It’s time for my Halloween viewing of Francis Ford Coppola’s camp classic, Bram Stoker’s Dracula

She and Keanu were at the height of their beauty.

I love that movie— so artistically done

I wish it was a little bit scarier, suspenseful, and someone other than Gary Oldman was Dracula.

Dracula's 'do, the double beehive, at the beginning while he's still at his castle in Transylvania terrorizing Jonathon Harker ( Keanu) is flat-out horrible brilliant.

I too love this film. The sets, costumes, bad acting, it's a glorious ride.

How does it look on Blu Ray?

“Take me away from all this death.”

....

It's an AMAZING looking movie with spectacular visuals. Unfortunately, the tone and key performances (Oldman, Hopkins) are pitched at an operatic level and opera doesn't work without the singing. It just comes across as loud and abrasive. I've always thought that it should be re-released as a silent film and people would appreciate what a work of art it is.

There will never be better vampire brides than the ones in Coppola's movie. They were perfect.

[quote] She and Keanu were at the height of their beauty.

As well as Billy Campbell...

.... and Cary Elwes

I remember Siskel saying that Keanu Reeves sounded like he came from some other century and didn't know what film he was in.

I'm a college teacher, and when I teach the novel of Dracula I often screen the Coppola film as a side treat because it's so campy. My students love laughing at Keanu's awful (and seemigly stoned!) British accent.

Dracula and his vampire bat form scared the shit out of me as a child. Dracula‘s werewolf form was also very frightening. Love the makeup in this film.

What fascinated me most was the transformation of Sadie Frost's character, Lucy, from slutty socialite to blood-sucking vampire bride.

I love Annie Lennox's theme song.

the originals

The acting was over the top, especially Anthony Hopkins. I remember the critics were savage, comparing it to a high school play. But it became camp classic; the production and costumes were gorgeous and opulent-looking.

Keanu's accent here is hilariously awful. Both of them look so young.

I was a bit pissed that Van Helsing killing the vampire brides was treated like an afterthought.

Almost every character was presented to look extremely suckable and fuckable by the audience.

I also loved Anthony Hopkins as a brutally nonchalant Van Helsing. His matter-of-fact mundanity perfectly complements all the high camp.

bump

R6, one of the worst quotes in movie history. This movie is proof Winona should never be in anything requiring an accent or anything that takes place before the 70s.

Here's the 17th century portrait that inspired Sadie Frost's creepy-ass wedding dress in this film:

Winona was great in "The Age of Innocence," r23.

R10 my friend wrote on a show with Billy Campbell. When he first started, Campbell took him aside and said "hey, look, I'm not that great of an actor, so don't write anything too hard for me." My friend tried to play it off by laughing, and Billy said "I'm actually serious."

[quote]How does it look on Blu Ray?

The transfer is disappointingly muddy and film-like, but I think I read that Coppola wanted it this way

[quote]Unfortunately, the tone and key performances (Oldman, Hopkins) are pitched at an operatic level and opera doesn't work without the singing.

Thanks, R8. That puts the finger on what has bothered me about it for years. Oldman and Hopkins both perform very well - just not in *this* film. It's like they were being directed for a completely different style of movie.

Still a great movie and repays an occasional re-watch.

R25, I disagree. I think she and Pfeiffer were both miscast.

It's like Francis told Anthony and Gary "Look, I know that Winona and Keanu can't act, but the studio wants them and you need to do all the heavy lifting, but you guys are pros and you will be able to pull it off!". But as a result the two old guys were over the top and Winona and Keanu came off even more bland in comparison.

If Trump says someone else can't be trusted that's his way of saying "Don't trust me!".

You just need to learn to understand Trump-ism.

Damn. Sorry, wrong thread.

Are there really people who don't love Oldman as Dracula?! I'm stunned.

And Harker and Mina are SUPPOSED to be wooden, pretty and artless - puppets in the monster's hands. Winona and Keanu weren't cast by chance or as a compromise. Coppola directed them that way

Keanu in this movie is guilty pleasure.

