![Interview with the Vampire: Ep. 5, A Vile Hunger For Your Hammering Heart [RECAP/REVIEW]](https://thathashtagshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image-5-e1667431803757-1280x640.jpeg)
We begin this week’s episode of Interview with the Vampire in Dubai watching Louis drink from Rashid. Daniel is still going through the journals and it seems to be a list of all of Louis’s kills/non-kills, with the final words of the victims written by their hand. Daniel wants to confirm this kill list, but can’t because Louisiana is a closed state. Rashid expresses concern for Louis’s safety once the book is published and it’s brushed off. Back to Claudia.
CLAUDIA
Heartbroken and angry, Claudia will not come out of her coffin. Louis fears it’s a hunger strike. However, Lestat doesn’t think she’s starving, he believes she’s sneaking out. Lestat wants to barge in the room and confront her. Even thought Louis doesn’t like his parenting tactics, he agrees and they get the answers they need.
Claudia is in fact not home, she’s dining out. Then, Lestat finds her diaries – and reads them. He reads aloud to Louis a personal passage where she wonders if she’ll forever be a virgin. Will her hymen grow back like her hair does?
When Claudia returns home she finds Lestat in her coffin, and Louis outside the door. We learn that after reading her diaries Claudia has more bodies than they’ve incinerated. She’s buried them on the edge of town, but that area is only three feet from the river line. The next storm will bring up the bodies…and it does.
SPEAKEASY
Lestat and Louis meet with their old frenemy, Thomas Anderson, who asks them for their support on his campaign for the Hour of Reps. “One each.” This wasn’t just a donation ask. Lestat cuts his face before leaving using that great slo-mo to show fast he’s moving.
However, they have bigger problems. Claudia’s bodies are coming up and are named “the floaters.” Every body has some soft part of it cut off – finger, foot, toe, even a woman’s breast. Claudia is keeping “trophies”. Louis and Lestat come home to a police officer inside their home. Claudia, who is drunk, let them in. We see the boys trying to justify their incinerator while Claudia hides her trophies and changes the rooms around.
After the police leave – not without threatening them first – Louis and Lestat yell at Claudia for all her kills and keeping her souvenirs in the house. Claudia goes on a monologue about never being loved by another person. They learn she’s trying to turn other people so she can have a companion. After Lestat calls Claudia a mistake, Claudia outs Lestat’s other woman and begins packing up her things. Louis comes to comfort her and she asks him why he brought her here instead of a hospital because she was breathing! He has no answer.
BACK TO DANIEL
Louis admits he made her out of remorse and selfishness. She spent every night with no friends stuck in puberty. Daniel compares her to Charles Mansions and saying that she’s more interesting than Lestat and Louis – two whiny queens. Louis tells Daniel that he wants the diaries used in the appropriate context, but Daniel has to explain he’s not the one who decides. After a moment, Louis hands him another diary.
BACK TO LOUIS AND LESTAT
Claudia has left them, leaving the storm of bodies for them to clean up. Louis and Lestat are planning how to survive if they get caught, as well as how to pretend to get caught. Lestat wants to leave New Orleans and go somewhere else. He also wants to dismantle Claudia’s room – Louis forbids it because he believes she’ll be back.
No roaring ‘20s for Louis and Lestat. The two go underground for seven years. Emotionally, Louis is now vacant, longing for Claudia and sending her telepathic thoughts of remorse. However, she’s shut her mind to him. Louis and Lestat are miserable, living in filth, and constantly arguing. Lestat has been drawn into Louis gloom. Louis blames Lestat for Claudia leaving and he enjoys provoking him about it.
CLAUDIA
After Claudia steals books from a college library, she meets another vampire on a motorcycle who saves her from a douchebag that is harassing her. Claudia and Bruce are roasting a body over an open fire when he shares his story with her. Claudia asks what his maker is like – he says strange and European.
Then, Bruce shares that he can hear Louis’s cries for Claudia to return. He’s curious what it would be like to be with other vampires. Bruce gives her a manners book and lectures her on being sloppy with her kills, and admits he’s been following her for a while.
Then, Bruce assaults her.
BACK TO DANIEL
Louis has ripped out the four pages of her diary that follow because it goes into details of what happened to Claudia that night. Finally, we see another example of Louis’s power by controlling Daniel’s hand! Pissed off, Daniel gets up and slaps him…then sits back down.
“Still recording”
LOUIS IS LOOKING FOR CLAUDIA – 7 years gone
Louis is constantly looking for any evidence of Claudia. He finds an article about a string of murders and believes it’s her. Lestat is fed up with Louis. He feels neglected, squandered, and unloved.
Louis gets a call from his sister to meet her at their mother’s grave. She lets him know that they’re moving up north. On top of that, she added his name to a gravestone. He is dead to her. It’s what she has to do in order to move on with her life. It’s better for her family. We see that Claudia saw the whole thing.
Claudia admits that she now follows Louis because life without him means nothing. That night at the cemetery she finally understood why they made her – to be his sister. So, Claudia returns home. Lestat calling her “the prodigal daughter.” She apologizes to both of them and Lestat dismisses it. She shares all the books she read while in college and her plans to go to Romania/Hungary as soon as possible. The kicker? She wants to take Louis with her.
Lestat warns her that the vampires out there are vicious. Then, he realizes that she met one. He warns her that the European vampires are even worse. Claudia ignores him and begs Louis to leave with him. Lestat attacks her. Then, he and Louis get into a horrific fight.
The brutality of this scene is insane. Lestat is dragging Louis by his JAW. Then, he bites him, flies into the air, and drops him.
Interview with the Vampire: A Vile Hunger For Your Hammering Heart Review
This episode. Holy smokes. My jaw was on the floor by the end of it. I was sitting on the edge of my couch SCREAMING for the next episode. But let me back up.
We’re finally seeing the demise of Louis and Lestat’s relationship. We’re getting the sad, brooding vampire we know with Louis. As well as Lestat hitting his breaking point. I appreciate that we got to see Claudia go off on her own and try to become her own vampire. Having her be assaulted is so dark and heartbreaking.
Seeing more into Louis and Lestat’s relationship and the dark turn it takes makes Claudia convincing Louis to murder him (if they go that route) make more sense. In the book I never really understood their relationship. Why did Louis stay so long? Why was Louis fine with being manipulated by his child? The series answers these questions and adds more brutality making every choice sadly understandable.
There are only two more episodes left in the first season of Interview with the Vampire and I don’t know if my heart can take it.
Watch new episodes of Interview with the Vampire on AMC, or stream them on AMC+.
