I love Lugosi and Lee's Draculas. I was merely pointing out they are not like the book. Lugosi plays Dracula as a suave parlor room hidden villain a la British theatre of the 1920s (where that film really originated) and other than when he is about to bite or staring at Renfield, he is very charming in a menacing way. He also has a perverse sex appeal. None of that is in the novel. Christopher Lee while a meaner Dracula, was visually modeled after Lugosi and not the book either. And the story was a certain departure as well.
They're not like the book exactly, but they're both faithful to certain elements in the book. There is a form, though I don't believe it's ever really taken further, of a sex appeal in the novel when Dracula is in Mina's room and makes her drink his blood. Mina says "I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him." Speculation leads me to believe that in his presence, or atleast under his spell, does he exert this sexual aura that makes women(or atleast Mina) not resist him. One could argue that Lugosi exerts this sex appeal, but that it also is brought to the front of the character. But it also has to do with the fact that we get to know more about and see more of Dracula in Lugosi's film, as in the novel Dracula, after moving to England becomes much more of a spiritual presence pervading the rest of the novel.
True that Lee may be visually modeled after Lugosi, but he's far more menacing than Lugosi, and in that aspect, close to the novel. The story changes, which is a shame, but Dracula's motivation is similar, as I pointed out: Why does he attack Lucy and get involved with the friends of the man he killed? Because Harker tried to kill him first and also killed Dracula's vampire woman. Dracula, in the novel, does the same when he attacks Mina after Lucy is killed.
The Lugosi film, initially, was far more faithful to the novel when originally conceived as a vehicle for Lon Chaney Sr. Harker's trip to Transylvania is intact, and the chase back intact. The biggest divergence is that the mid-section still plays out similar to the final Lugosi film. But something of interest is that it keeps Dracula growing young. He comes to England a younger man, named Count DeVille and he he vamps out, he turns back into the hideous older man, no doubt written to allow Chaney to work make-up wonders. I'd say it's about 95% faithful to the novel. It also keeps Lucy feeding in children and her death scene. Seward is Mina's father though, but Arthur Holmwood also appears in the script.
I agree Dracula is by far my favorite gothic and/or horror novel as well. However, Sleepy Hollow completely bastardizes Irving's story far more than Coppola did Stoker's and the original Wolf Man's story is pretty much ignored after the first act of the Wolfman remake. If I can enjoy those films, it is a bit hypocritical of me to chastise Coppola for not following the book, especially when no film to date has.
Really? I'm going to have to strongly disagree here. Even when the costumes served no meaning than for visual Victorian style, I have to say they are still the best Victorian costumes I have ever seen. But many of them are expressionist representations.
Dracula's red robe is visually less a piece of cloth than a liquid pouring over a wall (such as visualized when Harker is being fed on a month later in the castle). I feel it was red partially to differentiate the color of choice from all other Draculas of filmic past and to avoid looking like Lugosi (which was camp at this point), but also visually it was a throne of blood trailing behind the count like a throne of blood, such as seen when he and Harker walk across the floor of his lobby and it slides behind him like a line of blood. For blood is the life. He doesn't hide in the shadows, but emerges like a gaping wound. This effect is used again when Harker sees him crawl down the castle wall. Black is passive, red is vibrant and ominous. Lucy Westenra wears red when she is first attacked by Dracula. When Mina runs into this Shining-esque moment and sees the deed Dracula views the blood under her skin and this effect is done by the color red. When Dracula finally seduces her over dinner, she too is wearing red. It expresses the life and blood that is part of the covenant with God (which Dracula breaks at the beginning by stabbing the Cross while draped in red).
That's actually a very good look at it. I agree, that as it's own film, it all works very well. Perhaps I AM being too harsh on the film, but as I've said, the film has wondrous technical merits that I won't take away. However, i do feel that there are creative and inventive ways to have Dracula all clad in black, to truly be a creature of the night, who dwells and revels in shadow.
[/QUOTE]You call the orgy scene gratuitous merely because it is far more graphic than what is in the book. But again, I say don't judge it by how it is like the scene in the book. Coppola has gone for a very surrealist environment and this is perhaps the best scene that encapsulates that. It is not a realistic seduction scene. It is an erotic nightmare in that it is dreamlike and horrific, as sex is the thing feared most by a Victorian male who is supposed to withhold these impulses (such as Jon ). The women come through the bed and wrap around him like sirens. This is great and not just because we see Monica Bellucci nude! It works because it looks like an expressionist painting of the late 19th century. It both tantalizes the viewer and repulses him. These are gorgeous women but they literally come out of the bed like creatures of the night and the blood is repulsive but visually erotic. Then they turn into full monsters with surrealist imagery and devour a baby leaving the audience in a state of shock, with the wonderful music becoming intoxicating and foreboding. I say this scene bordered on art.