WEHT Sadie Frost? She deserved a better career than being Jude’s baby momma.

The horrible acting. And what's also crazy is these people were huge actors at the time. I often wonder if Francis Ford Coppola just slept the whole time they were filming.

Love this movie in spite of the horribly miscast Winona, who was somehow in every third movie back then.

Keanu was miscast as well, but he was so damn pretty you didn't mind.

Incredible performance by Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins was also great, and beautiful costumes and set design.

I agree Keanu can make any bad movie worth watching. Handsome 😍😍😍😍😍

I just wish the scene with the vampires and Keanu Reeves was more explicit.

Florina Kendrick (one of the brides) is Romanian, and coached Monica Bellucci, and Michaela Bercu so they could get their lines correctly.

One thing Coppola's Dracula did get correct is portrayal of brides as lust filled succubus. Many of the English and American versions gloss over that fact.

By extension Lucy is also rather lusty, in fact at least in book she's prevented from consumating her marriage because her husband is "ill' (venereal disease). This makes her more open as opposed to the more chaste Mina to Dracula, and the rest as they say is history.

Sadie frost was wonderful in this! She didn't do much else but Ecstasy after this though did she?

"WEHT Sadie Frost? She deserved a better career than being Jude’s baby momma. "

She was horrible in this movie! Her lustful squealing is so embarrassing, we can only hope she was trying for intentional camp, rather than unintentional! But it was probably unintentional, and I can see why she didn't get many offers after that.

r39 Keanu should've been bare-assed naked in that scene, I agree. God, he was beautiful back then.

For my money best looking vampire award goes to David Peel who starred in a cheesy Hammer film "The Brides of Dracula"

A "confirmed bachelor" (yes, Mr. Peel was family), the actor retired after this film to become an estate agent and antiques dealer.

Yeah, the scene with Keanu and the vampire wives was hot as hell! And the theatrical version, with the wives all topless and piling on this beautiful young man, was one of the most sensuous things I've never seen in a public place. (It was Keanu's best scene in the film by far, because it was the one where he didn't talk!)

At least, it was hot as hell until Dracula showed up, and inexplicably failed to join in the fun. He'd been lusting after Keanu in the last few scenes, he wanted it!

Tatiana von Fürstenberg was one of the succubi.

Keanu Reeves basically used same accent he did as Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny, in Dangerous Liaisons. Another role he was cast in more for physical beauty than acting chops.

It's a classic and the best Dracula ..despite Keanu

R45

Dracula was fattening up and saving Hawker's blood for his own use. That and he needed Hawker alive to complete some other tasks before Dracula himself would "love" (as the brides called feeding), thus restoring himself to form he was at time of death.

Vampires can only be destroyed as obviously they are already reanimated corpses, thus "dead". If they don't feed vampires turn into "monsters". But after getting some blood are restored.

As Lestat tells Louis in "Interview With A Vampire" when eyeing the child Claudia for a child vampire: "A starving child is a frightful sight. A starving vampire, even worse..."

In any event while it is clear Dracula has some power over his brides, how far that goes is debatable. Dracula expressly and specifically warns Hawker not to leave his rooms at night to wander about the castle alone. He thus must have been well aware of the difficulty in controlling his "wives". If latter were totally supplicant Dracula could have laid down the law long before Hawker arrived and they would have obeyed.

It's a guilty pleasure, although I much prefer John Badham's sumptuous 1979 Dracula, with Frank Langella and Kate Nelligan.

Saw a young Frank Langella in an episode of Mannix last week. He was something back then, even if a bit scrawny for one's tastes.

I think the vampire lore of the Stoker kind of vampire attributes to them a pack mentality. So when the pack leader is around they are, broadly speaking, subservient to him. But if he isn’t there, then there is a different dynamic at play. Hence Dracula’s warning; he couldn’t “protect” Harper if he wasn’t there with him.

