Vampire Flicks: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Remember how, in my review of the original Nosferatu, I said I first learned of it in a book I found at the library (I didn't specify which, but it was the public library in Monteagle)? Well, along with the one image of Count Orlock that freaked me out, as well as many others of Bela Lugosi, it also featured some pictures from this film. I don't remember exactly what the book said about it, but I do remember it had an image of the young Dracula looming over Mina's body, his eyes glowing red as he looked right at the camera, which also gave me the creeps. It also had an image of his old form at the beginning of the movie (albeit without that infamous beehive hairdo), which really confused my young mind, as I actually thought it was an old woman. In any case, both of those pictures stuck with me, but since this was a modern R-rated, violent, and sexual vampire movie, it was off-limits to me at that age, though I wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway, since I was still very skittish. I did some clips here and there on TV (one being the opening, another a bit of Jonathan Harker's dinner with Dracula, and finally, the scene where Van Helsing beheads Lucy), as well as the VHS, with that artwork, over the years, but I didn't see the entire film until I was twenty. By that point, I'd heard mostly good things, particularly immense praise for Gary Oldman's performance as Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola's direction, and the visual style. So, when I got around to watching it in October of 2007, after having found the then recent special edition DVD at Wal-Mart for very cheap, I was looking forward to it... and I was quite let down. Obviously, you don't see my Movies That Suck tag, so you know I don't absolutely hate it, and trust me, there are things about it that I do admire and even like. On a technical level, it's amazing, and the fact that all of these jaw-dropping visuals were created without CGI makes them all the more astonishing. Similarly, the makeup work, particularly for Dracula's various forms, the costume design, and the art direction are all superlative, and it's not surprising that the movie won Oscars for the first two. There also various concepts regarding its depiction of vampires that I do like. And, if nothing else, you can tell the movie had a very substantial budget, and that Coppola had the freedom to really express himself with it. 

But, in the acting and story department, I find it to be a disappointing mess. Some of the performances are fine, but the majority of them are so operatic and overwrought that they either don't do anything for me (and that includes Gary Oldman) or flat-out irritate me. And even though I know all the beats and scenes by heart, I find the story hard to get into, due to the movie's art-house nature and abstract narrative. In fact, once we get well into the latter half, I find myself no longer caring. Speaking of the story, I find it especially annoying how, even though it's called Bram Stoker's Dracula, it still deviates considerably from the original novel, particularly in the main subplot concerning Dracula and Mina's love story. And yes, this is the movie that made me realize how, with few exceptions, I dislike the idea of Dracula being made into a sympathetic and tragic character, at least when you're purportedly doing a faithful adaptation of the novel. This wasn't the first movie to do that, as we saw earlier this month with the Dan Curtis TV movie, and there have been others since 1992, that's for sure, but it is the one that, at the time, went the furthest with it and, for me, that's just not Stoker's original vision of Dracula.

In 1462, Vlad Dracula, a young Transylvanian prince and warrior, leaves his beloved wife, Elisabeta, to wage battle against the Ottoman Turks. After a brutal and bloody campaign where he often impales his enemies on spears, he is ultimately victorious. But when he returns home, he discovers that Elisabeta, having received a false report from the Turks about him dying in battle, has committed suicide. Dracula's initial heartbreak turns to fury when he is told that her soul has been damned as a result, and he proceeds to renounce God, declaring that he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta, with all the powers of darkness. Nearly 450 years later, in 1897, young London solicitor Jonathan Harker is tasked with closing a real estate deal with Count Dracula of Transylvania. He's taking over from R.M. Renfield, who went mad following his own trip to see his client and is now an inmate at a sanitarium in the city's Carfax District. Told that he must leave immediately, Harker says goodbye to his fiancee, Mina Murray, whom he is eager to marry, and leaves her with her friend, Lucy Westenra. He travels to Transylvania, arrives at Castle Dracula after an eerie and frightening journey through Borgo Pass, and meets with the Count, whom he finds accommodating, but strange and melancholic. Dracula is especially taken when he sees a picture of Mina, who reminds him of Elisabeta, and he then has Harker write to his firm and loved ones that he will be staying at the castle for a month. During his time there, Harker gradually learns of the Count's inhuman nature, and is then left at the mercy of his ravenous vampire brides. Dracula himself, meanwhile, travels to London onboard the schooner, the Demeter. Upon arriving after killing the ship's crew, he seduces and curses Lucy with the bite of a vampire. As her health gradually deteriorates afterward, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing is summoned to see to her; meanwhile, during the daytime, Dracula meets and has a romantic affair with Mina. Harker eventually manages to escape from the castle and, after having Mina join him in Romania, promptly marries her. Lucy soon succumbs to Dracula's bite and promptly rises from the grave as a vampire herself, but Van Helsing, along with her fiance, Arthur Holmwood, Texan Quincey Morris, and Dr. Jack Seward, manage to destroy her. Mina and Harker return and join the others in their quest to kill Dracula, which is complicated by Mina's lingering love for him. She willingly drinks his blood and begins in the same manner as Lucy, and the others race to find and destroy Dracula before it's too late.

The origin of this version of the Dracula story can be traced to screenwriter James V. Hart, who'd previously had a major part in writing the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Hook. Hart had first read the original Bram Stoker novel in 1977, and decided to make the film into what he felt it was: "An epic, sweeping, Gothic romance, on a scale we had never seen before," as well as to really make the historical figure of Vlad Dracula part of the story. However, it was actually Winona Ryder who brought the screenplay to Francis Ford Coppola. After she'd pulled out of The Godfather Part III at the very last minute in order to do Edward Scissorhands instead (which led to Coppola's notoriously ill-advised decision to have his daughter, Sofia, play Ryder's intended role), Ryder was worried that he wouldn't be too thrilled meet up with her and that she'd blown any chance of working with him. Still, he agreed to see her, even though he was now deep into shooting The Godfather Part III, and she left the script with him afterward. It just so happened that Dracula was one of Coppola's favorite books as a kid, so he immediately knew it was going to be his next movie.

While he'll always be best remembered for The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, Dracula was actually a very significant film in the context of Coppola's career. While his work in the 70's, specifically the first two Godfathers and Apocalypse Now (and The Conversation, to some degree), are considered seminal masterpieces, he spent the majority of the 80's attempting to pay off the debt he accumulated from the disastrous and expensive bomb that was 1982's One from the Heart. Some of his following films, like The Outsiders and Peggy Sue Got Married, did well, but many others were also very costly flops. Having declared bankruptcy more than once during the decade, Coppola finally caved and took up Paramount's long-standing demand for him to make a third Godfather, which was a commercial hit, despite not being nearly as acclaimed as the first two. And then, Dracula would prove to be an even bigger hit, just as he needed. Since he's hardly thought of as a horror filmmaker, it's often forgotten that Coppola has never been a stranger to the genre, as his directorial debut was 1963's Dementia 13. It is also clear from this movie alone that he does have some reverence for the genre, at least up to a point, though I don't think making a scary movie was his primary goal here. In any case, Dracula would also prove to be his last major hit, as his two follow-ups, Jack and The Rainmaker, were not successful, and he would then transition to self-funded, independent, experimental films for the remainder of his career. One of these, 2011's Twixt, was not only another horror film but also involved vampires.

Along with its visual and technical achievements, the aspect of this movie that gets almost universal praise is Gary Oldman. More to the point, I've often heard people call his portrayal of Dracula the best of all time, and say he was robbed when he didn't even receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. I'll give my opinion on that later, but one thing is for sure: his Dracula is the most sympathetic portrayal since Frank Langella's in the 1979 film. In fact, while he certainly has his fair share of creepy and menacing moments here, Dracula, overall, is portrayed not as a loathsome, blood-sucking beast but, rather, as a tragic hero who turned to evil due to the loss of his beloved wife. Upon returning home after his campaign against the Turks, he enters his castle's chapel to find that Elisabeta has committed suicide after being tricked into thinking he died in battle. As if he weren't grief-stricken enough, he's also told by a priest that her soul is damned, meaning they will not be reunited in heaven, as she hoped for in the note she left behind. Dracula then becomes enraged, tossing over a stoup of holy water, and yelling, "Is this my reward for defending God's church?!... I renounce God!" Then, pushing the priest to the floor, he takes out his sword and stabs the stone cross, causing blood to spill out of it, as well as in other parts of the church. He collects some of the blood in a chalice, declares, "The blood is the life... and it shall be mine!", before drinking it and becoming a vampire. Over 400 hundred years later, when Jonathan Harker comes to his castle to finalize his purchase of various properties in London, Dracula's initial purpose is to prey on its unsuspecting citizens. But, when he sees Mina's portrait, recognizing her as a possible reincarnation of Elisabeta, he's taken aback and immediately gains a new motive, asking Harker, "Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds... true love?" From then on, despite all the monstrous things he does, his purpose is to court and be reunited with his beloved through Mina.

