Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula came out in 1992. It stars Gary Oldman in the title role (Dracula, not Coppola or Stoker) and a bunch of other people you can look up on IMDB. As a human being, I was aware the book existed well before I read it in high school. I haven’t read the book in a long time so, this is not going to be a comparison of the movie to anything in the book. I remember the book as being uneven. It starts cool, Van Helsing is great, but I remember it having a lot of long uneven stretches. But it’s been a while. What I do remember is after we finished reading the book my buddy and checked out a few of the movies. I really like 2000’s “Dark Prince” which purports to be a more historical film (it ain’t). Before torrents, it took us about 4 hours to find a VHS of this thing. The Bela Lugosi film holds up really well. But the one we watched a portion of in school was the Coppola version. And at some point my friend and I turned to each other and agreed this movie is a pile of shit. We hated it. That was the end of the story. Years go by. Then Radiodrome does a podcast last week where all the panelists agree that they love the hell of this movie. As a good podcast often does, this gets me thinking. Did I miss something? The high school me was about 3 personalities and a whole lotta anti-depressants ago. I’ve turned on other movies before. Maybe I can find something here. So I’m going to rewatch this goddamn movie.
First things first, props to this movie for doing as accurate a re-creation of Ramsay Bolton’s armor as we’re ever likely to get. Show Ramsay didn’t even wear fucking armor in his big battle. And that armor brings me to thing number one about this flick. This is a gorgeous movie. It says the budget was $40 million dollars. I checked and with inflation, $40 million in 1992 is $68 million today. What recent movies were shot for around $68 million dollars? Coincidentally, Twilight: Eclipse. Dinner for Schmucks. Shit, Adam Sandler’s Jack & Jill cost $79 million (what the fuck? See Red Letter Media’s “The Great Comedy Swindle for details there).
You see every dollar of Dracula’s budget on screen. Sets, costumes, effects. Last year a movie came out, The Judge, with Robert Duvall and Robert Downey Jr. The consensus on that movie was that it was an “actor’s movie.” The story has no surprises. Only reason to see the movie is for the acting. This is a director’s movie. Dracula is a pretty straightforward story made complicated by the flowery Victorian speech of the novel. This version of the film adds a love story that makes the story make less sense. My problems with this movie stem largely from the story and the characters. But the art and the production design makes a compelling reason to check out this movie if that’s why you go to movies.
One thing this movie can truthfully claim from the Radiodrome podcast is that this is one of the last pre-CGI movies. Everything in this movie is done with practical effects. Hey Game of Thrones. You see that blood moving across the floor of the church in the opening scene. You know why it looks so good compared to whatever the fuck was happening after Jon Snow’s death scene in season 5? It’s because it’s an actual liquid moving across the floor. Not CGI when it wasn’t fucking necessary. No need to bring in the computers for the task of liquid on a floor in an overhead shot.
I have no issue with this movie until Sadie Frost shows up as Lucy Westerna. “It’s so big, can I touch it?” She says as she draws out Quincy Morris’s footlong steel…bowie knife. We get it. She could’ve been talking about a dick but she wasn’t. I got the joke, Frank. Lucy Westerna is a character I don’t give a shit about. And that’s one thing I remember being true of the book as well. It’s like she and these three guys are involved a romance plot stapled to my vampire story. The movie compounds this with a bizarre montage as Dracula arrives in London. we go back to Lucy and Mina, they make out in the rain. Dr. Jack Seward shoots some morphine. Gary Oldman transforms into a Wolfman, sexually assaults/bites Lucy later that day, and uses a sound effect from Predator when he sees Mina.
The love story between Dracula and Mina is the core of this movie. In his attempt to adapt the novel faithfully, Coppola added a love story between two characters that did not have a love story in the novel. I’m not interested in why this element was added to movie aside from that this is a nothing story without that added love story. Dracula comes to London, gets fought off, they chase him down, and kill him. But did it need more? I don’t think it did. The main evidence I have for that is that I don’t like this movie and the love story is the reason why.
So why is Dracula drawn to Mina? This movie tries to make it like Dracula goes to London to find Mina who is a doppelganger for his wife from 1462. That’s true because the filmmakers cast the same actress. That’s why. It was an artistic choice that makes no damn kind of sense if you think about this as anything other than a movie. Winona Ryder plays Dracula’s wife in the medieval opening and she plays Mina. She could’ve been blonde, have different features, anything, she looks the same because this is a movie. So for me, anytime there’s a reference to the love story, it feels contrived and reminds me I’m watching a movie.
This romantic subplot just doesn’t work. It’s just scenes of people doing stuff that feels completely disconnected from the story. The main reason it feels disconnected is that we spend the first twenty minutes of this movie with Keanu Reeves. Gary Oldman locks him in a castle with Monica Bellucci and two other supermodels. Somehow we feel bad for him, which means maybe this movie is a lot better than I give it credit for. Then we spend time watching Dracula torment Sadie Frost. Then like 45 minutes into the movie he meets Mina and tries to rape/kill her in a movie theater. Mina, he just accosted you in the street and tried to rape you at the movies, do not trust this man.
So later when Mina is having dinner with her attempted rapist WAIT WHAT!? Mina, why are you hanging out with Dracula again? Not since Jaime Lannister has a director expected us to forget this fast that this character is a rapist. Okay, let’s just say Mina forgave Dracula for the whole rapey bit. Just for the sake of argument. That’s just what they do on a first date in Dracula’s strange foreign land. Why is she having romantic dinners and Absinthe and making out with him? Jonathan Harker is working his ass off to escape a goddamn castle in Transylvania meanwhile Mina is getting all up in a sexy rich foreign guy. Maybe she just needs to get laid and Gary Oldman will do? It has been a couple months since she saw Keanu Reeves, any allosexual person with blood in their veins would be clawing the walls by that point. But then she hops on a boat to get married to Keanu Reeves who spends the rest of the movie with slightly grayed hair. I guess they’re trying to establish that the trials have aged Keanu Reeves, but I just saw him in John Wick and the years have been good to this man. Here’s an idea, make a sequel to Dracula years later except now its WWI and Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins are hunting vampires on the eastern front.
I think I have to just accept that this movie is just not my cup of tea. Someone out there likes this. My spouse had the DVD and the Blu-Ray. My father had the movie’s poster from college. Meanwhile I’m sitting here asking, who lit all those goddamn candles? It’s just so wrapped up in how the characters feel about what’s going on without asking if what’s going on makes any kind of logical sense. In one shot Anthony Hopkins can teleport, then doesn’t. Then in another Dracula seems to have telekinesis. Then he doesn’t. The common thread is that I can’t get invested in this movie. I keep getting taken out of it. If you like it, good for you. Me, I’m going to stick with stuff like Daybreakers and the ‘Salem’s Lot novel.