From: tsm@access.digex.com (The Secret Man)
Newsgroups: alt.horror
Subject: Re: (FFC's) Dracula - again
Date: 12 Jan 1993 07:50:05 GMT
Organization: The Quiet Room
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com

hillyard@CS.ColoState.EDU (kevin paul hillyard) writes:

>burdickd@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Dakin Burdick) writes:
[speaking of FFC's DRACULA]
>>1.  Stoker's version was savaged, changed into a teen-slasher with
>>    blood vomiting and breasty women in negligees.  The characters
>>    were all transformed into angst-ridden characters with little
>>    redeeming virtue.

Well, let's be honest about Stoker's novel.  We don't know if Mina and
Lucy are "breasty" women (in the book) because Stoker (being a product
of his era) never mentions their breast size.  As for the characters
not having redeeming virtue, I suppose that depends on which kind of
virtue you mean.  FFC's characters don't seem especially noble and good,
if that's what you mean by "virtue".  In fact, the character who shows
the most nobility in FFC's movie is Dracula himself - more on that later.
As for the characters as Stoker wrote them, they lack the "virtue" of
being 3-dimensional characters (as do FFC's versions of them, even though
he tried to give Dracula a rationale for his condition to add depth to
FFC's story - which was NOT Stoker's story, more on that later, too).

>>                   The women were sluttish, but the guys were too,
>>    and actually so was Van Helsing!  And naturally the doctor was
>>    was turned into a drug addict (another tidbit that never went
>>    anywhere).

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "sluttish".  As regards Lucy and Mina,
a lot of young women (then and now) have had affairs, ranging from chaste
love to torrid, steamy and straightforwardly sexual.  FFC chose to depict
their relationship as being a little bit "naughtier" than Stoker wrote it,
but I doubt that Stoker would have objected if he had been free of the need
to adhere to conventions that no longer apply in literature.
As for the men...  well, actually, I fuzzily recall that Jack Seward's drug
addiction might have been copped (you should pardon the expression) from a
modern source;  I think Fred Saberhagen had Seward a drug addict in THE
DRACULA TAPE.  Also, it would not have been an enormous surprise to find the
man in charge of a madhouse possibly prescribing medicine for himself.  Hell,
that happens to this day, and we know a *hell* of a lot more about how bad
drug addiction is than medical men in the 1890's.

>burdickd@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Dakin Burdick) writes:
>>2.  The plot never got going; Coppola tried to cram too much in and
>>    the result was a confusing mess.  Renfield was well-played, but
>>    never did much, and Dracula's various appearances were more
>>    amusing than scary.  In fact, there was little thrill in the movie
>>    at all.

Yep.  Tom Waits was a fine Renfield.  For me, one of the few truly *tense*
moments in the movie came when he kissed Mina's hand - I wondered if he'd
bite her fingers (this doesn't happen in the book, but FFC had gone pretty
far astray from the book).
I'll agree that the plot never "got going;"  the problem is that some of
the most interesting parts of the book (the log of the Demeter, and the
mystery of the "boofer lady", AND the driving need of the characters to
visit a large number of sites around London to destroy all of Dracula's
caches of native soil (remember, in the book Dracula buys a number of
places, some widely separated, and Jonathan is needed to help find all of
those sites, since he helped to arrange their purchase) *before* the sun
sets...  all of these things are simply *gone* from the story to make room
for FFC's "Love, Transylvanian Style" story (more on that later, too).

hillyard@CS.ColoState.EDU (kevin paul hillyard) writes:
[in response to Dakin's comments]
>Crammed too much in?  Have you seen any of the other so-called Dracula movies
>out there?  The only thing they have in common is the main characters' name...
>They didn't even try to get his looks right....

Gary Oldman *did* look good in the early scenes.  In fact, he didn't look
all that bad in his dandy outfit in London, although he wasn't as effective
in the scenes where his is seducing Mina.

>                                               Last time I checked, Coppola's
>rendition was set to be a faithful adaptaion of the novel.... and he "crammed
>too much in" to follow the original storyline... granted, the movie could have
>been a little longer, but at a little over 2 hours already, it was pushing it.

