This film has two things in its favor...

Rating: Null/10 (12 August 1999)

This film has two things in its favor. It has terrific production values. More importantly, it has taken the interesting position that the original story, as told in Stoker's novel through a collection of diaries and journals, doesn't tell the "entire" story of what happened. That is, this film says the characters' Victorian sensibilities wouldn't allow them to record all the details exactly as they happened. Unfortunately, this film is marred as it continues the post-Hammer era trend -- now a hackneyed cliche -- of trying to portray Dracula as both a romantic hero and an evil bloodsucking human vampire. You want to portray Dracula as "too much in love" with Mina to bite her? It just doesn't work. As of the date of this writing, the great horror film that could be based on an accurate adaptation of Stoker's novel has not yet been made.