Good adaptation, up to a point

Rating: 6/10 (11 October 2007)

This should really be called Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. Although it follows Bram Stoker's story more closely than any other Dracula movie I've seen (except the 1977 BBC TV series with Louis Jourdan), it adds a romantic subplot that throws the story off kilter and threatens to turn a horror film into a soap opera.
It's soap opera, really, that's responsible for this. ABC's daytime serial "Dark Shadows", which ran from 1966 to 1971, featured the vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), whose true love died in the 18th century. Released into the 20th century, Barnabas immediately encountered Maggie Evans, a dead ringer for his lost Josette (and played by the same actress). Although originally intended as a standard monster character, to be disposed of after a few weeks, the tragic dimension made Barnabas a pop culture icon and forever infected vampire films with a romantic counterpoint.
Coppola's film opens with a depiction of the "historical" Dracula, Prince Vlad of Wallachia. After slaughtering a horde of Turks, he comes home to find his bride dead, and immediately turns into a wimp. He reacts, essentially, like a guest on Oprah. He renounces God, and turns into a vampire.
Now we catch up with Stoker's story, as Jonathan Harker embarks on his journey to Castle Dracula. The vampire sees Jonathan's portrait of his fiancée Mina Murray. Of course, she is a dead ringer for Dracula's lost love.
The problem with this humanizing of Dracula is similar to what Thomas Harris did to Hannibal Lecter in "Hannibal." By "explaining" Hannibal, Harris turned him from a monster into an anti-hero, a misunderstood figure whose childhood trauma "drove" him to become a monster.
What Coppola does here with Count Dracula is not much different. Dracula may be a monster, but now he's humanized, he's a tragic figure, we're supposed to feel sorry for him. And this almost succeeds in completely ruining what is otherwise a decent picture.
Stoker's Dracula was like the original Hannibal Lecter: murderous, unremittingly evil, powerful, uncontrollable, furious, raging, terrifying. The revised versions, so to speak, are still bad, but no longer as horrifying. They've just had unhappy childhoods.
The vampire-as-tragic-figure theme worked well in Dark Shadows because it hadn't been done before. And that was a daytime soap, which was never real horror. Other vampire films have used the romantic angle effectively without making the vampire a figure of pathos, but Coppola's film goes way over the top and drains the story of tension and genuine drama.
Still, this is a well-made, enjoyable film, if a little flat in places. I'm glad to have it in my collection as I love all things Dracula. However, it would have been more effective if Dracula were allowed to remain the beast, the pure, unremitting, unrepentant, unredeemable evil he is meant to be.