Rating summary
| Movie |  | 4.5 |
| Video |  | 3.5 |
| Audio |  | 4.0 |
| Extras |  | 2.5 |
| Overall | | 3.5 |
Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie Review
The Recycling Chronicles
Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 30, 2014
For the twentieth anniversary of Neil Jordan's star-studded adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview
with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Warner Home Video has missed yet another golden
opportunity to improve on an early Blu-ray release that is showing its age. First released in 2008
with lossy audio on a BD-25, Interview sported a decent image for its era, but Blu-ray mastering,
not to mention manufacturing capacity, has come a long way since then. Warner has upgraded
the film's soundtrack to lossless audio, added one mediocre special feature (a 24-minute
featurette) and shifted the entire affair to a BD-50, of which it has used just 33.5 GB. But it has
used the same VC-1 encode as on the previous Blu-ray, without even bothering to remaster the
existing transfer at the higher bitrate that all the wasted space on the disc would have permitted.
This is a purchase solely for those who don't already own Interview. Everyone else should stick
to their existing disc.
For a discussion of the film, please see the
previous
Blu-ray review.
Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
Since the video is unchanged for this edition, please see the evaluation in the previous Blu-ray review.
Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
The previous Blu-ray's track was encoded in Dolby Digital at the top bitrate of 640 kbps, which
Dolby claims is transparent to the master and which certainly did justice to Vampire's
atmospheric sound mix and Eliot Goldenthal's moody score with its lightning shifts in tone and
tempo. The new lossless DTS-HD MA track at least equals the previous version and at times
(depending on your equipment and the acuity of your hearing) bests it in refinement and sonic
detail. The new track also provides the comfort of knowing that you're getting every whisper and
nuance contained on the master.
Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
In addition to the extras discussed in the previous
Blu-ray review, the disc offers a new
retrospective featurette, Lestat, Louis and the Vampire Phenomenon (1.78:1; 1080i; 24:06),
featuring Jordan, Rice, Cruise (in vintage interview footage) and a host of academics discussing
the place of the film (and novel) in the history of vampire fiction.
Interview with the Vampire Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
Warner's latest Blu-ray of Interview with the Vampire is a poor excuse for a double-dip, a lazy
reissue that squanders an opportunity to improve the existing presentation. We have seen enough
examples (The Road Warrior and Blazing Saddles come to mind) to know that an
existing transfer can look
noticeably better simply by being remastered and re-encoded, preferably with AVC at a higher bitrate than was used on the initial disc of
Interview, but apparently even that minimal effort has fallen victim to cost-cutting. Not recommended.
