From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper)
Subject: REVIEW: BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA
Reply-To: leeper@mtgzy.att.com
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 15:34:27 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01601
Keywords: author=Leeper

[This is the first of *many* reviews of BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA.  In general, I
try to keep the number of reviews per movie low, but it proved impossible to
decide which reviews to eliminate--so they're all here.  -Moderator]

                           BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper
		       Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper

          Capsule review:  Fairly faithful retelling with some
     very impressive surreal images.  When it works, it works
     well; when it fails, it is at least interesting.  Perhaps
     this works better as an art film than as a genuine piece of
     horror.  Rating: +2 (-4 to +4).

     In 1922 F. W. Murnau made the first film version of DRACULA: NOSFERATU.
While the film really was a thinly veiled plagiarism of Bram Stoker's novel,
originally calling the vampire Count Orlock, the source of the material was
obvious.  What was unusual about Murnau's version was the expressionist,
almost surreal, world that Dracula/Orlock lives in.  Using the crude special
effects of the day, Murnau drops the viewer into a sinister world of strange
visual images.  Subsequent versions, with the possible exception of Werner
Herzog's 1979 NOSFERATU, tended to show the story in a more natural world.
There were good reasons for that, mainly dealing with budget, but also with
audience acceptance.  Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, up through Christopher
Lee, all play Dracula as a human-like creature with a few special powers,
while there was little question that Max Schreck's Count Orlock had
transformed into something really quite different from a human.  Francis
Ford Coppola has directed a new DRACULA for a new generation and has
intentionally way out-done Murnau and Stoker.  Coppola has claimed this
would be the dramatic version closest to Stoker's novel and nearly
succeeded, at least for accuracy of plot.  (The three-hour BBC COUNT DRACULA
and the one-hour premiere of Orson Welles's "Mercury Theater" radio program
were both versions more faithful than Coppola's.)  Stylistically, Coppola
has turned up the horror elements in a way to make the novel prosaic by
contrast.

     Presumably most people reading this review will already have a good
idea what the story is about.  The historic Dracula (literally "Son of the
Dragon") was also known as Vlad Tepes ("Vlad the Impaler").  He got his
first nickname because his father was Vlad Drakul ("Vlad the Dragon").
Don't believe the film's introduction that said he got the name for being in
the Order of the Dragon; he was not.  It was Vlad Drakul, Dracula's father,
who was in the Order of the Dragon.  Two more things not to believe: the
Vlads were Hungarian, not Romanian as they say in the introduction (borders
were different then from what they are now) and the impalements were
depicted wrong.  People were not impaled the short way, through the trunk.
Instead they were set on the stake using holes nature had already provided,
which is a slower and much more agonizing death.  This alone would have made
Vlad Dracula feared.

     Here is where fiction separates from reality.  Stoker's novel claims
the feared Dracula became a vampire who still terrorized Transylvania four
centuries later.  For reasons that have been left by Stoker to speculation,
the vampire Dracula has decided to migrate to England and to spread his
infectious vampirism to a new country.  The symptoms of an outbreak of
vampirism eventually come to the attention of a Professor Van Helsing who
recognizes what is happening and, with a small group of friends, checkmates
and eventually destroys the vampire.

     In spite of his professed fidelity to the novel, Coppola's version,
with a screenplay by James V. Hart, makes some basic revisions to the story.
Borrowing an idea that goes back at least to the 1933 Boris Karloff film THE
MUMMY.  Dracula, it seems, became undead because of his love for a woman
back when he was truly alive.  Centuries later Dracula is still around and
finds a reincarnation of this lost love.  Now he wants her for his lover
again.  Dracula becomes a tragic hero trying to regain lost love.

     Other revisions to the story include a complete transformation of the
character of Van Helsing.  In the book it seems to me he was cautious and
reserved, holding his tongue as long as possible.  The film makes him a sort
of mad professor who does not care about the impact of his statement and
likely to misbehave in strange and unpredictable ways.  Actually, much of
the conversation we hear is probably a good deal franker and more sexual
than would be likely in Victorian drawing rooms.  The same goes for the
public cinematograph showing nude women.  I have no doubt the pictures dated
from then, but probably would have been reserved for a less public venue.
Two more places where a bit more research might have been done: Mina
mentions Madame Curie as if her name was a household word in 1897.  It was
not until several years later that Curie would become famous.  Also Van
Helsing said that the "story of syphilis is the story of civilization" as if
it had been around as long as civilization.  Actually the first known case
was in 1493.  It is suspected of having originated in the New World mostly
due to the chronology.  No other European is even suspected of having
originated with native Americans, incidentally.  And even in this case, it
is known only that it came with Spanish mariners from some other port.

     As for the acting, it is fairly spotty.  Keanu Reeves seems out of
place and uncomfortable as Jonathan Harker.  Anthony Hopkins is a bit too
weird as Van Helsing.  Normally, I would call that the fault of the script,
but various interviews have indicated that it was Hopkins's idea.  Winona
Ryder really was not too bad as Mina.  Her British accent seemed acceptable
to me, though likely a Briton might have a different idea.  Of course, she
did squint her eyes in a scene in which she was supposedly dead.  Then there
is Gary Oldman as Dracula.  Lon Chaney, Jr., was a very plain-looking man
who, contrary to expectation, was the best character actor of his
generation.  That same description applies to the man who played Joe Orton,
Sid Vicious, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Dracula.  This understated actor's range
is incredible.

     But what sets this version apart from all other versions is the look.
One image after another is startling.  Time and again the camera plays with
us.  You find yourself wanting to view scenes a second time.  Your eye will
catch something funny in a scene.  Dracula's shadow may be just an instant
in timing slower than Dracula himself.  Transylvania is painted in bright
primary colors.  Out of a red sky you will make out two huge Draculine eyes
watching a character.  It could be a touch of German Expressionism.  The
battle scenes in the historic sequence borrow from Akira Kurosawa.
Throughout the entire film there is a dram-like quality, perhaps a
surrealism.  Coppola seems to have chosen to avoid computer effects such as
morphing.  While these effects might be effective for a science fiction
film, there is something about them that does not work in a pure horror
film.  It did not occur to me at the time, but that might be one reason that
FRIGHT NIGHT was not as effective for me as it could have been.

     The one problem with this version is the lack of actor empathy.  BRAM
STOKER'S DRACULA is for me more an artistic success than a good horror film.
It tells the story often with images more vital than Stoker used in his
novel.  As with Murnau's seminal version, scenes are very good, but the net
effect perhaps is less than the sum of the parts.  My rating is a +2 on the
-4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
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					leeper@mtgzfs3.att.com
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