Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

–Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be altered for a single purpose? That the luckiest man who walks upon this earth is the one who finds… true love?

 

Bram Stoker’s immortal tale has been retold innumerable times. Its earliest version was the German silent classic, Nosferatu, which was famous for stripping away the romantic glamour of Dracula and showing him as the true undead creature he is. It is considered by many to be the scariest film ever made. Dracula was most famously portrayed by Bela Lugosi in the 1931 Tod Browning film. Lugosi made Dracula creepy but charming, sexy but sad. He is the yardstick by which all other vampires are measured.

I have a confession to make: vampires terrify me and always have. From the time I was a child, I have had dreadful nightmares starring the blood suckers. Needless to say, on the whole I’m not too fond of them and regard them unaffectionately as giant, overgrown ticks or other parasite. I am attracted to tales of immortals and their lives, but vampirism is my least favorite form of that genre. I tend to enjoy tales told from the point of view of vampire slayers like Buffy. Dracula, in fact, symbolizes in one character the most frightening boogeyman of my childhood and just reading the novel was an accomplishment for me. It was not easy for me to watch this film either although this now makes my second viewing.

Francis Ford Coppola ramps up the blood and the sex in this adaptation. The film has a beautiful mise en scene. The female characters wear gorgeous costumes in the first half of the film before changing to more sober garments in the later portion. All of the gothic elements are in place: a graveyard, a castle, a gigantic mansion, a madhouse, superstitious peasants, wolves, bats, fog. The atmosphere is so thick it practically flows off the screen into your living room.

The cast is certainly A-list: Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Cary Elwes, Richard E. Grant and Tom Waits. Oldman tries to duplicate Lugosi’s sexy but sad, creepy but charming routine and succeeds to a certain extent. Although I appreciate the scenes that show Dracula as the corpse he really is, I felt Oldman’s performance was better as the younger-looking romantic Dracula. Anthony Hopkins is solid as Van Helsing, but not overwhelming. Cary Elwes and Richard E. Grant are both good as Lucy’s suitors while Tom Waits is a standout as the ever creepy Renfield. Keanu Reeves, unfortunately, is a bit stiff, especially in the earliest scenes. He relaxes more in the action scenes at the end. That leaves Winona Ryder. Her Mina is a confused young woman trying to maneuver through the pitfalls of Victorian sexual morality. She loves her fiancé, but she is also drawn to the exotic stranger wooing her in Jonathan’s absence. The new feelings he inspires in her are contrary to what she has been carefully taught.

What is about vampires? What makes them so scary to some and so irresistible to others? Vampire lovers point to the temptation of immortality and usually see all of the versions of Dracula as bittersweet love epics spanning the ages. As for me, I think it could be several factors about the creatures that frighten me. One that most readily comes to mind is a deep rooted fear I have about something preying on me in my sleep. It could be as simple as associating them with mosquitoes and their bites which I am allergic to or it could be a by-product of my fear of snakes…things with fangs, perhaps? In any event, I can count on one hand the number of vampire characters I’ve encountered in any fictional form that I enjoyed and pretty much only one that I genuinely like: Joss Whedon’s character Angel. Still, if you’d like to revisit the Count one more time this is a beautifully produced, lush rendition.