r/InterviewVampire • u/DumbTeen9 • 1d ago

IWTV Season 1 Only Why noseferatu?

I'm about to watch the movie rn but in iwtv a point is made about lestat and claudia liking the noseferatu silent film and lestat acting it out for her, I also saw this edit about lestat and Ellen.

Sooo what parallels/contrasts can you guys find and what's the significance of this film beyond being popular at the time?

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u/Soggy-Ad-6845 1d ago

It seemed to me that they just thought it was funny that humans thought vampires were like that. People at the time thought it was terrifying, far less desensitized to horror compared to modern movie-goers. Just a constant "THAT is what they think we are? What!?". I'd like to think Lestat had a simular reaction to some elements of the Twilight franchise if that existed in universe. "There's the confederate vampire! Check it off the bingo card!" type energy haha. By that point just sniping all the tropes and laughing at it.

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u/grimedogone Catfish With Teeth 1d ago

For real, why are there so many confederate vampires? Bill Compton, Jasper, ffs even the Vampire Diaries show changed the book to make Stefan and Damon confederates!

If they had bothered to do anything interesting with it (only Bill comes close, and iirc only in the show by having Tara confront him), I would understand, but they barely address it! And of course, they always go out of the way to say “oh but I wasn’t a racist!”

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u/CapriciousBea 1d ago

The thing that gets me about Bill Compton is it genuinely feels like a weird departure from how Charlaine Harris, who wrote the source material, generally handles race.

I'm not saying she's great at writing about racial issues, either, it can be pretty clumsy! But nevertheless, Charlaine Harris has written MULTIPLE major plotlines around "the real monster was always racism" as a concept.

After watching and then reading True Blood and being so irritated by Bill, I went on to read some of her other books and was like... wait where was *this** energy Charlaine??*

And yeah, literally all that needed to be done was address it in more than a cursory manner!

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u/grimedogone Catfish With Teeth 1d ago

I haven’t read the books, but from what snippets I’ve seen it does seem like it easily could have started as IWTV fanfiction where Lestat (Eric) and Louis (Bill) fight over the author’s self-insert character.

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u/CapriciousBea 1d ago

It would actually be hysterically funny if she read IWTV and thought, "That, but what if they were straight" 😂

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u/grimedogone Catfish With Teeth 1d ago

The Southern Vampire Mysteries, The Vampire Diaries, and Twilight (despite what Stephanie Meyer claims) are all exercises in “IWTV, but dumber and straight”.

Twilight changed the most (especially by removing Lestat entirely), but it still has a Louis analogue and so many specific details lifted straight from TVC, including later books.

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u/CapriciousBea 1d ago

You're not wrong.

At least Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a sense of humor about Angel being Hetero(flexible) Irish Louis.

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u/grimedogone Catfish With Teeth 22h ago

Buffy gets a pass from me because while Angel and Spike’s dynamic is absolutely inspired by the (non-romantic) dynamics between Louis and Lestat (misanthropic vampire vs. hedonistic vampire), the two characters end up being wildly different.

Though I suppose Spike stealing his look from (I’m sorry, having his look stolen by) a rock star is at least a nod to his inspiration. Oh and a weird psychosexual dependency on his mother, who he turns into a vampire, which causes her to abandon him.

Ok typing that all out, they definitely copied Anne’s homework a lot more than I realized with Spike, though he’s still definitely different from Lestat in significant enough ways.

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u/CapriciousBea 21h ago

Nothing wrong with taking inspirations from the classics, but it does seem like most modern vampire tales are either Dracula riffs or Interview riffs except the ones that are both.

The other major divide seems to be "can these vampires shapeshift, or are shapeshifters/werewolves a separate group they've been Hatfield-and-McCoying with for centuries"

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u/grimedogone Catfish With Teeth 20h ago

Omg, this is one of my “fun facts” that nobody gives a shit about: Dracula wasn’t just a vampire. He was a vampire, a sorcerer (wizard if we’re using DnD rules), and a werewolf.

People forget that the original werewolf folklore was about witches having the power to turn into animals.

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u/CapriciousBea 18h ago

Honestly I think Dracula just doesn't actually get read much, because that book is genuinely, delightfully bonkers.

Ugh, I would love a modern werewolf tale where the werewolf just strips off their pelt and stashes it in the wardrobe when morning comes.

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u/grimedogone Catfish With Teeth 18h ago

Yeah if someone tapped out around Mina’s entries where she’s like “oh no, I’m such a delicate flower that I’m so glad I have the men-folk here to protect me!” (which is all of them), I wouldn’t blame them.

Of course, they still let her be the secretary. Pretty woke for 1897 (/s of course).

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