Still, that doesn't mean he's not a dangerous and often sadistic creature. Far from it, as he commits a number of truly evil acts. Even before he became a vampire, he not only killed but also tortured hundreds of his enemies by impaling them. Then, early on in the first act, as Harker watches in horror, Dracula allows his brides to feed on an infant he brought for them. Harker yells in helpless anguish at this, while Dracula laughs evilly, then departs to go after the man's fiancee, leaving him at the mercy of his brides. Of course, along the way, he kills everybody onboard 

the Demeter, and upon arriving in London, he seduces and corrupts Lucy Westenra, not only biting her neck but also raping her in the form of a werewolf. He continues to feed on Lucy the whole time he's seeing and romancing Mina, and when Mina leaves for Romania to marry Harker, Dracula, heartbroken and in tears, lets loose his jealous fury. He creates a violent windstorm and then makes his way to the Westenra Estate. There, he appears at the window to Lucy's bedroom, using his power to render Arthur 

Holmwood helpless, and tells her, "Your impotent impotent men with their foolish spells cannot protect you from my power. I condemn you to living death, to eternal hunger for living blood." He then takes the form of a real wolf, breaks into her room, and bites into her neck to fully turn her into a vampire. He also brutally kills Renfield after he attempts to warn Mina to get away before it's too late, slamming him repeatedly against his cell's bars. And after Mina has drank some his blood, dooming her to

eventually become a vampire herself, Dracula, knowing that Van Helsing and his party have destroyed all of his boxes of earth at Carfax Abbey, makes his way back to Transylvania, resting within a crate onboard a ship, and outsmarting and managing to evade the others as they attempt to intercept him.

This is also one of the most powerful and omnipotent versions of Dracula, as it's suggested early on that he's able to cast influence over people and places thousands of miles away (I don't particularly like that myself, but we'll get to it later). He has the ability to create powerful winds and storms, as the storm the Demeter travels through on its way to England is all but flat-out said to be his doing, as is the one that hits London when he arrives. And, again, when he learns that Mina has gone to marry Jonathan Harker, he whips up some fierce winds for cover, as he goes

back to Lucy's home to curse her as a vampire. He's also a major shape-shifter, able to take many forms. He appears as a werewolf-like beast a couple of times, mainly when he first goes for Lucy; a shadow when he feeds on her for the second time; an actual wolf when he curses her completely; an eerie, green mist, which he uses to slip into places undetected; a monstrous, gargoyle-like bat when he's confronted by Van Helsing and his group; and even a swarm of rats, a form he uses to escape the vampire hunters after he 

flees Dr. Seward's quarters  In addition, Dracula sometimes takes on a much more ethereal nature, feeling more like a malevolent force that people can sometimes but not actually see (this is often personified in a very rapid, floating POV shot). He can even determine when he wants to be seen, as he growls, "No. Do not see me," when Mina comes across him raping Lucy as a werewolf, and then allows her to see him before she first meets him as 

his young self in the daytime. That's another thing: like in the novel, Dracula is able to move about in daylight, with Van Helsing adding, in narration, "Though it is not his natural time, and his powers are weak." Rather than as a means to avoid the sun, the boxes of earth he sleeps in are a place for him to safely rest until his supernatural abilities return to their full strength, as well as to restore himself. And while he doesn't use this ability too often, also like in the novel, he does hold sway over animals, like how he's able to tame a wolf that escaped from the zoo when it appears in the cinematograph exhibition.

Also like in the novel, Dracula is an old man when Harker first meets him in Transylvania, but becomes younger later on in the story. In the novel, it's specified that he becomes young because the blood he drinks rejuvenates him, and here, you would assume that it's the same, likely from his killing everyone on the Demeter, as well as when he first feeds on Lucy. However, during the journey to England, you twice see Dracula as he rests in one of his boxes, encased in a slimy, embryonic-like sac. The first time, he still looks old, but the second time, he seems to be

younger, only to then become the wolf creature for the first time. So, it seems to suggest that resting in his native soil is what made him young again (though why he couldn't do that back at his castle is anyone's guess). And yet, like in a lot of modern vampire movies, it's suggested that his young, dapper form is itself now a facade that he puts up, with his true, monstrous visage being revealed in moments like when he becomes distraught over reading Mina's letter about her marrying Harker. Notably, after the

scene between him and Mina when he tells her who he is and she lets him begin the process of making her into a vampire, as well as after you see his bat form, he returns to looking like an old man, as well as a more monstrous version of that, for the rest of the movie, until Mina redeems him at the end. Only then, does he revert back to the man he once was.

Speaking of which, as we've already seen this month, the notion of Dracula searching for the reincarnation of his lost love was hardly a new concept (nor was it even exclusive to the Count himself, seeing as how other vampire movies like Blacula did it, too). But what's new here is how this love ultimately does lead to his redemption. Dracula's sadness and bitterness comes from his feeling that God betrayed his loyalty by damning Elisabeta's soul after her suicide, ensuring that he's lost her in both this life and the next one. By extension, he also blames God for leading

him to become the monster he is now, telling Van Helsing during their confrontation in Seward's quarters, "I was betrayed. Look what your God has done to me!" Van Helsing insists, "No, your war with God is over! You must pay for your crimes!", only for Dracula to boast that Mina is now his bride. However, that was a decision Mina made for herself, as Dracula initially intended to stop her from drinking his blood, saying, "You will be cursed as I am to walk in the shadow of death for all eternity. I love you too

much... to condemn you." Thus, even at this point, there is still some humanity within him, enough to where, at the end of the movie, when he's been fatally injured, Mina is able to redeem him and free his soul. Moreover, it happens in the very chapel where he originally renounced God.

While this film also wasn't the first to suggest that the real life Vlad Dracula and Stoker's character were one and the same, Coppola and Hart really went in on it. This connection is only suggested in Stoker's novel, with Van Helsing briefly postulating that Dracula may actually be Vlad Tepes, but the movie immediately starts up with it, as he battles and brutally slaughters the Turks, impaling most of their bodies on long spears. Moreover, while in the novel, Dracula boasts to Harker about his heritage, claiming to be a descendant of Attila the Hun, and proudly reminisces

about his family's past, this movie makes him a knight of the Order of the Dracul, or the Dragon (playing on one of the perceived meanings of the name Dracula, "Son of the Dragon,"), meant to defend the church from all enemies. Like in the novel, it's a history that he doesn't take lightly, as when Harker chuckles at a remark Dracula makes about it, the Count flies into a fury. He grabs and swings a sword, then yells, "It is no laughing matter! We Draculs have a right to be proud." He then adds, "What devil or witch was ever

so great as Attila, whose blood flows in these veins?", further tying Vlad Tepes and the Stoker character together. And, like in the book, when Van Helsing and his group confront him, he mocks their thinking that they have a chance against him, saying a variation of the line, "I, who commanded nations, hundreds of years before you were born!"

Unfortunately, as ambitious as this portrayal of Dracula is, it's not one I've ever been able to completely embrace, for several reasons. Sad to say, but one of them is Gary Oldman himself. I won't deny that he really threw himself into the role, as he seems to do with virtually every role he plays. But, as acclaimed as his performance is, I've always found it to be very... hammy, for lack of a better word. I'm probably going to get some hate for this, but I've always felt that Oldman comes off as an overblown Shakespearean stage performer here. Not only are his

emoting and line delivery hardly ever subtle, to say the least, but I find that accent really distracting. I originally said it made me think of Bela Lugosi but, now, I feel the problem is that it comes off like too much of a put-on, rather than his natural way of speaking. When you combine that with his often clipped enunciation, the florid dialogue he often has, especially in his scenes with Mina, like, "I have crossed oceans of time to find you," (which Oldman said was one of his incentives for taking the role),

and, "I give you life eternal. Everlasting love. The power of the storm, and the beasts of the Earth. Walk with me, to be my loving wife, forever," and his exaggerated, operatic, and, in some scenes, almost kabuki-like mannerisms, I find it hard to take him seriously. I'm sure there are actors who could've made all this work, but Oldman slices the ham so think that it makes it hard for me to connect with Dracula and feel pity for him. 

Another problem I have is that, the first time we actually see Dracula in the mainline story, when Jonathan Harker meets him at his castle, he looks ridiculous. In the Stoker novel, Dracula does first appear as an old man, but he's simply described as simply, with a white mustache, and clad completely in black. He's also described as not being particularly good looking but, at the same time, not as over the top and bizarre-looking as he is here. I've heard some say that they find Dracula's appearance here to be unsettling and truly inhuman, but if I was Harker, I

would've probably fallen over laughing if that appeared to greet me at the castle door. The chalk-white color of his skin, his long fingernails, and bits of hair around his wrists (details from the original novel) do give you something of an "ugh" feeling, and I think his old form looks more effectively creepy when Harker tries to kill him before he departs for England, as well as during the journey onboard the Demeter and the climax back at the castle. But that goofy hairdo and the bright red, flowing, Japanese-

like robe he wears during much of the first act are just laughable. In fact, he looks so unlike his younger self that I find it hard to believe Harker would be able to recognize him when he later sees him in London. And the really sad thing is, that is the image of Dracula from this movie that everyone remembers.

Now, all that said, I don't think Oldman's performance is a complete misfire. While I feel that both Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee have him beat in the creepy/scary department, he's effectively menacing in some scenes, like when he orders his brides to leave Harker be and then laughs evilly at the man's horror, and in those aforementioned scenes where his old form is better utilized. I also think he's effectively monstrous-looking in his werewolf and bat forms, especially the former, and I have to give Oldman kudos for being able to effectively emote and move 

around in that extensive makeup without feeling restrained. And I think he's especially good in the scenes where Dracula appears on the London streets in the daytime, mainly because, when he first meets and speaks with Mina, his accent and gestures come off as natural. He's also able to sometimes come off unnerving in this guise, like when he's about to bite Mina at the exhibition, when he appears at Lucy's window, and when Harker sees him after he and Mina return to London.

