Best Horror Movies

Part One follows several different people over the same period of several days. Several of the characters appear in the two previous books, including Armand, Daniel (the “boy reporter” of Interview with the Vampire), Marius, Louis, Gabrielle and Santino. Each of the six chapters in Part One tells a different story about a different person or group of people. Two things unify these chapters: a series of dreams about red-haired twin sisters, and the fact that a powerful being is killing vampires around the world by manner of spontaneous combustion.

Pandora and Santino rescue Marius, having answered his telepathic call for help. Marius informs his rescuers that Akasha has been awakened by Lestat’s rock music. Akasha has destroyed her husband Enkil and plots to rule the world. Akasha is also revealed as the source of the attacks on other vampires.

Part Two takes place at Lestat’s concert. Jesse is mortally injured while attending the concert, and is taken to Maharet’s Sonoma compound where she is made into a vampire. The vampires from Part One later congregate in the Sonoma compound. The only vampires not present are Akasha and Lestat. Akasha has abducted Lestat and takes him as an unwilling consort to various locations in the world, inciting women to rise up and kill the men who have oppressed them.

Part Three takes place at Maharet’s home in a Sonoma forest. There Maharet tells the story of Akasha and the red-haired twins (who are, in fact, Maharet and her sister, Mekare) to Pandora, Jesse, Marius, Santino, Eric, Armand, Daniel, Louis and Gabrielle. Also present are Mael and Khayman, who already know the story. (see “Maharet and Mekare”)

In Part Four, Akasha confronts the gathered vampires at Maharet’s compound. There she explains her plans and offers the vampires a chance to be her ‘angels’ in her New World Order. Akasha plans to kill 99 percent of the world’s human men, and to establish a new Eden in which women will worship Akasha as a goddess. The vampires’ refusal of her offer will result in their deaths. The vampires refuse to join her; but before Akasha can destroy them, Mekare enters. Mekare kills Akasha by severing her head. Mekare then consumes Akasha’s brain and heart, thereby saving the lives of the remaining vampires and becoming the new ‘Queen of the Damned.’

In Part Five, the vampires leave Maharet’s compound and assemble at Armand’s resort, the “Night Island,” (according to Anne Rice, inspired by Fire Island) in Florida to recover. They eventually go their separate ways. Lestat takes Louis to see David Talbot in London. After their brief visit with Talbot they depart into the night, an incensed Louis and his angry words filling Lestat with glee.

The 2002 film deviated considerably from this storyline. Several characters, including Pandora, were killed in the film, though they were not killed in the novel. In the film, Lestat turns Jesse after Akasha is killed by Maharet, rather than in the novel where Maharet sires her after she is mortally wounded at Lestat’s concert. The characters of Mekare, Santino, Daniel, Louis, Gabrielle, and Eric do not appear in the movie. The exclusion of these characters necessitates the alteration of the preceding events as written in The Vampire Lestat. Of those characters that do appear, none have more than an excessively minor role. Alongside this change, the lyrics Lestat ‘sings’ are altered, effectively eliminating the entire reason for anyone to attack at his concert (the reason being that his songs reveal ancient/sacred vampire truths). The concert attack still occurs. In the novel, Jesse meets him for the first time, leaps into his arms, and is then pulled back from him by the concert-goers. Then she is mortally wounded by a vampire after leaving the concert hall. But in the film, she becomes enamored with Lestat (and vice versa) in an alleyway after he saves her from a trio of vampires (unlike in the novel). Then, also unlike in the novel, before his concert, she gives him back his journal and tries to warn him of the attacks while at the concert by calling out his name. (Of course, he defends himself very well.)

Also in the novel, Jesse is thirty-five, is an apprentice for the Talamasca, and has psychic powers. But in the film, she’s in her early twenties, doesn’t have psychic powers, and is still an apprentice for the Talamasca.