A fraudulent and absurd turkey

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 1999)

The arrogant and pretentious publicity surrounding this film heralds it as the first true depiction of Stoker's novel. Don't believe it - they're just exploiting Stoker's reputation to sell you their own stunningly unoriginal and vastly inferior story.

Adapting from a literary source naturally requires considerable condensing of plot, characters, etc., but at the very least there should some of the book's essence remaining.
It is absurd and fraudulent to call this movie 'Bram Stoker's Dracula'. The entire plot about Dracula chasing the reincarnation of his true love is simply not in the original ! It's actually closer to the 1932 film "The Mummy". Stoker's novel has no scenes set in Vlad The Impaler's lifetime. This new film has Dracula as an anti-hero wronged by the hypocrisy of the church, which is obviously a desperate attempt to provide sympathy, and a clear motive for his evil doings.
The sense of the book is that Dracula has no motive beyond the pure evil that has possessed him - his behaviour is an end in itself, a far more horrific scenario than Coppolla'a new age revisionism. And of course conventional christianity is never presented as villainous or hypocritical by Stoker.
Despite its own considerable departures from Stoker, the 1931 Lugosi film has much more of the spirit and atmosphere of the novel. And it was based on the play, not the book. In any case didn't have the gall to attach Stoker's name to the title.