My final issue with Dracula isn't Oldman's fault but, rather, is with the most significant aspect of the character's portrayal. I'm sure you're sick to death of me complaining about when they try to make Dracula sympathetic or add in this subplot of his search for his lost love but, as I've thought about it during this revision, I've come to realize it's not that concept in and of itself that I dislike, as I remember thinking Frank Langella's sympathetic performance in the 1979 film was well done (to the point where it felt out

of character when that Dracula tried to be ferocious and menacing). And, if you remember back to earlier this month, to the Dan Curtis film, I thought Jack Palance was at his best in Dracula's more poignant moments. Rather, what I really don't like is whenever they go this route in a movie that's purporting itself to be a true adaptation of Bram Stoker's book. I'll go more into this later but, while I realize you always have to take some liberties in an adaptation, I find it annoying when writers and filmmakers will change or add in something so drastically different from the

source material, yet insist they're adhering really, really close to it, to the point of putting the original author's name above the title. It would be one thing if the movie was just called Dracula (as it often is), or Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, or something like Dracula: The Fallen Prince or Dracula: A Love Story (as Luc Besson's 2025 film is similarly titled in some territories), but if you're going to call it Bram Stoker's Dracula, you'd better be as close to that as you can possibly get. And, among other things, that

means no reincarnated loves, romances between Dracula and Mina, or, most of all, making Dracula sympathetic to the point of being almost an antihero, because he is anything but that in the novel. (It could also be that they've tried to make Dracula sympathetic so many times in general that I'm sick of it.)

Sad to say, but a lot of the big name actors here either don't cut it for me or I find them to be just disappointing, and that includes Winona Ryder as Mina. In fact, I think she fares a bit worse than Gary Oldman. At least I can find some aspects of his portrayal of Dracula to be interesting or memorable; Ryder, however, is someone whom I do not buy as a repressed young woman from Victoria Era London. It's bizarre because, obviously, I've seen her give good performances, even in movies that most people feel are trash (Alien: Resurrection, for instance), but I don't know what happened here. Her acting always feels stilted and like a put on, with her voice often monotone and her emotional pretense feeling so artificial, which is not helped at all by that forced British accent. I do think she's fine during the movie's third act, when Dracula's influence begins to take hold and she becomes seductive in and of herself, towards Dr. Van Helsing. But everything else? Nope. Be it when she's pining for Harker when he's away in Transylvania, taken aback at how much of a sultry free spirit Lucy is, enraptured with Dracula, conflicted with her feelings for the two men in her life, or with how she still loves Dracula, despite knowing what he is and what he's done, I don't buy into any of it. And that's especially bad, seeing as how, again, her and Dracula's love story is the movie's emotional crux.

As much as I don't like how it goes against his depiction in the novel, I might've been more lenient about the love story between Dracula and Mina if I actually bought into it. However, like everything else regarding Mina, it feels forced and insincere, no matter how much they smack you over the head with the notion that it's "beautiful" and "tragic." Putting aside the notion that Mina is Elisabeta reincarnated, I don't buy that she would grow to love Dracula so much. Obviously, she's intrigued when she meets this

suave, enigmatic, foreign gentleman on the streets of London (though, at the same time, when he virtually teleports around her on the street corner, she seems more confused than uneasy), and also seeks to apologize for initially being rude to him. She goes with him to the theater with the cinematograph, but the next time we see them there, she's decided to leave, mostly due to how uncomfortable she feels about the pornographic film being projected during the demonstration. Dracula then attempts to seduce her and comes close to biting her, only to stop 

himself. A wolf that escaped from the city zoo earlier wanders in and Dracula manages to tame it after it corners Mina. Apparently, that was enough to make her so enamored with him that she begins seeing him in private, despite how he, you know, tried to take her by force. Naturally, you can argue that there's more to it than that, maybe because of his growing hold over her or, more than likely, because her past feelings for him as Elisabeta are coming through, as she tells him that his voice is "familiar" and even comforting to

familiar, and she also has visions of when her past self committed suicide, I still can't buy into it because of Ryder's bland acting, combined with the overly flowery and poetic dialogue the screenplay has them say to each other. And, despite all their love professing, kissing, and swooning, I don't feel that Oldman and Ryder have any chemistry (they are said to have had a falling out at some point during filming, and I think you can feel it).

It really is amazing how, despite its taking up comparatively little of the running time, and the woman herself having no character at all, I got so much more out of the subplot of Dracula's lost love and her reincarnation in the Curtis film. Not to keep harping on that but, there, I could feel Dracula's love for his wife when he was human, and his anguish over losing her back then, as well as when he finds that her reincarnation in Lucy has been staked after he managed to make her into a vampire. Like I said in that review, I think a benefit was that the film didn't 

beat you over the head with it, as well as Jack Palance's performance. Here, you not only have Oldman being so melodramatic and Ryder so bland, but the movie puts this aspect of the story front and center from the opening prologue in the 15th Century, and continues on to the very end, with Mina managing to both kill Dracula and redeem his soul, with the last shot being a mural on the chapel ceiling depicting Dracula and Elisabeta reunited. Between that and my not caring for the two lead performances or buying the romance, it really does make the movie unbearable for me to sit through.

Even those who absolutely love the movie and buy into the central romance can agree that the single worst cast member, and possibly the weakest element overall, is Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker. First off, I've never been a fan of Reeves to begin with. I've found him okay in certain movies, and I have heard that he's apparently the nicest guy in Hollywood, but I just find him to be very wooden, low energy, and emotionless in his acting (which, in this case, receives the added bonus of a really bad English accent). He's also been notoriously miscast a good number of times and this is one of the most infamous examples. Francis Ford Coppola has admitted that he cast Reeves because he wanted a "matinee idol" to draw in the young crowds, especially since Jonathan Harker is typically the most uninteresting character in the Dracula story. I guess, in that latter regard, said casting was successful, as his lackluster performance is what you typically expect from Harker. It also kind of makes it more understandable why Mina would be drawn to Dracula, as her betrothed is so dull and perfectly personifies the conformity and repression of the Victorian Era. 

Putting all that aside, though, Reeves' acting severely drags down that first section at Castle Dracula, as he has such dull reactions to the weird and creepy things he experiences and sees. Even when he's being molested by Dracula's brides, he mostly comes off as indifferent, with the one exception being his horrified reaction at Dracula allowing his brides to kill that infant offscreen. But even that's followed by a rather poor and very forced yell of anguish, all while he makes a goofy face (a clip that, notoriously, was used as the death screen in the Sega CD video game).

Thus, you don't care at all when Harker is left there for the brides, eventually manages to escape, and joins Van Helsing's group of vampire hunters back in London. In fact, he often looks completely lost during much of the second half. And you want to talk about lack of chemistry, I especially don't buy Mina and Harker as lovers, even before Dracula comes into the picture, or at the end, when Mina asks him if he'll be prepared to kill her if she fully becomes a vampire. Finally, even more so than Winona Ryder, that 

British accent Reeves puts on is just atrocious, as you can hear his normal surfer dude-type voice clashing with it. Rather than not trying, Coppola said it actually resulted from Reeves trying way too hard to produce the accent but, whatever the cause, it's terrible. (What kills me even more is that, the following year, he was cast in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and again, his performance there was singled out as one of the weakest.) 

Since he was now a hot commodity in Hollywood after having won the Oscar for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, it's not surprising to see Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Van Helsing. In fact, at the time, he was a rather inspired choice, and I do kind of like him because, well, it's Anthony Hopkins. Also, the angle they take with the character is interesting, in that he proves to be rather unhinged and even unpredictable at times. Coppola said he felt somebody who had studied and pursued vampires all his life would probably be a little crazy and, indeed, Van Helsing has often been portrayed as being a little eccentric. (That includes both Edward Van Sloan in the original Bela Lugosi Dracula and Peter Cushing in the Hammer films, not to mention Prof. Bulwer, the Van Helsing stand-in who briefly appears in the original Nosferatu.) However, Hopkins' Van Helsing is really out there. When he's first introduced, he's giving a lecture on venereal diseases, using a vampire bat in a cage as part of it. He goes on to talk about diseases of the blood, like syphilis, remarking, "The very name 'venereal diseases,' the diseases of Venus, imputes to them divine origin. And they are involved in that sex problem about which the ethics and ideals of Christian civilization are concerned." He then adds, "In fact, civilization and 'syphilization' have advanced together." That's just one of many memorable lines that Hopkins gets to spout. When he prepares to give Lucy a blood transfusion upon arriving and seeing her condition, Jack Seward asks, "You've perfected a procedure?", and he answers, "Perfected? No. I've only experimented." Arthur Holmwood then says, "I would give my last drop of blood to save her," and Van Helsing remarks, "Your last drop? Thank you. You are very welcome here. I do not ask as much as that. Not yet." In fact, a lot of dark humor comes from how utterly callous and tactless he is regarding people's feelings. Following Lucy's death, he asks Seward for, "A set of postmortem knives," and when asked if he's going to perform an autopsy, he nonchalantly answers, "No, no, no. Not exactly. I just want to cut off her head and take out her heart." Later, when Mina and Harker return to London after being married in Romania, Mina asks Van Helsing if Lucy's death as a vampire was a painful one. Randomly annoyed at this, he answers, out loud in the middle of a restaurant, "Ja, she was in great pain! Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then, she found peace." And then, he asks Harker, "A sensitive question: during your infidelity with those... creatures, those demonic women, did you, for one instant, taste of their blood?"

