Bram Stoker's Dracula review

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. For those who know me you know about my love for horror films so once a month I’m going to review and discuss a scary flick. We’ll look at the classics, some new films, and I want your suggestions on what I should review. I’ll do my best to cover all the different genres within the genre – slashers, ghosts, monsters, etc.

SPOILER ALERT! – These will be reviews so if you haven’t seen the movie you’ll want to watch it first before you read this. Let’s do this.

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

If the first 7 minutes or so of this movie don’t get you going, you may not like movies in general. The opening scene of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is pretty epic. Dracula, the mighty Romanian Knight, heads out into battle against his enemies. The hero then returns only to find his wife dead, killing herself after false news of his death had reached her. Filled with rage and hate, he renounces God. In a theme of over the top scenes in the film, he stabs a cross which then begins to bleed followed by him drinking the blood from a chalice. The room drowns in blood as we sweep into the opening titles. Whew, if that’s how it starts I can’t wait to see the rest.

We like Dracula/vampire movies right? There sure are a lot of them and I could go on about Vampire movies forever but this is specifically about the adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel. The novel is the most famous story about Dracula of course and it has been done to death (no pun intended) in movies and television. I’m going to state my opinion though that the film by Francis Ford Coppola is the best of them all – at the least one of the most popular. I saw it for the first time when I was a kid. Maybe 12 or 13 and I LOVED it. It’s pretty faithful to the novel but of course any film will take it’s own liberties and you just can’t put a carbon copy of a book onto the screen. It’s more sultry, sexual, and erotic. Dracula had always been portrayed as an ancient, gentlemanly Count with a bad accent from Eastern Europe. Coppola’s film turns him into an irresistible, utterly mesmerizing character that women cannot resist.

The cast in this film is impressive. Gary Oldman is at his best playing a Crusader Dracula, young Dracula, old Dracula, rats, and a bat. The guy should have been given an award just for having to sit through the time it took for makeup (the film did win awards for makeup and costumes) I really like Winona Ryder in the film too. So vulnerable to the young Count. Anthony Hopkins is of course great in everything he is in. I’m not sure if that was how Van Helsing was initially supposed to be portrayed, but I love Hopkins take on him. He’s the only one who knows exactly what is going on. Love the scene when he decapitates Dracula’s brides. I always enjoyed the actress who played Lucy and all her suitors including Cary Elwes. We can’t forget to mention Keanu Reeves right? Yes we can.

Francis Ford Coppola who is one of the great Filmmakers of all time directs Bram Stoker’s Dracula and without him, this film wouldn’t be what it is. It’s set near the end of the 19th century and Coppola wanted to be as true to the time period as he could in terms of production. He didn’t like what the crew was doing so he hired his son to achieve the majority of the practical in-camera effects. The costumes, sets and overall feel are so period piece and are excellent. He didn’t want to use much computer generated or special effects. Shoot and produce the film they way it would have been done at that period in time.  He even went so far as to use antiquated technology. In the scene where we see the young Dracula walking the streets of London it has a great old time jittery shutter speed feel that looks like it really was filmed in 1900. Well it kind of was. Coppola actually bought a working camera from the early 1900’s, loaded film in it and shot that scene with it. When Jonathan Harker is reading Dracula’s note on the train ride to Transylvania we see the Count’s eyes superimposed over the view of the mountains. No postproduction effects. A rear projection screen was used behind Keanu Reeves, which displayed the mountains and Oldman’s eyes when they shot the screen. Who doesn’t love the scene when the Count’s carriage comes to pick up Harker at the Borgo Pass. Where are we? Some terrifying wasteland in Eastern Europe where, as the gypsies tell Harker, the dead travel fast. After seeing blue flames that apparently rise out of the ground, an armor clad stagecoach driver arrives and reaches out an impossibly inhuman ever-extending arm that picks up Harker and puts him in the coach. Dracula climbing the castle walls is really just the camera put on its side to shoot the scene. Same when we see the upside down rats. Film was used to shoot the rats, then flipped and used to shoot the rest of the scene. We talked about scenes being really over the top. Case in point when Dracula transforms into a wolf and enters Lucy’s bedroom to finish her off. He starts chowing down on her neck and the room explodes in blood from every corner in a gory crescendo you just have to love.  Best scene? I think when they go out to kill the vampire Lucy. Van Helsing takes his men, including her fiancée to the crypt where she is buried armed with all the tools a good vampire hunter needs. They open her casket and she is nowhere to be found. Perfect timing though as she has just returned with a baby to feed on. Practical camera tricks here are great. The candles seeming to come to life as she descends the stairs are really already lit candles that were blown out then played in reverse. We see her walk backwards into the casket before they drive the stake into her heart. Again they had her walk normally then reversed it. Her poster paint red vomit doesn’t faze Van Helsing as he gives the instructions to Holmwood on what to do. “A moment’s courage and it is done” he tells him. The scene is certainly scary but doesn’t take itself TOO seriously. As soon as they slice her head off, we have a direct hard cut to a shot of a roast being served at a table. I love a horror film with humor.

If you like all these production tricks that make this movie so great, then you need to watch the making of documentary, which is included in the DVD, which nowadays you can probably find on YouTube. We talked a lot about how this movie was made but what about it as a whole? Superb. It’s super gothic and really goes the extra mile to do it right.  It’s overly violent sometimes but it should be. No more stale Count Dracula in this movie. We finally see the character played as though he might actually have feelings. Sometimes I think of the movie as one of those cheesy romance novels you used to see with the outlandish artwork on the cover. I mean that in a good way though. The overarching theme as I’ve mentioned is that they wanted it to feel authentic. That it was produced in the heyday of candlelight and ocean liner journeys. Film is art and this is the Starry Night of Dracula movies. The final scene when they are chasing Dracula’s coach back to the castle in the snow is so beautiful. Whenever I’m in a hurry to get a bunch of errands done I think of that scene. Somehow I’m rushing to beat the sunrise…

Enjoy the trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiWsfO5HjEo