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Bram Stoker's Dracula Customer Reviews (34 - 36 of 84 Reviews)

BEST DRACULA EVER!!!
I love this movie. I have loved it ever since it came out! Whenever it comes on the tv I run to watch it, even thought I own it on DVD. This movie touches on the love aspect of dracula and what he went through for love. It touches on the whole "church" issue of Dracula being made or coming from the church. I can't think of another recent Dracula movie that even comes close. I definite must see! :)

Extremely Funny
Vampire films almost by definition are parodies, just as the Victorian-era vampire story is almost by definition a metaphor for repressed sexuality. These run from the obvious ("Fearless Vampire Killers"), to the subtle ("Van Helsing"), to the self-parody ("Bram Stoker's Dracula").

Coppola's "Dracula" is a lush high budget adaptation that comes closer to the Bram Stoker original story than most other examples of the genre. That it takes a major liberty by adding bad history to make the title character sympathetic is forgivable, in part because it adds to the self-parody element and in part because this version still incorporates the main elements of the original-if somewhat reinterpreted to better align with the sympathetic treatment.

The parody elements begin early when Dracula declares war on God by pushing his sword into a stone cross which then begins to flood the room with blood (yes it is as silly as it sounds). At one point Coppola breaks the conventions of the genre and allows Dracula to walk around in daylight, apparently done solely to allow Coppola to show someone to capturing him on motion picture film. Whether or not this was invented by that time is a moot point as they use color film, which most certainly was not available. Dracula's getup for this scene may have been the inspiration for Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka look. The warders in the insane asylum spend their on camera time spraying the patients with fire hoses, and they wear birdcages on their heads while performing this duty. Throughout the film, Coppola and his postproduction people parody the overuse of "match cut" transitions (i.e. when a light in the current scene cross-dissolves into a fire in the next scene) by other filmmakers. They make almost all transitions into overreaching match cuts. This is all enormous fun to watch but not as much fun as the wild performances by the cast.

Gary Oldman, Sadie Frost, Richard E. Grant, Tom Waits, and Anthony Hopkins all overplay their characters in a nice self-parodying way. They obviously are having a whole lot of fun playing this stuff for laughs. At one point Oldman gets to wear a makeup design that would work well in a Star Trek episode. But Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder act like Coppola forgot to let them in on the joke (unless everyone in the cast is happy because they are laughing at Reeves' lame attempt at a British accent). Reeves is too limited in the talent department to pull out an over-the-top self-parodying performance. Ryder's situation is a little different, her style and strength is playing all her roles as if they are real. Although this works nicely for things like her Veronica character in "Heathers", it leaves her at the mercy of the script. Here the Mina character just doesn't have enough complexity to justify Winona's efforts.

Speaking of Winona, she has never looked more desirable than in this film and the same can be said for Sadie Frost. This is ample justification for male viewers to seek out this film. Ryder and Frost even manage a brief passionate kiss during a cloudburst.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

"Love Never Dies." An Excellent And Very Faithful Rendering Of The Classic Horror Story. Visually Stunning As Well. FFC Does It
From the title itself, Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film version of the classic vampire story by Bram Stoker leads you to think that it will be a faithful interpretation by appending the author's name to the title, albeit the reason a mundane one for the adding of the author's name.

It delivers all that and more. Having read the novel prior to viewing this visually stunning interpretation of the horror story, I expected nothing less from Mr. "Godfather" Coppola and WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. The acting-from Gary Oldman as the titular Count-now turned romantic hero-, Winona Ryder as Mina, the woman who was his wife in a previous life (the excellent prologue which opens the film, which serves to shed light on the historical figure Vlad the Impaler; they didn't call him that for nothing, mind you), Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (stepping into a role done by the legendary Sir Laurence Olivier in the 1978 "Dracula," starring Frank Langella), Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, the hapless victim of the Count, Sadie Frost as Lucy Westenra, Mina's aristocratic friend, whose sexual appetites prove to be her undoing and a very young Monica Belluci as one of Dracula's lovely, but very lethal, brides, just to name a few of the many actors in this film-is excellent. The screenplay by James V. Hart improves on the original ending of the novel and makes Dracula the protagonist as well as the villain. The film's "R" rating was too damn harsh. Same thing for "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," which is the same kind of movie, only that there's no sex (just some passionate kissing as the camera moves around Victor and Elizabeth); see my review on it. Rated PG-13 for some violence and brief sensuality.

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