I also love how intelligent and take charge Van Helsing is from the get-go, letting Dr. Seward, Holmwood, and Quincey Morris know immediately that they're dealing with something supernatural. He pushes Seward, a former student of his, to figure out why there's no sign of any blood loss, even though he's sure it did happen. And when Seward off-handedly throws out the suggestion that something went into Lucy's room and sucked the blood out of her, Van Helsing answers, "Ja, why not?", then adds, "Jack, you are a scientist. Do you not think there are 

things in this universe that you cannot understand and which are true?" He goes on to say, "Gentlemen, we are not fighting some disease here. Those marks on your dear Ms. Lucy's neck were made by something unspeakable, out there. Dead, but not dead." Later, when Lucy has an episode and attempts to bite Morris' neck, Van Helsing grabs him and throws him off the bed, then restrains Lucy. Seeing the fangs growing in her mouth, he now knows for sure that he's dealing with vampires. He does some research, and figures out that it's Dracula, whom he says he's 

been searching for his entire life. Following Lucy's death, he knows what must be done, despite how horrific it seems to everyone else, and leads his impromptu band of vampire hunters to her grave. When she does show up, Van Helsing stops her from feeding on the young girl she brings back with her, and repels her with a cross when she tries to attack Holmwood, all while passionately shouting a prayer. Even when she vomits blood on him, he's undeterred and continues his recitation like an absolute boss. 

After Lucy has been staked, and Mina and Harker join them, Van Helsing lets them know what a threat Dracula is, but also tell them of his vulnerabilities. He then leads them to Carfax Abbey, where they perform an exorcism and destroy Dracula's boxes of earth, before arriving to confront him after Mina has drunk his blood. Despite how monstrous Dracula is in his bat form, Van Helsing shows no fear, even when he makes his cross burn up and he falls to the floor. He's helped back to his feet

and, from there, continues strongly and forcefully confronting Dracula, before he flees the scene in the form of a swarm of rats. Van Helsing then deduces: "Dracula fears us. He fears time. For if not, why does he hurry so?"

As in the book, Van Helsing, knowing that Mina has a mental link with Dracula, attempts to use hypnosis on her in order to learn his whereabouts. As they talk, he admits that he actually admires Dracula, saying, "His heart was strong enough to survive the grave... He was, in life, a most remarkable man, and his mind was great and powerful." This is most definitely unique, as in most portrayals, Van Helsing sees the Count as nothing more than a threat that must be destroyed. And even though here, he does say, "But greater is the necessity to stamp him out and destroy him utterly,"

him utterly," it's still interesting. There's also a feeling of affection that he has towards Mina, as he gently asks her to help him find Dracula, and, during the journey to Transylvania, he seems as worried as Harker and the others when Dracula's influence over her grows. When the two of them journey to the castle together and camp for the night, Van Helsing is nearly bitten by Mina when he falls under her own spell. But, yet again, he proves to be a badass with a strong will when he breaks away from her, yelling, "Not while I live! I'm sworn to protect you!" He manages 

to both repel and slow Mina's corruption by placing a communion wafer on her forehead, and then creates a ring of fire around them to protect them from Dracula's brides, who are negatively influencing her. Van Helsing drives them back with a torch, calling them, "Whores of Satan!", and commands them to leave Mina alone. He's enraged when the brides kill their carriage's horse, and the next day, he enters the castle, stakes and beheads them without any hesitation, and tosses their heads into chasm around 

the castle, before yelling for Dracula. By the end of the movie, when everyone has gathered at the castle, and Mina walks inside with the dying Dracula, Van Helsing insists that the others let her handle things. Seeing the aftermath of the bloody fight that occurred, which includes Quincey Morris dying from a fatal stab, Van Helsing's final line is one of my personal favorites from the novel: "We've all become God's madmen. All of us."

If you're wondering why, after all that, I said I only kind of like Hopkins' Van Helsing, it's because there are moments where he's a little too weird for me. His strangest and most inexplicable action, by far, comes after they've given Lucy her first blood transfusion. We cut to outside, as Seward, Holmwood, and Morris talk about what's going on with her, when Van Helsing suddenly appears out of the darkness nearby. That's already weird enough but then, when he tells Seward that there are some things he can't understand, listing off examples like, "Mesmerism, hypnotism...

materialization, astral bodies," Seward turns away from him, and the sound of his voice suddenly becomes distant. When the others look, he's gone, and then reappears behind a stone monument, on virtually the other side of the grounds from them. He nonchalantly says, "You see?", to which I'm like, "No, I don't!" How the hell did he pull that off? And why aren't the others more perplexed about it than they already are? Besides that, there are other strange moments, like when he first meets Mina. Telling her that Lucy has told him about her and Jonathan Harker,

Van Helsing says, "Well, I too worry for all young lovers," and proceeds to dance in place with her while humming. He then stops and intensely, as well as creepily, tells her, "There are darknesses in life, my child, and there are lights. You are one of the lights, dear Mina. The light of all light." He proceeds to briefly sniff her, then sends her on to see Lucy. And after he realizes he's dealing with Dracula, he tells Morris, who intends to stand guard over Lucy, "Guard her well. Otherwise, your precious Lucy will become

a bitch of the Devil! Yee-hee! A whore of darkness!" He humps Morris for emphasis while saying the latter and laughs crassly, before he proceeds to call Lucy, "The Devil's concubine!" Between that and how abstract and hard to follow the narrative gets later on, I've never been able to completely get onboard with Hopkins, as much as I may want to.

Interestingly, like Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder, Hopkins also appears in the opening, significantly as the priest who tells Dracula that Elisabeta's soul has been damned (I didn't know that was him for a long time), and he does some sporadic narration throughout the movie. He narrates the prologue, the Demeter captain's log, his voice randomly pops up to tell us that vampires can move about in the daytime, and he also reads excerpts from Van Helsing's own journal during the journey back to Transylvania. I assume he's doing much of this in character, likely in retrospect of the story's events, given how Hopkins is still speaking in that vaguely Dutch accent. However, that one brief bit of narration about the vampire's ability to walk around in the daytime really threw me, as it comes out of nowhere and, unlike the various letters and journal entries, there's no explanation for its exact source.

I do rather like Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost), mainly because she's the drab Mina's polar opposite. In fact, calling her a "free spirit" is putting it mildly, as she's utterly flamboyant, flaunting her sexuality with no apologies whatsoever. Early on, while Mina is staying with her, she finds a copy of Arabian Nights that has some very sexual illustrations within it, hinting at Lucy's utter lack of shame before she's even properly introduced. At that moment, she comes in and, seeing Mina typing a letter to Jonathan Harker, teases her, "Is your ambitious Jon Harker forcing you to learn that ridiculous machine? When he could be forcing you to perform unspeakable acts of desperate passion on the parlor floor." Then, Mina knocks the book open on the floor, and when they open it up to another sexual image, Mina asks if a man and a woman can actually do that. Lucy claims she did it the night before, and when Mina refuses to believe it, she admits it was in a dream. That night, during a reception, Lucy continues with her sexual boldness, describing Quincey Morris as, "So young and fresh... like a wild stallion between my legs." To further shock Mina, she goes over to Morris and says, "Please, let me touch it. It's so big." Just as Mina looks thoroughly aghast, Lucy reveals that she was talking about his Bowie knife. And when Jack Seward and Arthur Holmwood arrive in quick succession, she immediately goes from one to the other, flirting with them. Honestly, though, I can understand why Mina secretly wishes to be like Lucy, because she really is a hoot to be around. At the same time, despite how much she teases Mina, it's obvious that she is a good friend. As Mina says in one of her diary entries, Lucy, despite being from a much wealthier family, has never looked down upon her. Moreover, when Mina becomes worried about what's become of Jonathan, Lucy attempts to assuage her fears, telling her that it's nothing she should worry about.

Because of her very sexual nature, it's not surprising that Lucy is not only bitten but also raped by Dracula after he manages to draw her out of the house. When Mina finds her afterward, she's really frightened, saying she couldn't control herself or resist his call, adding, "My soul, it seemed to leave my body. There was this agonizing feeling, and I couldn't get back to it." Later, when Seward comes by to talk with her, as Holmwood asked, Lucy, despite initially being flirty like always, drops her veneer and tells him, "I don't know what's happening to me. I'm changing. I can 

feel it. I can hear everything. I hear the servants at the other end of the house, whispering. I hear mice in the attic, stomping like elephants. But I'm having horrible nightmares, Jack. The eyes." And when Van Helsing first arrives, Lucy is experiencing another visit from Dracula, which has her writhing in her bed, arching her body unnaturally, and shouting in Romanian. Though, she's given a blood transfusion, her condition deteriorates further, to the point where she's bedridden when Mina comes to see her during the second act. Though Mina is now reluctant to go to Romania and 

be with Harker because of her condition, Lucy insists she go and marry him. She even gives Mina her ring, calling it a wedding gift, and tells her not to worry about her. However, as Mina is about to leave, she knocks a wreath of garlic onto the nightstand, to which Lucy reacts very violently. She then attempts to seduce Morris so she can bite his neck, but Van Helsing stops her, and sees the fangs growing in her mouth. Shortly afterward, Dracula, in retaliation for Mina going to marry Harker, goes to Lucy and

completes her transformation into a vampire. She appears to die, but Van Helsing, knowing what's going to happen, takes the men to her crypt soon afterward and opens her tomb to find it empty. They then lie in wait, and Lucy returns with a little girl she plans to feed on. The group manage to save her, and Lucy then tries to seduce and feed on Holmwood, but Van Helsing stops her and forces her back into her tomb. She spitefully vomits blood on him, but he manages to subdue her, and then has Holmwood stake her, after which he decapitates her.