Maybe it was *originally intended* to be a faithful adaptation of the novel.
*Parts* of the film actually prove this - various snatches of dialog, certain
entire scenes - BUT (here's the "more on that later" I keep talkin about):

Stoker's novel WAS NOT A LOVE STORY.  Mina and Jonathan loved each other, and
in fact everybody seemed to love Lucy (no snickering, oh thee with filth for
minds), but Dracula was NOT a sympathetic character, was NOT in love with
Mina, and was pretty much an incarnation of evil.  The look of peace that
comes over his countenance as he dies at the end is presumably the peace of
finally resting after centuries of unrest, and only *maybe* because he is
free of a terrible curse.  Making FFC's movie longer would not have fixed
this problem.  In fact, adding back in the missing "footage" that I mentioned
earlier would make this movie plod more than it does, *because* of the love
story, which takes up a lot of screen time.

hillyard@CS.ColoState.EDU (kevin paul hillyard) writes:
>burdickd@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Dakin Burdick) writes:
>>3.  The acting was appalling.  The hero was completely unconvincing
>>    and had a british accent like that of Kevin Costner in Robin Hood
>>    (BAD!).  The only two characters that were well-done were Van 
>>    Helsing and Winona Ryder's characters, although the actors weren't
>>    given much to work with.

Keanu Reeves was slightly out of place.  He *looked* fine in the role - the
very picture of an earnest young man trying to do well and so earn a better
position with "the company".  His accent was not ideal.
As for Van Helsing, the portrayal was vigorous and interesting, but it was
NOT Stoker's sober-minded scientist.  It was interesting, but not the real
thing.  To some extent, I suppose this may have been Hopkins' effort to
avoid turning in a perfunctoryperformance as the now traditional stuffy old
professor.
Oldman really did tremendously well in the castle scenes, and the only thing
that I can really fault FFC for (as regards Oldman's role) is wasting this
performance on a love story that wasn't in the book by the author whose name
FFC had the hubris to affix to the movie, as if to refute the fact that the
movie is *FFC's* story, NOT Stoker's.
Poor Cary Elwes - when I heard he was in the movie, I thought that he would
have made an excellent Quincy Morris.  Instead, he languishes as a foppish
Lord.

>burdickd@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Dakin Burdick) writes:
>>5.  The sets and special effects were impressive but were used too
>>    often and were never really relevant to the story.  Someone should
>>    also have restrained the cinematographer, who did a wonderful job
>>    but who also got WAY out of control.  I giggled when the peacock
>>    feather turned into a tunnel; it was WAY too much.

The head/roast scene was also remarkably over-the-top.  This is during the
part of the film where things begin to "camp up", and where Van Helsing
starts acting like he's more of a menace than the monster...

hillyard@CS.ColoState.EDU (kevin paul hillyard) writes:
>I thought the sets were very well done.. the castle was an incredible effect.

Yes, but the movie is *too* claustrophobic (because *all* of the scenes were
purportedly shot inside - even the chase scene on horseback at the end).
The stark beauty of the Carpathian mountains is even mentioned *within the
film*, but we never see them - only a small few shots of the castle.

>Coppola could have spent millions of dollars on the movie very easily
>(especially when compared to most movies in the last few years), but instead
>he used older techniques and darker sets to gain the "gritty" feel of the
>movie instead of using computer effects a la T2... 

If the film had been better overall, Coppola would probably have inspired a
resurgence of some of those older techniques, more reliance on storytelling
(and concomitantly less on spectacle-showing), and maybe greater respect
what is visually an impressive film.

>                                                   we never even see Dracula 
>transform on screen, and it made it (to me, anyway) all the more frightening

I was not at all disappointed by the lack of on-screen transformations.  It
takes an awful lot of money to make something look as smooth as the T-1000
in T2, and I'm glad FFC didn't choose to try to half-way do that kind of
special effect.  A well done cut or pan (with shadow effects to suggest
what is happening) serves just fine.  In fact, I actually liked the shadow-
play in the early part of the movie;  it would have been grimly amusing if
the movie had not devolved into camp during Van Helsing's reign.

[As an aside:  when the technology is cheap enough to allow more people to
 achieve superb morphing effects, I kind of hope that someone will do a
 remake of CABAL (entitled THE NIGHTBREED on film).  To be honest, that
 would really require full-scale full-time animation of some of the
 characters - Baphomet was, putting it kindly, not very well realized.]

-- 
The Secret Man                                            tsm@access.digex.com
"Well, I've never been to Spain
  but I kind of like the music..."
Newsgroups: alt.horror