then Wes Bentley was cast but he dropped out.

When Aaliyah was killed in a plane crash shortly after principal photography ended, the director got her brother, Rashad Haughton, to help overdub her voice. Lestat’s singing voice is by Jonathan Davis of Korn, who has a cameo as a ticket tout at the concert, which is set in California’s Death Valley but filmed in Werribee, Australia. The architecture of Aunt Maharet’s house is based upon the Angkor Wat stone temple in Cambodia.

Rice apparently considers this film to be a disappointment for herself and her readers.

Townsend says: ‘A lot of people ask me if it’s intimidating because Tom Cruise was the star of the original. But for me, it was just such a different story, it was rock and roll.’

Townsend as cast as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) but was replaced by Viggo Mortensen after four days of shooting. He made three movies with his fiancée Charlize Theron: Trapped (2002), Head in the Clouds (2004) and Æon Flux (2005). She thanked him in her Oscar acceptance speech (2004). They split in January 2010 after nine years together.

In August 2014, news came that Universal and Imagine Entertainment have acquired the rights to the whole of Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Universal’s first Lestat movie is set to be directed by The Fault in Our Stars director Josh Boone, who is also thought to be writing the screenplay, probably based on the second book, The Vampire Lestat.

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