Like so much else here, Renfield (Tom Waits) is portrayed in a very over the top and exaggerated manner, but this is an instance where I feel it suits the creepy and disgusting character he. The way he looks, sounds, and fanatically worships Dracula is pretty spot on with what you'd expect, and it's a shame he's locked up in the asylum for the entire film and doesn't take part in the actual story. In fact, there's really no reason for him to be here at all, as, apart from Dr. Seward, he has no interactions with the vampire hunters, and the only other main character he speaks with is Mina. While he's also in the asylum for the length of the book, he tries to escape several times, and Dracula also uses him to invite him into the asylum in order to get at Mina, who's in Seward's personal quarters; here, Dracula enters of his own accord (the trope of a vampire needing to be invited into a dwelling is totally absent here) and kills Renfield for betraying him. Still, like in the book and most adaptations, Renfield eats insects and other small creatures in order to obtain their life force, feeling Dracula personally sends them to him as part of their bargain. He and Seward have a fairly antagonistic relationship, with Renfield making a reference to his infatuation with Lucy, and when Seward gets him worked up with the idea of eating larger creatures in order to receive the accumulated life-forces of everything they've preyed on, he attacks the doctor and has to be restrained. He especially raves when Dracula approaches and then arrives in London aboard the Demeter, and later flips out when he sees Van Helsing leading the vampire hunters towards Carfax Abbey. When Seward brings Mina to the asylum in order to take her to his personal quarters, Renfield meets her and seems so touched by her that he begs her to get away before Dracula can claim her. But, as Seward takes her up to his quarters, Renfield exclaims, "Master! You promised me eternal life, but you give it to the pretty woman!", suggesting he may have actually been trying to ruin Dracula's plan out of spite. Either way, Dracula soon kills Renfield for his betrayal.

The rest of the main cast are the characters from the Dracula story who don't have much of a role, save for their being Lucy's suitors and how they become Van Helsing's band of vampire hunters. Dr. Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant) is the one who has the most to him, coming off as something of a hapless dork who's deeply infatuated with Lucy. When he's first introduced at the reception, he trips over a bearskin rug and Lucy immediately starts fawning over him, acting like he's a little kid who just got a booboo. But then, Arthur Holmwood arrives and she drops Seward just like that in order to go to her next suitor. Working at the asylum, Seward treats and is fascinated with Renfield, despite how disgusting he finds him. When talking with him about his desire consume insects and other small creatures to obtain their life-force, Seward suggests he eat larger animals in order to accumulate the life-forces of what they've preyed on, which gets Renfield worked up. Then, Renfield mentions his master and his promise of immortality, and Seward, in a derisive tone, demands to know just how his master will do so. This prompts Renfield to attack him, and he has to be restrained. Later, when Renfield is raving as Dracula approaches on the Demeter, Seward records, for his diary, "There is method in his madness, with his flies and spiders. Had I the secret of even one such brilliant mind, the key to the fancy of one lunatic..." He then trails off, as he injects himself with morphine, but despite this suggested drug addiction, nothing more is made of it. 

Seward is then charged by Holmwood with seeing to Lucy when she becomes strangely ill. Still taken with her, despite her engagement to Holmwood, he goes as far as to kiss her after he gives her an injection of morphine. He admits to Holmwood and Quincey Morris that he's unable to explain what's wrong with her, thinking it may be something mental, and brings in Dr. Van Helsing, who was his teacher. Following the blood transfusion they perform on Lucy as soon as Van Helsing arrives, Seward is unable to explain the

blood loss he knows she suffered, which is when Van Helsing pushes him to accept that it's something he can't rationally explain. Following Lucy's death, Seward is as heartbroken as Holmwood and Morris, and aghast at Van Helsing's desire to chop off her head and remove her heart, especially when he asks her in the middle of the wake. But, when Van Helsing leads them to her crypt the following night, Seward and the others see what Lucy has become, and understand what they're dealing with. From then on,

Seward is simply another of Van Helsing's vampire hunters, with his most significant moment afterward being when he takes Mina to his quarters in the asylum, while he and the others go to Carfax Abbey. He also lets Mina speak with Renfield, staying nearby to make sure he behaves himself, and then takes her to his quarters, but, of course, this doesn't protect her from Dracula at all.

Cary Elwes feels especially wasted in his role of Arthur Holmwood, Lucy's eventual fiance. There's barely anything to him, other than his being friends with Seward and Morris, and being skeptical of Van Helsing's claims of vampires, as well as shocked by some of his methods. He also proves completely ineffectual when he sits up with Lucy to protect her, as Dracula easily throws him aside with his power. His most notable scene is when Van Helsing proves to them that Lucy is now a vampire. Initially, when he sees her empty tomb, he believes Van Helsing has

moved her body in order to prove a point, and pulls a gun on him. But Van Helsing tells him that Lucy is now a vampire, and she soon returns to the crypt with that child. She also nearly seduces Holmwood, though Van Helsing drives her back. He then has Holmwood be the one to stake Lucy, which he does in complete anguish, and after that, he's mostly along for the ride when the group begins hunting Dracula. Finally, it's actually a miracle that the character of Quincey Morris (Billy Campbell) is here at all, given how he's often either adapted out or combined with the character of Holmwood in most version of the story. Moreover, his portrayal is one of the most faithful: a friendly, easygoing Texan who's infatuated with Lucy, while also being friends with her other suitors. He's especially friendly with Seward, with the latter accidentally sitting on his hat during Lucy's reception, much to his chagrin. Even after Lucy chooses to marry Holmwood, Morris, like Seward, is still taken with her, and isn't as discreet about it, as he tells Holmwood, "May I say that Miss Lucy is hotter than a June bride ridin' bareback buck naked in the middle of the Sahara!" To that, Holmwood jokingly remarks, "I would watch my colonial tongue, if I were you." Another memorable quote from his is when they're preparing to go to Carfax Abbey, and Van Helsing tells him, "Your bullets will not harm him. He must be beheaded. I suggest you use your big Bowie knife." Morris retorts, "Well, I wasn't plannin' on gettin' that close, Doc," which makes Van Helsing laugh. Still, Morris, much more than the other two, is mostly along for the ride. That said, his death during the climax, caused by being fatally stabbed by one of Dracula's gypsies, does leave an impact, with Seward last seen crying over his friend's body.

In the years since I first wrote this review, I have read the original Bram Stoker novel, and I'll say that, while I understand its importance and legacy, it's not a favorite of mine by any means. In fact, as a story, I enjoy Frankenstein by Mary Shelley much more, so trust me when I say I'm not a devout fan who's a real stickler for accuracy when it comes to any adaptation of Dracula. For crying out loud, my personal favorite Dracula movie is the first Hammer film, which is one of the least faithful adaptations ever, even more so 

than the Bela Lugosi film. What's more, it's very difficult to do a true adaptation of that book, due to its rambling and fractured story structure, told entirely through letters, diary and journal entries, and the like. So, expecting it from anybody, even a perceived master filmmaker like Francis Ford Coppola, is very presumptuous. Plus, as I always say, you have to expect some changes in an adaptation, be they artistic, budgetary, political, whatever, and I do like some of the changes here, like how Dracula becomes various

humanoid beasts rather than just an actual wolf or bat, that he's not killed in the same anticlimactic manner he is in the book, etc. And, in fact, this is a very true adaptation in many ways, such as in how a good number of characters are portrayed, various details and images from the book are realized, journal and diary entries are employed periodically in the narrative, either visually and through voiceover, and the overall story structure. But, this more sympathetic portrayal of Dracula, his being made into Vlad Tepes, and the idea of Mina being the reincarnation of his beloved wife, all change things so drastically that, in my opinion, it doesn't feel right for this to be called Bram Stoker's Dracula. 

It especially kills me when, in the behind-the-scenes documentary, Coppola says, "There was so many of them, but no one ever did the book!" (That's not true but, to qualify it, few had tried to be 100% accurate.) He then adds, "And I knew what the book was, cuz I read the book... And they just totally played havoc with Stoker's novel, you know, just to suit whatever, God knows, their reason was," to which I'm thinking, "Like you?" Also, Coppola claims that he put Bram Stoker's name above the title because that's what he

does when he adapts a book into a movie, such as he put Mario Puzo's name above The Godfather (others claim it was to keep them from getting in legal trouble with Universal), which I feel kind of contradicts what he says about the novel, his personal history with it, and his implied reason for doing this movie. Why would he justify it that way if his intention was to do a proper adaptation? In that same documentary, screenwriter James V. Hart talks about reading the book in 1977, saying he found it to be, "An epic, sweeping Gothic romance," and that, with 

this film, "The idea was to portray Dracula, finally, as a charismatic, tragic hero that he really was, not just another blood-sucking monster that we had to do away with." It makes me wonder if I read the same novel that the two of them did because, as I've already said way too many times here and in other reviews, that is not how Dracula is portrayed there. Despite his family's history of battle and the suggestion that he could be Vlad Tepes, Dracula is an evil, blood-sucking monster that needs to be destroyed, no matter what. I'm not going to continue on with this, since I've already beaten it to death, but that will never not an issue with me.

An even bigger issue, which, along with the performances that I don't care for and the lame love story, truly keeps me from enjoying the movie like so many others, is how quickly it becomes too arthousey, abstract, and confusing for me to follow. While its visuals and editing techniques are very impressive, as I'll go into, the dreamlike aesthetic that Coppola infuses it with causes the narrative to not feel cohesive to me. Once we get to the part where Dracula's shadow suddenly appears at Lucy's

reception, followed shortly by that surreal moment where his brides try to feed on Harker, it becomes akin to a confusing fever dream, one that I possibly wouldn't have been able to follow at all if I didn't already know the Dracula story by heart. And the editing, combined with all of the matte and photography effects, compound that feeling further, with the constant cutting back and forth between two or more sequences of events that, in some cases, don't even feel like they're happening parallel to each other (for example, the short overview of the Demeter's 

journey to England, which you see while Mina and Lucy frolic in the rain and the wolf escapes from the London Zoo, only for the film to then transition to Dracula's arrival and attack on Mina), all of the bizarre and surreal images, the random instances of voiceover, that weird moment where Van Helsing appears to teleport, and so on. It's all too much for me, causing me to lose interest in this two hour movie early on and, thus, making it is excruciating for me to sit through. Even though the climax is fast-paced, with a western-like carriage and horse chase, and is still visually compelling, I'm completely checked out by that point.

