Francis Ford Copolla should get on his knees and BEG for forgiveness from Bram Stoker!!!!

Rating: 1/10 (30 January 2007)

Firstly, I'm NOT going to say that the story of Dracula is strictly for Gothic culture (whatever's left of it) because, truthfully, such a fabulous example for literature is something that anybody of refined taste should enjoy. However, Dracula, due to being a story about the children of the night and their haunting impulse on the world of the living, has become associated with Gothicism. But it makes the Gothic genre of art and literature (I'm referring to Byron, Henry Fuseli, the Romantics etc) look poor and squalid because of the way it has been TAKEN and MAIMED by modern day Hollywood. Now this review is not about me personally, but I want to mention how I, as a Gothic, can no longer look at this story and admire it. Want to know why? Because every time I hear the name 'Dracula', horny, tanned and frankly un-vampiric Gary Oldman and his groaning, self-orgasm-ing miniature Harem (the three brides, Mina AND Lucy, for those of you who didn't guess) fill my head! What has Francis Ford Copolla done?! What possessed him to mutate such a beautiful piece of Victorian literature? And what the Hell makes him think-HONESTLY THINK-that his pornographic, dirty, lecherous,flea bitten vision is SO worthy of the title "Bram Stoker's" Dracula?
I could talk all night about the mistakes he's made. For one thing, Johnnathen Harker and Mina Murray, not just as sweethearts but also as aristocratic Victorians, have a CHASTE and PURE relationship; a relationship that does not require sloppy, sweaty sex to show virtue and passion. F.F.Copolla has not only discarded of Johnnathen Harker's importance to the story, he has also totally distorted Mina's gentle, heroic character by pretending to himself that she is actually Dracula's long lost reincarnated 'love'. Having a tag line like 'LOVE NEVER DIES' and a theme of love between Dracula, the wraith, and Mina, the maiden, is ludicrous.Its not only ludicrous because its NEVER what Bram Stoker intended; its also ridiculous because Mina and Dracula DO NOT love each other! How can Dracula rape Lucy, have a harem of brides AND adore Mina all at once? Whenever the two are around each other they behave like sex-deprived, sex-seeking, silly little lustful teenagers-sucking each others nipples and canoodling each other in public places. Where is the love-REAL love-in that?
You see, the Victorians had extremely strict ideals about love and marriage. Mainly all marriage was prearranged, the entire point of the corset was to keep a woman faithful to her husband (the husband laced her corset up in a specific way so that, if it was ever undone and then redone up, he could tell.)...and the characters in Bram Stokers book just go to show that that scummy thing we call 'sex appeal' is not actually important. Stokers characters are valiant, beautiful, in corrupt. Or were.
I think Copolla should be ashamed for ruining such a beautiful story. If he wanted to make a movie-another scummy excuse of a vampire movie-he should have wrought it with his own story and his own characters. Why he felt he had to deform this perfectly beautiful story about the triumph of purity over Death, is beyond me. And I will hate him forever for what he has done.