Satanic Torture Porn, and Little Else...

Rating: 2/10 (11 November 2017)

This movie is both easy to describe, and yet difficult as well. I say this because while I like many of the design elements, the music, and some of the performances...the story and most scenes are outright horrible. They're far too explicit compared to the novel, and many scenes in this film have no place in Stoker's work at all. As I understand it, Francis Ford Coppola placed the author's name in the title to avoid either confusion or a lawsuit with Universal Pictures, owners of the classic 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi. Nonetheless, this film represents Coppola's desire for a Dracula story much more than Stoker's...so the director should have used his own name instead.
How to criticize this film beyond the title - oh, let me Count the ways (pun fully intended). First, Dracula's existence as a vampire is shown to be the result of him renouncing God after his wife commits suicide, and driving his sword into a large Christian cross...which gushes blood that Dracula then drinks. He even tells the priests in that scene, "I shall rise from my own death, to avenge hers with all the powers of darkness." That's some seriously messed up spirituality to begin with, and it appears nowhere in Stoker's book.
Second is the depiction of Mina Murray, as a reincarnation of Dracula's wife centuries later. Coppola's version of Dracula is motivated completely by this, in spite of the fact Stoker never wrote it either. More changes include Dracula's beast form attacking and having sex with Lucy, and Dracula giving his brides an innocent baby...presumably to eat or defile sexually. The writers were sicker with these inventions than Stoker ever was, and Coppola's a fool for supporting it.
Another element in the film is very common to adaptations of the story, yet it appears nowhere in the novel. That element is the idea of Dracula being an undead or cursed Vlad Tepes, a 15th-century prince of Wallachia. This is a very popular myth which has persisted thanks to Hollywood, but again Stoker never equated Dracula with Vlad.
Aside from the excessive sexual, Satanic, and gory elements in the movie, there's actually a very talented cast in it. Gary Oldman has done phenomenal work through his career, as has Anthony Hopkins. Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves were fairly well-known in 1992, but had not yet reached superstar status. Billy Campbell's main role prior to this film was "The Rocketeer" for Disney, a perennial favorite of mine. Cary Elwes had done "The Princess Bride", which remains his most popular role 30 years later. But all these fine actors were wasted on a tale that, in spite of bearing Stoker's name, has only the slightest commonalities with the book.
If you're going to adapt someone's work, and use their name in the title...keep your film as close to the source as possible. This movie is a violation of Stoker's book in so many forms, the title being the least one. There's so much here that is absolutely horrendous; I'm surprised Stoker's estate didn't sue Coppola and American Zoetrope.