During filming, Coppola came up with the idea that, when you're in the presence of a supernatural creature like a vampire, the laws of physics no longer apply. Even before Jonathan Harker arrives at Castle Dracula, the landscape begins to feel more and more otherworldly as he approaches it. And during the section at the castle, you have weird stuff like Dracula's shadow having a mind of its own, rats running upside down on a ceiling beam, a moment where Harker opens a bottle, only for the liquid to

drip upwards, the vampire brides materializing out of the bed he then finds, and so on. Though I feel Coppola used that idea just as an excuse to make things even weirder, I'm willing to go with it, at least when Dracula is actually around. But, things get weird even when he's thousands of miles away, like when his shadow appears during Lucy's reception, approaches Mina and seemingly caresses her neck. Initially, I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be real or metaphorical, but, on the audio commentary, Coppola confirmed that Dracula can manipulate

things even when he's far away. I.can deal with Dracula having the ability to control weather, as it's an ability he does have in the original novel (although, again, the range of his control is much greater here), but this not only makes him way too omnipotent for my tastes but also, yet again, causes the majority of the movie to be far too strange for me to get into.

But, as much as I don't care for that idea, I do, overall, like this movie's depiction of vampires, particularly in how ethereal they can be. I like how Dracula glides during his scenes with Harker at the castle, and as weird and confusing as it is in context, the visual of Dracula's brides emerging from the bed (something that Coppola consulted a magician about in order to pull off) is really cool. I also like Dracula's ability to become a mist and slip inot places he otherwise couldn't, allowing him to materialize in the bed with

Mina. I like how utterly ravenous the vampires sometimes are, with the brides especially coming off as bloodthirsty predators, feeding on Harker both on the bed and later, when they're holding him captive, not to mention how they devour a baby offscreen (just hearing the baby crying, with an obscured glimpse of their feeding on it, is far more disturbing than if you actually saw it)! They especially come off as animals during the scene in the climax where they confront Mina and Van Helsing, snarling ferociously as he

keeps them at bay, and then eating the horse that brought them there instead. Dracula himself has his fair share of ravenous moments, mostly when he's in werewolf form, as well as when he becomes an actual wolf and bites into Lucy's neck to fully damn her. There's also that moment where he's about to bite Mina at the exhibition and you see his monstrous side emerging, with his eyes turning red and his canines starting to sharpen into fangs (which may also make this the first movie to show the fangs materialize

onscreen in a vampire's mouth). And speaking of the monstrous side emerging, you see this in Lucy and Mina after they've become tainted by Dracula, with their personalities growing more sinister and fangs beginning to appear above their canines. Lucy also mentions suddenly having heightened senses, while Mina eventually becomes seductive in her own right, and proves to have some of Dracula's elemental powers, creating a gust of wind that disorients the vampire hunters during the climactic chase.

Another thing I like is how this movie emphasizes the demonic nature of vampires, with Dracula himself becoming one after turning against God and the church, desecrating it by stabbing into a cross and drinking blood that pours out of it in a literal blood pact with Satan. As per usual, the vampires are repelled by holy objects, with even communion wafers being effective against either them or those who've been corrupted by them, but also, when the vampire hunters destroy all of Dracula's boxes of 

earth in Carfax Abbey, it's akin to an exorcism, with Van Helsing even referring to it as such, as they purify the earth itself using crosses and holy water. And, again, the ending sees Dracula being redeemed and his humanity returned, in the very church where he first cursed himself. 

Ever since Bela Lugosi first made Dracula into a suave, handsome seducer, vampire movies have often been quite sensual. Not only does that definitely the case with Bram Stoker's Dracula, but it's sometimes quite shocking how sexual it is, given that it's a big budget, mainstream movie. There's no total nudity or explicit sex scenes, like in Innocent Blood, but there are many examples of erotic material, even before we get to the vampires themselves, such as Lucy's utter shamelessness in both her attitude and clothing, and

the suggestive drawings in that book of Arabian Nights she has. Naturally, that's also an example of one of this story's major themes: the repressive nature of the Victorian Era, which Mina conforms to while Lucy doesn't. Mina comments that Harker doesn't like her spending so much time with Lucy, for fear that some of her "bad habits" will rub off on her, and that he also views Lucy's openness as, "A defect of the aristocracy, that they say what they please." But, in the same breath, Mina admits, "I admire Lucy, and I'm not surprised that men flock around her. I wish I 

were as pretty and as adored as she." She gets to experience that once Dracula comes into her life, while Harker, despite Mina willingly marrying him and remaining so at the end, comes to represent the conformity that she's left behind. And even though she's released from Dracula's curse at the end when she redeems him, she still seems to be connected to him, meaning her and Harker's marriage probably won't last.

The attacks by the vampires are often just as sensual as they are violent and horrifying, with the brides' seduction of Harker being incredibly erotic, with how they rip open his shirt and, initially, kiss, lick, and caress his body, as we see a montage of closeups of various parts of their own, like their legs and bare torsos. Even when they bare their fangs and start biting him, it's still very sexual, to say the least, with one bride undoing his pants before showing her fangs and biting... something. This merging of sensuality

and violence continues when you later see how the brides are holding Harker captive, continuing to seductively feed on him while keeping him alive. Similarly, you have Dracula raping Lucy, as well as biting into her neck, and when he fully curses her, biting into her neck again in the form of a real wolf, she appears to be both in pain and ecstasy, given her moans and facial expressions. Needless to say, the vampire's inherent seductive qualities and sensual manipulation are front and center here, with scenes like Dracula's initial seduction of Mina at the 

exhibition; Lucy rubbing and caressing herself before Dracula even seemingly starts controlling her body when he appears at her window; Lucy's own attempts to seduce Quincey Morris and, later, Arthur Holmwood; and Mina herself becoming seductive towards Van Helsing during the third act. And, of course, the movie's very center is the romance between Dracula and Mina, and when Mina willingly gives herself to him, drinking the blood oozing from his chest, Dracula himself now seems to be the one who's being seduced and is in orgasmic bliss.

One thing I don't think anybody can deny about Bram Stoker's Dracula is what a visual spectacle it is on every level. The movie just looks great in general, with a very lush, glossy feel, indicative of the $40 million budget it had to work with. It has a very vibrant color palette and, naturally, red plays a big part in it, not just in the very rich-looking blood, but in outfits such as Dracula's armor in the opening and the red kimono he wears during Harker's visit to his castle, and the blood-red sunset coloring the sky 

during Harker's journey there. There are also many scenes that feel like they're bathed in a golden sheen or a rich orange, both of which often feel like they're due to a setting sun. One of the most striking is the battle scene during the opening, where Dracula's slaughter of numerous Turks is done almost entirely in silhouette, with the orange glow in the background from the sunset sometimes almost looking red in and of itself. By contrast, some scenes that take place at night, like the one between the men after Lucy's 

transfusion and Harker's escape from the castle, have a rich blue to them, sometimes with the classic touches of an eerie mist. Transylvania itself is often made to look otherworldly and classically spooky, most notably when Harker is dropped off at Borgo Pass and then met by the coach that takes him on to the castle. But there's an undeniable beauty to it as well, and the scenes set inside the castle also manage to combine the expected creepy darkness and shadows with the film's overall lovely aesthetic. The scene with Harker and the brides, fittingly, looks 

especially surreal, but also quite lovely, with warm, golden lighting mixed in with some greens and reds, while Dracula himself is memorably backlit when he appears and enters the room. I've always especially liked the look of the climax, with the red-orange sky from the rapidly setting sun combined with the soft snowfall, as it gives the whole thing a definite fairy tale feel. The scene before that, where they're traveling through the snowy Carpathian Mountains late on an overcast day, is also very lovely. In fact,

even scenes where there's not a lot of color, like Renfield in his cell or Lucy in the crypt, the latter of which is mostly whites and grays, and added to with Lucy's white dress, still often look quite appealing in some way.

