Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

[The Rain Dog]

Just watching this again for the first time in years on cable. Despite all my complaints about this and the amount of things Coppola gets so wrong, fuck me this is sumptuous to watch. It's the old fashioned falseness of everything that gives it a beautiful and colourful charm that claws a lot of my bad will back. Visually speaking, Francis knew exactly what he was doing.

...and screw the haters, Oldman is the fucking shit as The Count.

[OCallaghan]

I almost leapt across my kitchen table and the beat the shit out of a friend of mine this very afternoon because she bagged out Tom Waits in this.

[The Rain Dog]

No bagging of Waits Renfield - EVER.

It's on SciFi Channel now if you've got Foxtel mate.

[Nexus-7]

Originally Posted by The Rain Dog

Just watching this again for the first time in years on cable. Despite all my complaints about this and the amount of things Coppola gets so wrong, fuck me this is sumptuous to watch. It's the old fashioned falseness of everything that gives it a beautiful and colourful charm that claws a lot of my bad will back. Visually speaking, Francis knew exactly what he was doing.

This would be a pretty amazing film to have a score-only audio option, ala Leon.

The only thing holding it back then would be Keanu's dead doll eyes.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by OCallaghan

I almost leapt across my kitchen table and the beat the shit out of a friend of mine this very afternoon because she bagged out Tom Waits in this.

Originally Posted by The Rain Dog

No bagging of Waits Renfield - EVER.

Yeah, this is pretty inexcusable behavior. Then again, I'll apologize for Waits in anything, even if he made gonzo porn with him and a yard full of chickens.

Originally Posted by Nexus-7

This would be a pretty amazing film to have a score-only audio option, ala Leon.

The only thing holding it back then would be Keanu's dead doll eyes.

Also, this. Insert "dead, lifeless, like a doll's eye" quote from JAWS.

[OCallaghan]

At the time, Keanu's performance was utterly shitful and dragged the whole film down every time he was onscreen and opened his mouth, but years of being subjected to his particular and unique brand of thespianism have made his effort in this film feel less shit.
Could be battered wife syndrome, but he doesn't taint the film quite as badly as I used to think he did.

[Nexus-7]

It's battered wife syndrome.

I actually think Keanu is decent when he's cast properly, but he's really awful in Dracula.

[LeRolls]

Still haven't opened the packaging on my Blu-Ray of this. Last time I watched it was on the Superbit DVD. Love the production values on this movie.

[Ratty]

Originally Posted by Nexus-7

It's battered wife syndrome.

I actually think Keanu is decent when he's cast properly, but he's really awful in Dracula.

To be fair, Winona is equally terrible. She just has killer tits, so we go easy on her.

[OCallaghan]

Yeah, Jesus: Tits aside, Winona is horrific in this. When this came out I was desperately in love with her, like most guys my age probably, but this and Age of Innocence really killed it for me.

[Hammerhead]

Originally Posted by Xagarath Ankor

I keep hearing the best Dracula is actually the fairly recent ballet one. Anyone know anything about it?

Only that it was directed by Guy Maddin, which seems to be about as perfect a match of artist and material as possible. Haven't yet seen it.

I saw BS Dracula when it came out, and found it flawed yet gorgeous, in line with most all the reasons listed above. It's a movie I've always been reluctant to revisit, on the chance that I'd like it less now. The wretched follow-up of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein didn't help.

[Ratty]

Originally Posted by OCallaghan

Yeah, Jesus: Tits aside, Winona is horrific in this. When this came out I was desperately in love with her, like most guys my age probably, but this and Age of Innocence really killed it for me.

See, I thought she killed in Age of Innocence. Didn't require an accent and it played to her somewhat darker/slightly devious strengths.

[The Rain Dog]

Originally Posted by Ratty

To be fair, Winona is equally terrible. She just has killer tits, so we go easy on her.

Sorry but Sadie Frosts cleavage walks off with the entire film under their arm.

[OCallaghan]

Not to turn this thread into a boob-fest, but Sadie Frosts cleavage in Dracula is the best cleavage ever filmed.

[First Class 782]

FWIW, the Topps comic series was pretty awesome. 4 comics drawn by Mignola all about Dracula. I really enjoyed the film for its art direction and incredible visuals. Still watch it every few Halloweens.

[The Rain Dog]

Honestly, the 35% or so of the film that mirrors Stokers actual novel are just fantastic and I'm not an "it's not like the book therefor it's shit" kinda guy normally.

I'm all for adaptations taking their own path as long as they stay true to the spirit of the source, I just don't think Coppola did this with his doomed love angle. He turned it into Anne Rice's Dracula - point utterly fucking missed.

[Sebastian OB]

If it hadn't been called "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and had better actors (meaning Keanu and Ryder) to sell the love story, I don't think it would have been an issue.

[The Rain Dog]

Agreed, but it was and it did.

The definiative adaptation of Stokers novel is yet to be made.

[OCallaghan]

I just looked this film up and realized it was written by the same guy who bought us "Hook".
Explains a bit.

[The Rain Dog]

Explains a lot.

Never knew that.

[SAIRUS]

I had an old vhs of this film, and pulled it out due to this thread and halloween. I hadn't watched it since it came out.

I really think this is a Superman Returns interesting failure. I love the direction, and the music. Gary Oldman was amazing.

Keanu Reeves doing an english accent? Well it sucked, but Costner didn't even try for Robin Hood (interesting tid bit that the Robin Hood with an english accent is in this film).

Everything else sucked.

Just imagine if George Lucas came in with the mindset Coppola had about everthing being practical and in camera?