Oldman was too ugly to play Dracula.

Oldman was too ugly to play Dracula.

Don't forget DL fave Louis Jourdan!

More:

If we're talking about Draculas, this one is glorious and Udo Kier - beautiful and camp

Oldman wasn't bad-looking back then. Dracula was never supposed to be strikingly handsome, anyway.

The new Dracula looks promising.

I like the scene with the brides outside of the protective fire circle closing in on Van Helsing and Mina. They were beautiful, but really scary.

Honorable mention goes to the most unlikely of vampire killers; Roddy McDowall in Fright Night.

RmD made some cheesy films towards end of his career, but guess like many actors old or young he took what was on offer.

R60

For the record that bit about Van Helsing using broken bits of the host (communion wafer) is rubbish. You cannot ward off or destroy evil by desecrating the holy. A whole wafer is another matter.

Oh and if you're going to ward off a vampire, it's a crucifix you want, not a cross. You also must have faith, for it is our Lord that gives a crucifix its power against evil. Thus that object also is useless against Jewish and other vampires from non-Christian faiths.

R62. You know this isn’t real, right?

Vampires' lust for blood is a metaphor for "sins of the flesh" (aka acting on your sexual urges). The vampire curse stands for STDs and faith in God stands for having the strength to not give in to temptation (and have sex).

[quote] Oldman was too ugly to play Dracula.

Coppola wanted Daniel Day Lewis, but he was still filming The Last of the Mohicans. There hasn't been a good Dracula adaptation in decades. I mean Gerard Butler, Johnathan Rhys Meyers and some forgettable actor on Penny Dreadful !!?? It's a shame. Luke Evans had all the right qualities for Dracula Untold, but the story really sucked.

Dracula Untold sucked, because the producers decided to make a horror movie child friendly so kids could buy tickets for a lifeless horror movie. Their stupid greed destroyed a promising franchise.

R50 I read this bit of trivia before watching the movie and found it quite distracting: “Frank Langella suffers from an eye condition called nystagmus, which causes one's eyes to move involuntarily. The producers were aware that this might detract from the menace he was able to portray in the role, but cast him anyway, as they trusted in his overall screen presence to make the role work. In many scenes, his eyes are seen to be moving erratically, while in other scenes, he can be observed to be keeping them still, either through force of will, or by focusing on objects in the distance.”

Coppola went with a too Byzantine look for Dracula and his crew. I like the more austere white-tie-and-shroud look of the Tod Browning version.

If your tastes run towards a more unusual vampire movie, check out another cheesy Hammer film, "Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter.

It's worth it just to see young German actor Horst Janson.

More:

R63

Of course oneself and others know vampires aren't real; but never the less statements still stand. In fact information was taken from an interview with a RC priest who was interviewed about all sorts of evil, including vampires.

While vampires per se may no be real, evil and by extension Satan of course do exist, that is what one's post was about.

Were it otherwise there wouldn't be RC or most (if not all) Christian or many other religions. If there is a God (good), then there must be an evil (Satan or whoever), it is part of what balances universal scales. For every force there must be an opposing one to counter it.........

Someone once sat down and did the sums (obviously a person with too much time on their hands), and calculated that existence of vampires is mathematically impossible. Human race would long have ceased to exist with world becoming one huge Salem's Lot; vampires feeding upon same for lack of living prey.

This is my favorite vampire movie, and coincidentally the first movie my parents took me to at a theatre. I was 6.

Trivia;

Sadie Frost when made-up as vampire Lucy scarred the poor child in the crypt scene so badly filming had to be stopped several times. Ms. Frost would do her best to soothe the child, but it never seemed to last long. Those tears you see when child was crying along with look of fear were real.

The film looks murky and heavily shadowed because the budget didn’t permit lavish sets. All the money went into the costumes.

it's beautifully done. I love it too....even if Gary Oldman 's hairstyle reminds me of The Princess Royal, Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise....