Interestingly, most of the movie's impressive visuals are not the result of just elaborately-composed camerawork, although there are certainly some notable examples. These include various high-angle shots, like Dracula yelling in anguish over Elisabeta, Renfield's introduction in his cell following the prologue, Dracula screaming while standing in the center of a bunch of candles as he whips up the winds, Van Helsing creating the protective circle of fire around himself and Mina, and the shots looking 

down on Dracula and Mina at the end, as he lies dying on the cathedral floor. Also, one of the scenes with the two of them in private, where they dance amid the candles, involves some sweeping and elegant camerawork. Whenever Dracula is meant to come off as an ethereal force, making its way through various environments, we get these sped-up, slightly jittery, traveling POV shots, which, while definitely memorable, do, as Edgar Wright once noted, feel copied from The Evil Dead. Coppola also sometimes 

had actors, namely Sadie Frost, do actions in reverse in order to make them feel more unnatural when they're played forward. This happens in the scene in her bedroom, where Dracula manipulates her movements before he enters as a shadow, and also when she's a vampire, most notably when she climbs back into her crypt as Van Helsing repels her with his cross. And shots where characters look as though they're on the sides of buildings, like when Dracula climbs along his castle wall and when Harker jumps 

off a ledge to escape, were done by just having the actors crawl or slide along a surface, while the camera angle made it look as though they were actually very high up. But for me, there are two shots in particular that look amazing, yet were done through fairly simple, on the set methods. One is when Jonathan Harker is picked up at Borgo Pass, with the camera following the demonic coachman's arm as it seems to stretch out unnaturally, then picks up and places Harker in the carriage. That had me scratching my head when I first saw it, and it similarly floored me 

when I discovered how simply it was accomplished: the guy playing the coachman was on a camera crane, which moved him to the side at the same time that the camera followed his arm. The other is when Harker is shaving and Dracula's hand comes up behind him and touches his shoulder, without being reflected in the mirror. That was achieved with a body double and a false mirror, a trick that's been used before. The one visual aspect of the movie I don't particularly care for, however, is when, after Dracula first emerges from his box at Carfax Abbey and he's seen wandering the 

London streets, the film, for a few seconds, looks as though it were shot by an old, hand-cranked camera. That's because it actually was, with a hand-cranked Pathe camera, straight from the silent era. That is interesting to know, and I understand what Coppola was trying to express, as you later see Dracula and Mina at the exhibition, where early silent film footage is being marveled at. Plus, it also fits in with his desire to create all of the visuals using old-fashioned techniques rather than anything computer-generated. But that really threw me the first time I saw it, and putting it within the actual context of the movie just makes it that little bit more abstract and confusing.

Save for one, single scene, the film was shot entirely on sound-stages and studio backlots, and the sets built there are absolutely fantastic (although it didn't win, the art direction was nominated for an Oscar). The very first set you see, which is the chapel where Dracula says goodbye to Elisabeta before heading off to battle, then later renounces God after she commits suicide and is redeemed at the end, is immediately striking, with the stone table and the large cross atop it, the stained glass window behind it, the big stoup 

of holy water over to the left, and all of the candles decorating the room. This chapel is revealed, at the end, to be part of Castle Dracula itself, which, when seen when Harker first arrives, is as big, ancient, crumbling, and creepy as you would expect. That goes for both the immediate exterior beyond the outer gate and the foyer, where Harker first meets Dracula. The interiors are also large but rather sparsely furnished, with the long dining table where Harker eats after arriving being one of the few major 

examples you see. Said dining room is also memorable for the old painting of Dracula's younger self on the wall, and some statues here and there, including a giant face around a corner behind the head of the table. The same can be said of a sort of study where Dracula signs and stamps the papers Harker gives him, which has both a large desk and, behind it, a map of London on the wall, where Dracula has marked ten houses throughout the city (this detail is never explained, even though Harker asks him about it, but in the original novel, this was part of Dracula's 

plan to have multiple places for him to safely rest). Harker's room is fairly spacious, but still gloomy and definitely claustrophobic, and when he manages to escape it and explore the castle, he finds his way into the brides' room, with that large bed in the middle that looks as though it's lying right on the floor. And when the gypsies are preparing the boxes for Dracula's journey to England, they do so in both the chapel and other large chambers somewhere within the bowels of the castle, where you can see the long decayed corpses of the Count's past victims impaled on spears.

The surrounding countryside of the Carpathian Mountains are brought to mesmerizing life with a combination of backlot work, miniature photography, and matting. The infamous Borgo Pass looks incredibly creepy in the scene where Harker is dropped off there, and in a classic manner, like the castle, with dead trees, barren ground, freakish monuments, eerie mist, wolves with glowing eyes, and flashing lightning (you gotta love that claw-shaped lightning bolt in the background of one shot).

The coach that picks Harker up moves in an unnatural way, with the coachman himself (who may or may not actually be Dracula himself, as per usual) feeling downright demonic, and as Harker is taken to the castle, you see that there's a sharp drop-off from the ledge the coach drives along, leading down a seemingly endless canyon. As the coach approaches the castle's main gate, it passes by an otherworldly blue flame that sends rings up into the air, another detail carried over from the original novel, which was also the one element that was created optically (Mina 

employs something similar during the climax). And finally, there are many wide shots of the castle, both at night and during the day, where its profile makes it look like a man sitting on a throne, an image inspired by an eerie painting by Czech artist, Frantisek Kupka.

Interestingly, Transylvania is also where the one scene that was filmed at an actual location is set: Mina and Harker's wedding, which was shot at an actual Greek Orthodox Church in Los Angeles. It may not be an actual set, and it's only featured in this one brief scene, but it looks just as lovely as any other setting in the movie, especially the shot with the beam of sunlight coming through the stained glass window in the background, as Harker stands at the altar. (Funnily enough, it was only after they'd filmed that the crew realized, since the priest in that scene was a real Roman Orthodox minister, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves may have actually been married, at least in the religious sense!)

Victorian-era London is created in a similar fashion to Transylvania, with well-done matte paintings for the city's large vistas, such as the establishing shot at the beginning, and a well-constructed, classic-looking section of the bustling city streets on a backlot. Set-wise, the most notable here include those of the Westenra house, which is a large, elegant mansion, full of lovely and well-furnished rooms, like this one spot surrounded by glass windows where Mina is seen typing her diary entries; the drawing room and 

foyer, which is setting for both Lucy's reception and the wake for funeral; and her bedroom. And right outside is a large, beautiful garden, with some stone steps leading down to it, a fountain in the center, stone benches, and statues, as well as elements of a hedge maze. This place looks absolutely haunting in the scene where Dracula arrives in London, as you get an eerie shot of Lucy's empty bedroom and Lucy wandering among the hedges in the rain and lightning. Other memorable sets include the cinematograph exhibition, which is set up like a tent 

you'd see at a fair or a circus; the private area of what appears to be a fancy restaurant and dance hall, which is where Dracula romances Mina, with the shadows of people dancing behind the glass window they sit in front of, and all the lit candles; and, while it doesn't get a lot of focus, the rundown Carfax Abbey, which is the typical old, Gothic building, with mist just above the floor, Dracula's boxes of earth, and the only light being that of the vampire hunters' torches.

However, there are two settings here in particular that deserve special focus. One is the asylum, which mostly looks like a medieval dungeon on the inside, with nothing but the patients' cramped, dingy cells, and a narrow walkway and some pillars in the center separating them. Renfield's is the only cell we see the inside of, and, as expected, it looks pretty inhumane, with the padded walls, the small cot with filthy sheets and covers, the insects flying around (not that he particularly minds that), and the one small, barred 

window. The exception to this oppressiveness is Dr. Seward's private  quarters, which are very nice and comfortable, feeling like an actual home built within the madhouse. Significantly, this is where Mina allows herself to be tainted with Dracula's blood, beginning her slow transformation into a vampire. And then, there's the bland, gray, marble crypt where Lucy is interred and Van Helsing is able to prove to the others that she is now a vampire. While there's nothing that special about the crypt itself, it's lit and shot very well, and the blandness makes the copious

amounts of blood involved stand out more. One setting you'd expect to see more of than you actually do is the Demeter, particularly its decks and its hold. However, while you do get plenty of shots of the ship making its way through the violently stormy seas, there's no life to be found in the few shots onboard, with the only indications of a crew being the captain's log, a splash of blood on the sails, and the sounds of their screaming when Dracula massacres them; otherwise, you only see the hold and the boxes of earth, some quick glimpses of the deck, including the bridge and the helm, and the sails.

It really does make the visuals all the more impressive when you realize there were no computer effects used in this film. Granted, this was still in the early days, with this coming in-between Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, so CGI hadn't yet become the standard for visual effects, but I think some of the transitions and overlaid images here could've easily been done using either digital or optical compositing. But, again, you really have to give Coppola credit for insisting that they instead use rear-projection, multiple 

exposure, matte work, miniatures, and forced perspective. The film literally begins with a series of such effects: a miniature of a domed building with a cross sitting atop it, surrounded by smoke, followed by a shot of the cross falling to the ground, signifying the fall of Constantinople; a shot of a building with the symbol of the Ottoman Empire atop it; said symbol's shadow making its way across a map of central Europe, heading for Transylvania; an image of Dracula's armored hand, gripping his sword's handle;

and a quick shot of a symbol of the Order of the Dragon, with flames behind it, before the man himself is introduced. The later image of Elisabeta letting herself fall into the river is as about as breathtaking as both the battle scene between Dracula and the Turks, and the shot of him riding on horseback across the battlefield, amid his enemies' impaled bodies, with the sun setting in the background. And when Dracula reads her suicide note, you can make out a purple-colored, glowing image of her falling superimposed above it.

I won't list every single one of the movie's striking visuals, as there are just too many, but I will continue to note those that stick out the most to me. The transition from the scene where Mina and Harker say goodbye before he departs for Transylvania, to the next scene is done through a peacock feather that gently falls across the shot of them kissing, with the camera zooming in one of the blue "eyes," which then dissolves into the inside of a train tunnel. That's followed by a shot where more than half of the 

screen's lower section is taken up by the pages of Harker's diary, as his train crosses above it (you later get a similar shot where the diary appears next to Castle Dracula), and the very menacing image of Dracula's eyes on the red sky in the background, as Harker reads his letter. All of the shots of the landscape passing outside the train windows was done through rear-screen projection and miniature work, which look great. Miniatures were also used, I'm sure, for the shots of the Demeter making its way through 

the stormy seas, and for the wide shots of the Westenra house and other buildings, even in shots that didn't really require effects work, such as an establishing shot of the house for Lucy's reception. Meanwhile, matte paintings were effectively utilized for shots of London's skyline and the amazing, fairy tale-like images of the Carpathian Mountains and the sun setting on the horizon during the climax. There are also many superimposed images throughout the movie, with some of the most memorable being when Mina has visions of Elisabeta's suicide during one of 

her private moments with Dracula, and a brief one of Dracula looming over her after he's fled back to Transylvania, establishing their psychic link. Memorably, as they're tracking Dracula across Europe during the third act, a map with a line depicting both parties' journeys, a la Indiana Jones, is superimposed over shots of the vampire hunters' train and Dracula's ship. That's followed by a shot of a suffering Mina over the train, which then transitions into the scene where Van Helsing tells the others that Mina is rapidly losing her humanity.

