Gorgeous erotic poem

Rating: 10/10 (6 February 2000)

*Easily* the finest film adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", though it should properly be called "Francis Ford Coppola's McNally and Florescu's Bram Stoker's Dracula" for its unmatched amalgam of cinematic style, historical research (the visual evocation of Vlad the Impaler's battlefield triumph is just nonpareil) and Stoker's actual plot. Coppola had the nerve and integrity to combine the historic Dracula (even including his wife's dramatic suicide, a documented event!) with scenes from Stoker that had never been filmed before and some lovely extrapolations (including a revival of the classic "reincarnation of lost love" theme) for a fresh, richly beautiful and emotionally powerful version of this much-filmed tale. Sumptuous in every sense of the word.