"Fred Saberhagen's Dracula"

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2002)

I just saw this movie again last night and once again was really irritated by it. When it originally came out, I didn't know about IMDB, but now I have a forum.
Many people seem to think it's not really valid to complain that this movie isn't like the book. I'm sorry, but when you include the author's name in the title of your movie and advertise the movie as the most faithful to the book yet, you set yourself up for that sort of criticism. In varying degrees, all of the other versions of Dracula fall short of faithfulness to the book, too, but none of them had the gall to call themselves "Bram Stoker's."
Some people have commented that Coppola "added a love story." He didn't "add" a love story; he made the whole thrust of the film that love story. So where did this plot come from? Let me introduce you to the science fiction/fantasy writer, Fred Saberhagen. Name seem familiar? His name is on the novelization of this movie. But back in the 1970s, he wrote a book named "The Dracula Tape" - the Dracula story from the Count's point-of-view, how Mina was the love of his undead life.
This movie was NOT Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was Fred Saberhagen's. Here's Fred's Dracula-series bibliography. Looking for Dracula sequels? Here they are:
The Dracula Tape (1975) The Holmes-Dracula File (1978) An Old Friend of the Family (1979) Thorn (1980) Dominion (1982) A Matter of Taste (1990) A Question of Time (1992) Seance for a Vampire (1994) A Sharpness on the Neck (1996)
Visually, this movie owes a lot to Creepy and Eerie magazines from the 1960s and 70s, particularly those floating eyeballs in the clouds.

And then the one picayune thing that just drives me crazy. They just had to introduce the main story with "London, 1897..." and then proceed to dress everybody in the height of fashion for "London, 1887" (or even earlier). The extreme bustle worn by Lucy and Mina in this movie was way out of fashion by the late 1880s. Lucy and Mina should have looked like Gibson girls, if they had wanted to be in 1897 fashion. It was as if you staged a production of "Hair" using the costumes from "Grease." And they got an academy award for this.