Going back to the subject of transitions, another one that I like is when a zoom-in on the bite marks on Lucy's neck become beads of light shining in the eyes of a wolf, namely the one that escaped from the London Zoo when it shows up at the exhibition. Also memorable is the teletype message that Seward sends to Van Helsing turning an image of blood cells under a microscope, before dissolving to the bat Van Helsing uses in his lecture. Similarly, when Dracula is seen manipulating Lucy in her bedroom, it cuts to an 

image of her own blood cells, emphasizing his growing hold on her. And later, a close-up of Lucy's eye transitions to an overhead shot of a glass that Dracula fills with absinthe, during one of his "dates" with Mina. And finally, Dracula's redemption at the end, with his monstrous face morphing into that of his younger self, is, like the effect of green mist he becomes, especially impressive when you know there was no digital work involved.

Like I said at the beginning, it's no surprise that the film did win several Oscars. Not only does the makeup for Dracula's various forms, created by Greg Cannom, look great (even as silly as the old version at the beginning is, it's still well-designed), but so do the way Gary Oldman looks as the young Dracula (I'm sure they intended him to resemble paintings of the real Vlad Dracula), and the chalk-white color of Lucy's skin when she becomes a vampire. I also have to mention the costumes, by Eiko Ishioka, which also

won a much-deserved Oscar. The most striking, in my opinion, is Dracula's armor during the opening, as it just looks so unusual and fairy tale-like, and even though you don't get to see a lot of it, that animal-like helmet he wears in battle is particularly cool-looking. I also do like the gray suit, top hat, and dark glasses that Dracula wears when he first meets Mina in London, and when he appears at Lucy's window, he's wearing what appears to be a black version of that suit. The only other time you see this costume is 

when Harker spots Dracula and remarks that he's become young, and that's a shame, because I really like it. And, while I still think he looks ridiculous, I can't deny that his red, kimono-like clothing, with the long, trailing lower half, is memorable when combined with his old form. Still, not only do I prefer the more monstrous-looking version of his old form that he has in other scenes, but I also find the outfit he wears with it, this golden-textured robe (based on the Gustav Klimt painting, The Kiss), to be more effectively striking. As for the other costumes, I think 

Mina's initial green dress is very lovely, but also alludes to her initial conservative and repressed nature, whereas Lucy's dresses are more liberated and sexual. Speaking of Lucy, that white wedding dress she's buried in and wears when she resurrects as a vampire goes well with that makeup. Renfield's costume consists of what appears to be his ratty, old business suit, along with his little spectacles and these gloves with exposed fingers and metal prongs connecting the wrists to the knuckles, just to make him look all the stranger. You also see him in this 

striped straight-jacket, with long sleeves that are sometimes tied up near the ceiling in order to restrain him raving. And the people inside the asylum, including both the other inmates and those who work with Dr. Seward, wear very unusual clothes, with the latter wearing boxes over their heads that initially had made thinking they were inmates as well.

While far from the goriest vampire movie ever, there is a lot of the red stuff to be found here. In fact, there are often long stretches where you don't see any blood whatsoever, only for it to suddenly explode in your face. At the beginning, when Dracula renounces God and stabs the cross in the chapel, blood oozes out of it, as well as some sculptures' eyes and even from the candles, and Dracula collects some of it in a chalice and drinks it. During Harker's stay at the castle, there are some minor but wince-inducing moments, such as

when Dracula slices his hand open with a sword, cuts his own tongue with a razor behind Harker's back, and when Harker himself receives some painful yet sexual bites from the brides. This is taken even further when Dracula arrives in London and, while raping Lucy in his werewolf form, bites into her neck, and later, when you see how the brides are having their way with Harker, repeatedly feeding on his blood but keeping him alive at the same time. But it's with Lucy where the bloodletting really gets extreme.

There's a shot of blood pooling during the transfusion that Van Helsing administers, and when Dracula fully condemns her to being a vampire, biting into her neck in wolf form, there's a quick wide shot of the bedroom where there's a literal explosion of blood from both sides of it (not to be overly gross, but given the perceived sexual nature of it, I think we can assume that was the climax). And when Lucy is later revealed to be a vampire, she vomits blood on Van Helsing while being driven back into her crypt, and is 

then staked by Holmwood and beheaded by Van Helsing, after which there's a surreal shot of her head flying through a black void. Renfield suffers a bloodless death, but it's still wince-inducing to see him get slammed against his cell bars, with his head going between them with a loud crunch. There's also a close-up of Dracula slicing open his chest when Mina asks to be made into a vampire as well; Van Helsing beheading the brides and throwing their severed noggins into the chasm around the castle; Quincey Morris getting stabbed in the back during 

the climax; many of Dracula's gypsies getting killed during the chase; and Harker slicing Dracula's throat open, while Morris manages to ram his Bowie knife through him, sticking it there. As a result, Dracula has a very bloody mouth and neck wound for the rest of the movie. Finally, at the end, Mina stabs the Bowie knife all the way through Dracula, with the blade coming out of his back, and then beheads him.

While it may not be his preferred genre, you can tell that Coppola does have a soft spot for horror, as there are various references to be found here. There are some specific allusions to the Bela Lugosi film, such as in how Dracula tells Harker, "I never drink wine," and the idea that Renfield had been a solicitor himself before going insane after his own journey to Transylvania, as well as to Nosferatu, like when Dracula's body rises straight up out of a coffin and when he becomes a swarm of rats. Mario 

Bava's Black Sunday is said to have inspired Harker's unnerving carriage ride; the scenes in the asylum, when Renfield and the other inmates are raving, can be seen as tribute to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and German Expressionism as a whole; and Dracula's sentient shadow not only also calls back to Nosferatu, with Count Orlock's sometimes sentient shadow, but also to a character in Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr. I've heard that the explosion of blood in Lucy's bedroom is meant to be an allusion to the rush of blood from the elevator in The Shining, and her 

projectile-vomiting blood onto Van Helsing's face is an obvious reference to The Exorcist (not just in the vomiting itself but also because she does it to a man who is, technically, trying to exorcise her). And the main plot of an undead character searching for his lost love's reincarnation is very similar to the original 1932 version of The Mummy. Other, non-horror influences include, possibly, Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight for the opening battle scene; John Ford's Stagecoach for the climactic chase back to Castle Dracula, which does indeed come off a lot like a western; and, most notably, Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, which Coppola has admitted was a major influence on the love story aesthetic.

The music score was the work of Polish composer Wojciech Kilar, with Bram Stoker's Dracula marking his first English-language film after scoring over a hundred in his native country. The music is something else I was down on in the initial version of this review but, now, I do think it's another of the movie's stronger elements. It manages to be effectively eerie and horrific at moments, with these high-pitched, rising strings in scenes like when Dracula laughs evilly at Harker's helplessness and when he prepares to bite Mina at the exhibition, as well as very foreboding and ominous, like with this rhythmic, pounding theme, accompanied by chanting voices, which you hear during the sequence where Dracula approaches and then arrives in England. Long before I saw the movie, I'd heard the menacing music that plays at the start of the ending credits, and is heard in several different forms in the movie itself, during advertisements I'd seen on various VHS tapes, all from Universal (I specifically remember hearing it over their ad for the home video release of The Mummy Returns and for their "Universal Thrillers" line), and I think I can safely say that's my favorite part of the score. And, of course, Kilar also does music for the movie's romantic side, which doesn't really move me personally but is still lovely music, nevertheless. However, I can't say I feel the same for Love Song for a Vampire by Annie Lennox, which plays over much of the ending credits. It sounds so corny and overly sappy to me, especially in the section where the chorus repeats, "Love/Oh, love/Oh, love/ Oh, love," and I also just plain don't like the way it sounds, either. I can't explain it but it sounds so off-putting to me, rather than lovely.

I'm sorry if this review was overlong and rambling, but Bram Stoker's Dracula is a very frustrating movie for me. It's one that I've always sincerely wanted to like, but I just can't. I do agree with the general consensus that it's very visually stunning on many levels, with very lovely cinematography, great art direction, memorable costumes, well-done creature makeups and gore effects, and a buffet of amazing images that were created through old-fashioned techniques. Also, some of the characters and performances are enjoyable, I do like the depiction of vampires, for the most part, the music score is good, and it does manage to be a true adaptation in many ways. But, on the whole, I find it to be confusing, overly bizarre, too long, and downright boring, with a bunch of hammy and wooden performances, which does include Gary Oldman's much lauded portrayal of Dracula, an art-house aesthetic that I don't care for and causes me to lose interest very early on, and a main story and characterization of Dracula himself that, not only stray wildly from the source material, but make me wonder if the filmmakers themselves even understood said source material. I've heard a good number of people call this their personal favorite adaptation of the Dracula story, as well as name Oldman as their favorite actor to play the role, and, as I always say, to each their own. But I don't ever see myself revisiting it, as it's just not my thing.