I watched the 1992 version of Dracula. Not going to lie, I’m disappointed.
I should have known better. Vampires have gotten worse year by year since the damn book was written. I’ve never seen Nosferatu, but it was supposedly fair. The Bela Legosi version is the classic that ‘created’ the vampire, and since then a few dozen movies, mostly of terrible quality, have solidified the quintessential, archetypal, infinitely cliche vampire.
Anne Rice ran with the idea and made a twisted cross between Bram Stoker, Lovecraft, and cheap fantasy. Still, she probably created the best vampire beyond Stoker himself.Since then, vampires have apparently become impotent effeminate soap opera wood. It’s a terrible fate for a creature, a character, that feels like it should have a much more profound life.
It was my fervent hope that Francis Ford Coppola’s version of the Dracula legend would get it right. Maybe it’s dated, maybe it just didn’t click. One way another I finished the movie feeling that it was hit everything at a 45 degree angle. It had so many things right and so many things unforgivably botched.
Easy criticism: Keenu Reeves should never act. East Response: Gary Oldman should have a part in everything.
Beyond the casting and the now-hokey visuals, my criticism is really with the plot. It started off brilliantly. Vlad went to the crusades to defend the church and came home to a dead wife, dead and damned from suicide. I think there was room to explore the back story more, but the initial scene is probably the best in the whole movie. Seeing the Vlad storm out of a bloody alter captures the quintessential curse of the vampires.
From there the plot can’t decide what it wants to follow. It bounces from a burlesque horror in Transylvania, a comedy of manners in England, an adventure film, and a goofy action flick without really concentrating on any one of them. Why did Dracula go to England? The reason was to find Mina, his wife reborn. That is clarified later, but given that’s the main inspiration for all the plot that follows, it seems that angle needed to be emphasized instead of an obscure (and itself poorly narrated) real estate deal in England, that obviously preceded the film, as concerned by Renfield’s subplot. Why did he need land in England if he didn’t know about Mina yet? Who knows?
Renfeld was excellent, both visually and in direction. They might have said why exactly he became the vampire’s servant, or explained why his struggle only seemed to start in the last thirty minutes, but he emphasized better than any other character (Helsing included) the power of the vampire.
The scenes with Lucy are also powerful. They suffer from age and a certain lack of subtlety, but the Victorian eroticism is played with nicely. England was a good mixture of modern and stately, seedy and mysterious. It is a suitable haunt for the vampire once he arrives, but then he ruins it by jumping through nonsense montages.
What I’m really getting at is that the quintessence of Dracula was never really touched upon. The first half of the film focused on a rare sense of eroticism that was never explained or explored. Did Lucy fall for Dracula due to her promiscuity? Presumably, but if that’s true than you can’t blame it on a dream later. If her actions are responsible for her date than she must make her choices unhindered and with full cognizance. The book managed this, but the film botched it.
The second half of the film spends too much time letting Anthony Hopkins chew the screen as Van Helsing. Van Helsing is an awkward character either way. He is an expert on Dracula and too many shades a double of Sherlock Holmes. If Dracula is truly this absolute horror than having Van Helsing as a fearless knight ruins the whole creation. Van Helsing, at best, can be a knowledgeable book expert who is faced with something far beyond his capability. That scenario preserves the vampire’s mortal horror and gives the quest an emotional tension that cannot be grasped otherwise.
In reality, the real exploration needs to be of the vampire himself. Many films have concentrated on vampires who must have flesh, but are equally repulsed by what they have become. That is one angle, but I prefer the vampire who either wishes to freely grant his gift to those who would have it, a seductive vampire who has no need of force or especial guile. Alternatively, the damned vampire is adequate, though harder, I would think, to capture. The damned vampire is one who has come to his fate through crimes that could not be punished through death alone. This is Satan as a vampire, a creature who suffers for their own pride. This is the vampire that may be destroyed by love, ala Nosferatu. The seductive vampire’s destruction is really only satisfactory through starvation. If his victims can be convinced his gift is not worth having than the vampire has been rendered dust.
That is my mind on the matter. The imagery was so great and Dracula, the film, tried to hit so many elements, but I found it lacking through and through. With such a powerful character and such a vibrant story, I genuinely hope this recent fad of androgynous boy-thing vampires goes away. It is a sad fate for the children of the night. What sweet music they might make…
