The Witching Hour

Anne Rice’s influence can be seen in many forms of media, including books, film, television, games, music, and websites. Her novel Interview with the Vampire was published in the mid-1970s and adapted into a movie in 1994. In 2002, the film Queen of the Damned, another adaptation of Rice’s novels, was released in theaters. This release caused a huge media sensation because one of its stars, R&B singer Aaliyah, died in a plane crash between the film’s production and release. In 2022, AMC created the Immortal Universe and produced the television series Interview with a Vampire. The Witching Hour became part of this universe with AMC’s Mayfair Witches series in 2023. Rice’s vampire novels paved the way for a huge boom in vampire media, such the Twilight novels and movies, as well as the tabletop roleplaying game Vampire: The Masquerade, which was adapted into a television show called Kindred: The Embraced. Rice’s phrase the “savage garden” also inspired the name of the band Savage Garden. This phrase, and variants of it, appear in Rice’s vampire novels and The Witching Hour: “the depths of the garden patch, savage and shivering, a hideous mouth of a flower” (828).