Dracula's Lair, Adaptation not Fair

Rating: 4/10 (16 June 2008)

Coppola's transcription of what I consider the best horror novel has been praised and lauded for the excessive lush and comfort spilled in it's design and production. The only highlight is how writer Hart could absorb Stoker's ramble on sexual hysteria, repression and explosion finally, in which Coppola translates into seductive movements, innuendos and deep colors. What is, indeed, as sexually inducing as sucking the blood, the life out of others? But in the development of action, the only highlight is Oldman's interpretation, cold, slow and chilling. The make-up dangles in between baroque and exaggerated. Reeves and Ryder make for a couple with no flair, nor joint or individually. All of the attention put in the design and context should have been taken into Dracula's internal conflicts, the spawn that grinds his eternal years of solitude, the fear and hate towards mankind, his reclusion, his eternal love.
Besides that, they forgot the chapter of the book where peasants attack and clog Dracula's mansion, and claim for vengeance on the death of young women.
Stoker's flair is sadly removed, at least much of it.