Damn at Horst Jansen!

Oldman looks like the cartoon character who says "one wants one BBC"

[quote] While vampires per se may no be real, evil and by extension Satan of course do exist, that is what one's post was about.

r62 still doesn't make sense when the comment offers practical advice about protection from a specific threat (vampires) that doesn't exist.

If one is that much afraid of supernatural evil, and considers it a legit threat, it is best to go to a spiritual healer and pay for an elaborate protection spell ritual and a special lucky charm. The strong belief in the protection spell and the lucky charm will ward off any vampire or other evil being you believe is out there to get you. And maybe hire a life coach to help you get a more positive view in life and expect to see more fairies and unicorns and less vampires and, say, werewolves in the future.

Sorry, and expect to see more fairies and unicorns and FEWER vampires and, say, werewolves in the future.

Captian Kronos - Vampire Hunter also stars a very young (and rather attractive) Wanda Venham, mother of DL fave Benedict Cumberbatch.

Too late, R78/79. We saw it and judged you.

I must confess even though I love this movie, my favorite Dracula is Frank Langella. The movie with him in the title role, and Kate Nelligan and Sir Lawrence Olivier was sexy and scary. Gary Oldman, bless his heart, was not sexy.

Someone really ought to redo Anne Rice's "Interview With A Vampire" maybe as a television mini-series (PBS, Netflix, HBO) or something. That original with Tom Cruise stunk to high heaven.

Has everyone forgotten about me?

[quote] Someone really ought to redo Anne Rice's "Interview With A Vampire" maybe as a television mini-series (PBS, Netflix, HBO) or something. That original with Tom Cruise stunk to high heaven.

From the Link

The upcoming Vampire Chronicles series, which briefly flirted with Bryan Fuller as series showrunner, has finally found someone new to fill that position. According to a post from series co-executive producer Christopher Rice, the series showrunner will be Dee Johnson, who was behind seasons 1-4 of Nashville, as well as several other critically acclaimed series. You can read his whole statement below:

I loved Interview with the Vampire. I hope the series is good.

Keanu in his grey wig reminds me of Jessica Tandy in The Birds.

How does the hat sit so firmly in her head if it doesn't fit?

When Dracula turns into a green mist, it sort of looks like he becomes a fart.

R88

Hat pins my dear, hat pins. That and "big hair"

You perched your hat on top of bouffant or piled hair hair (yours and or pieces added), then stuck pin into hat through to hair. Some ladies would use more than one to ensure a hat was anchored properly, and remained so regardless of wind or whatever.

Ironically it was the bouffant of 1960's that lead to women discarding hats except for certain sorts like pill boxes. Others just looked silly or didn't work with all that teased and sprayed to death hair.

By the 1970's it was another problem; women began wearing their hair cut very short, so there wasn't always a way to anchor a hat down.

Some hats going back to 1940's or so had a discrete elastic band that was drawn down behind ,and hidden by hairstyle. This worked for hats worn to cocktail parties or other events where it would be left on until milady arrived back home.

R88

For reference his is a clip from musical "Sweet Charity" set in 1969. There was just no way a hat would work with most of those hairstyles.

However if one wished a hat could easily be affixed to one's head by a well placed hat pin through those rat's nest bouffants.

[quote]Of course oneself and others know vampires aren't real

Oneself

Then you can watch The devil's advocate. Instead of Winona's overacting. You have Al Pacino. He seems like he gets worse with each movie.

Al Pacino overacts it's true, but his character has this monologue where he talks about God and how he would never worship him. The old magic is there in that one scene.

He might be theatrical at times, but never hammy. There's always a truth to a Pacino performance regardless of its scale.

I was very disappointed by this when it came out. Maybe it's better upon second viewing, I don't know.

The unedited opening scene is astounding. Literally a river of blood. Oldman should have been nominated for an Oscar.