[OCallaghan]

This film shits all over Superman Returns.
All over it. From a great height. Covering it.
In shit.

[LisaNY]

Originally Posted by DARKMITE8

I loooove this flick, flawed (and miscast) as it is. I love the old-school approach they took with the FX (everything was done in camera by Coppola's son & crew). I love its surreality, and its operatic bombast. I think Hopkins' hammy performance is great. It's got beautiful and simplistic production design, unusual costumes and killer makeup, and a score so iconic that it's been borrowed countless times for other movie trailers. Plus, it did wonders for Oldman's career (not to say his talent wouldn't have been enough); so we can thank DRAC for that. [/IMG]

I agree totally - I love this movie. It's beautifully shot and a guilty pleasure for me all at the same time.

[Count Chocula]

This film feels like someone watched one of those super cool early trailers with the Hopkins narration and the booming ominous music and Oldman doing his awesome evil laugh and then made a feature length parody of it.

[SAIRUS]

Originally Posted by OCallaghan

This film shits all over Superman Returns.
All over it. From a great height. Covering it.
In shit.

I meant more that its an interesting failure.

[Phil]

It's on youtube as a special presentation thingy.

[Princess Kate]

I actually really like Ryder. Go figure. I saw "RB" when I was like 6 years old, and it had a deeply profound impact on me and my perception of the 90s. My understanding of my own life has been greatly informed by the story in that film, and I often think that if my life were put to film I'd be written as the Ryder character (definitely not the Janeane Garofalo character. I can't stand her! Plus her rhymes were just awful in that film, I'm much better at matching homonyms. "Don't bogart that can, man"? Give me a break, that's hardly a rhyme at all. Try matching "Million Dolla -Chai Walla", then I'll be impressed)

With that said, I love this movie, and have seen it over 20 times. Aside from Keanu and a few other slight issues, it's madly brilliant and a wonderfully passionate Victorian horror story. I love the look of the film too, what Coppola was able to achieve on sound stages alone is kind of a small miracle. It helps add to the surreal look of the film during the outdoor scenes.


Oh, and the score. Bum bum badada dum! That never gets old

[JacknifeJohnny]

I can't love the often grossly hammy melodrama of the Hammer Dracula films but hate this, that's just not possible; shit, I even like Dracula A.D. 1972, and that film gives my sensible side almost every reason not to.

Though it contains the tragic/romantic angle to Dracula and to vampires that I've never really enjoyed (I vastly prefer Christopher Lee's "I'm evil for no fucking reason at all except that I'm Dracula"), I think Coppola did well here, and that the film mostly gets lumps because he did it, and we somehow expected or wanted more.

Having recently re-watched Herzog's Nosferatu for the first time 13 years, I will say that few, if any, sequences in Coppola's film and in any Dracula adaptation period, beats Harker's journey to Castle Dracula as depicted in Herzog's version, but the there is something to be said for the phantasmagorical artifice that Coppola was going for. It's entirely devoted to the weird, and to the operatic, and to the melodramatic. It's filled with shit that can never, ever happen, and it does whatever it wants to do because it can. It's not a guilty pleasure for me, it's just a pleasure.

[Princess Kate]

Originally Posted by JacknifeJohnny

It's filled with shit that can never, ever happen, and it does whatever it wants to do because it can. It's not a guilty pleasure for me, it's just a pleasure.

That's what I love about it. Things like the stage coach driver's arm's impossibly long grasp when it helps Keanu into the coach. Or the stuff Drac's shadow gets up to. Weird as hell, inventive, and very very creepy. Half the time you aren't even sure you saw it.. "Did his shadow just leave the room .5 seconds after the door closed?"

[OCallaghan]

Originally Posted by SAIRUS

I meant more that its an interesting failure.

Still wrong.
It's not a failure. Not even remotely. It wasn't a failure financially and it's not a failure artistically. It's a beautiful, evocative, wonderful film hampered by some less than awesome performances which, for me and many others who have posted here, are not so grievous the movie's many, many strengths are squished.

[Abbott & Prospero]

The romance doesn't work. And that was a major factor of this interpretation of the story so it absolutely needed to work. You can never really buy Winona in the role, so no matter how much effort Oldman puts into the tragic romance angle ..well, considering that, I don't think interesting failure is such an off the mark description.

[OCallaghan]

Eh. Depends on how you want to take the word "Failure" I guess. I find it too negative a term to use as an overall description of this one. Makes it sound like there is more bad than good to it, which I really don't believe is the case.

[Abbott & Prospero]

I like, even love in some cases, a lot of films that I have no hesitance in calling interesting failures. I know the films don't completely work, but there is something interesting about them that draws me back. I wouldn't take it as a complete negative, a nail in the coffin of the filmmaker's efforts, just an observation of the whole and a means of stepping back and unbiasedly judging how well they pulled off what they intended to do.

[Fat Elvis]

Originally Posted by OCallaghan

Still wrong.
It's not a failure. Not even remotely. It wasn't a failure financially and it's not a failure artistically. It's a beautiful, evocative, wonderful film hampered by some less than awesome performances which, for me and many others who have posted here, are not so grievous the movie's many, many strengths are squished.

Exactly.

And to complain about the performances is to completely miss the point. There's a tone/mood Coppola was going for, and everyone was game, even if only Oldman and Hopkins knock it out of the park.

[Abbott & Prospero]

If tone and mood is the only thing I thought Coppola was striving for with this then I'd say that you are correct, I must have missed the point. But I don't think that is the case.