If you go back and read about horror stories from the past you will find out that people used to believe in a lot of things. For example in Scandinavia people believed that trolls actually existed while in countries like Austria they believed that the Christmas demon known as Krampus was in fact real. But then we have historical horror stories that actually happened in real life such as The Villisca Axe Murder House in Villisca, Iowa, USA. In the year of 1912 at this house there were six children and two adults brutally murdered by having their skulls completely crushed by an unknown perpetrator with an axe. You can actually stay at this house if you dare, where they say people have heard screams from children. Let us move forward to a completly different country and let´s talk about a very special author who grew up in Ireland. We are of course talking about author Bram Stoker who in the year of 1897 released his world famous gothic horror novel Dracula. If you talk to horror fans worldwide about horror novels regarding their favourite books in this genre, there is a big chance that this classic novel will be in the top ten of that list. I have read this book myself right after the millenium in the year 2000 when i bought myself a copy. This is an excellent novel that you should read if you love horror in general. It may be very old but it still very effective and very well written by author Bram Stoker. It was this novel that inspired the character known as Dracula to become a horror icon in cinema for many years and i have seen the 1931 horror film Dracula with legendary actor Bela Lugosi, a film that basically gave this character a franchise for many generations ahead. In my opinion the really good Dracula film that got me hooked up on this character was the 1958 horror film Dracula with legendary actor Christopher Lee as Count Dracula. There were plenty of sequels made with Christopher Lee as Dracula, some were ok while others were not as good as i was hoping they would be. Since then the Dracula franchise continued on in many different versions but it was in 1992 when director Francis Ford Coppola ( director of classic films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now ) really wanted to bring the novel of Dracula to life with his adaptation of the novel called Bram Stoker´s Dracula. I saw this film in cinema in early 1993 and fell in love with the film. It´s been quite some time since i revisited this film so decided to do a special review of Bram Stoker´s Dracula for the upcoming Halloween weekend. Is this still a very solid horror film or have this film aged more than i expected and lost some of the magic it once had?
In 1462, Vlad Dracula ( Gary Oldman ) returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his beloved wife Elisabeta ( Winona Ryder ) has commited suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. A priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church tells him that his wife´s soul is damned to hell for commiting suicide. Enraged, Vlad desecrates the chapel and renounces the Christian God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. He drives his sword into the chapel´s stone and drinks the blood that pours from it, becoming a vampire. In 1897, solocitor Jonathan Harker ( Keanu Reeves ) takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R.M. Renfield ( Tom Waits ), who have gone insane and is now an inmate at Dr. Jack Seward´s ( Richard E. Grant ). Jonathan travels to Transylvania to arrange Dracula´s real estate acquisitions in London. There, he meets Dracula, who finds a picture of Jonathan´s fiancée Mina Murray ( Winona Ryder ) and believes she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. He leaves Jonathan trapped at his castle with some female vampires while he travels to London to make Mina his Elisabeta.
It doesn´t take very long until we see that Bram Stoker´s Dracula have a very erotic tone in this film. Especially where the almost completely naked vampire women show their bodies and manage to set the right tone for this film, where lust and passion becomes one with these creatures of the night while they feed on fresh human blood. I do think this gives the film strength daring to cross over some of the typical Dracula ingredients we have seen in much older film adaptations, where nudity feels like a much welcome detail that matches really well with darkness. There are so many different details that i appreciate with this film adaptation based on Bram Stoker´s classic book. For example the costume design in this film is really well designed, you can tell they really made a big effort to try and capture the right look for each of the most important characters we meet in this film. I also feel that the background story of Count Dracula is told very well with some fascinating details regarding his life as a human in the past, as well as we get a sense of how hes struggling being the monster he is transformed. We have to talk about the acting in this film and i have to say, Gary Oldman as Count Dracula is not only one of the best acting performances i have seen Gary Oldman do in his career but i also feel that his portrait of Count Dracula is extremely powerful, emotional and very effective. Especially in the scenes where he show himself as a vampire beast, the make up effects are absolutely brilliant to his incredible performance. Legendary actor Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing doesn´t need any introduction, right from his first scenes as this character you feel his presence by his powerful dialogue. Cary Elwes is here as well and it comes to no surprise he´s just as good as you would expect him to be. What about the horror influences, do they match well with this film? I would say for a vampire film this may be one of the best looking films in this specific horror genre. There is no doubt in my mind, this is definetely the best film adaptation of Dracula we have so far and it may be the greatest we will ever have. Director Francis Ford Coppola really proved with this film that it is possible to make a very powerful vampire film with all the right ingredients. A must see if you want to see a true horror vampire classic, Bram Stoker´s Dracula hits all the right notes.
Rating: DDDD
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