Same goes for the second Sadie Frost attack. Though the first--The wolf one, you have a point. But as vampires are sexual liberation, then the imagery of a beast in man unleashed on a woman in Victorian setting is quite a great concept (and something that the Wolfman remake reached for but never came as close to achieving).[/QUOTE]
I don't call the orgy scene gratuitous because it's not the scene in the book. I said in order to make the scene in the book scary, you'd have to play up the sex. A guy lying on a couch, while three women lick their lips and approach him isn't too scary(though depending on how it's filmed, it COULD work, but I'd still play up the sex).
The whole scene in the book though is nightmarish. You could certainly have these women basically molest the hell out of him, fangs bared, snarling like wild animals. But the bleeding nipple? That's what sends the scene over the top for me, that really ruins it. Other than that, it works. But that nipple thing is just silly.
But you could also have the women come out of the moonlight streaming into the bedroom. I don't think any adaptations have that. The women come out of the streaming moonlight, laughter surrounding Harker, intoxicating him and then they just...materialize from nowhere. Not to mention, I believe Harker likens one of the women to Mina, which is why he actually, ever so slightly, gives in. But the horror of what he's facing is what holds him back. The sex should be treated as rape; the proverbial roofie in the drink.
I don't see vampires as a sexual liberation as much as I see it as the liberation of the animal inside of us. The sexual aspect merely comes with it. The sexual aspect of the vampire in Stoker's novel shouldn't tantalize. It shouldn't be like looking at a car accident: intrigued and repulsed. And though I previously pointed out that Mina doesn't want to hinder Dracula's attack, it's like I just said: roofie in the drink. She's still horribly repulsed by what's happening. Rape isn't tantalizing. It's repulsive and should be treated as such.
You think the film borders on art, with surrealist ideas. I'm not sure if that was so necessary. I appreciate Coppola's interest in doing something different, but like The Wolfman and Sleep Hollow, and even Branagh's Frankenstein if I'm remembering correctly, didn't need elaborate, lavishness to tell it's story or enhance it. As I said in a previous post, Coppola's film feels like an extremely pretentious remake of the Dan Curtis film.
Actually, he attacks Lucy after he has first met and befriended dear Mina. He then goes around the house and starts to drain Lucy dry and is only interrupted by Van Helsing and Seward who give her a blood transfusion otherwise she would die. Sure only after Mina leaves does he finish her off, but he obviously already almost killed her and trying to get into Mina's pants was not stopping him from basically having sex (in the vampire way) with Sadie again and again.
Nope. Lucy is Dracula's first victim upon arriving in England. The Demeter drifts into port, and Dracula in wolf-form runs about the streets, ending up at their home and rapes and attacks Lucy. Then the film cuts to men loading in all the boxes to Carfax Abby, in which a young Dracula emerges from one. He then wanders about town and meets and subsequently befriends Mina. Then it cuts to Jack inspecing Lucy when she's trying on her wedding gown and it's then that Jack decides to call upon Van Helsing. They DO interrupt another attack on her, but after that, he holds off until Mina leaves.
I have actually not seen the Dan Curtis movie since I was a kid. I'd love to see it again but I have not found it anywhere. But in any case, I recall the style and atmosphere of that and this is better.
The DVD is out of print, but you may be able to pick it up on Amazon if you look. I don't have it either. I think i may have it on VHS somewhere, but to find it will take a long time.
The Curtis version is a much more traditional gothic horror film. It's main problem is that it's a TV movie. And as I've said, Coppola's film is really nothing more than a lavish remake of the Curtis film.
Though i don't agree Dracula needs to be lavish, this is what David J. Skal, a hardcore Dracula scholar(You MUST check out his book Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel To Stage To Screen. Wonderful book!) wrote about the film in his book "V is For Vampire: the A-Z Guide of Everything Undead", said about the film: "The film operates like a broken, very expensive kaleidoscope, jamming image atop precious image until the whole thing ends up feeling disjointed and insubstantial. Of course, all the film's incongruities and flaws and superficiality were applaudd by Coppola partisans as evidence of a brilliant 'post-modernist' sensibility. The post-modernist defense, of course, is the last refuge for anything these days that has no point of view, borrows egregiously, and finally, makes no sense."
And to an extent, I agree with him.
You see I don't think Coppola was having you be forced to have it just so black and white. His view on religion is very complex and while Hart added a schmultzy romance, Coppola was more interested in the themes of religion and man's role with God rather than that stuff. For that reason the hunters are just as sympathetic. But yes Dracula is a tragic hero or an extremely sympathetic villain in this. But Van Helsing is the voice of reason in this movie, hence its narrator, and that is why hen he says to dear Mina that her salvation is his destruction, the audience is supposed to believe it. There is a great deleted scene of Renfield dying and trying to explain this to Van Helsing before croaking, but it didn't fit the pace of the movie. But it worked so well.
But the thing is, how can you hate him? You can't. You're presented with a character who hates what he is, a character who can't help what he is anymore and is searching for a way to escape it. You're presented with a character that, while he does terrible things, is extremely sympathetic. When he dies, you feel great pity for him, and you almost feel good for him, because now he's reunited with his love(or will be eventually). The film's building block is this romance between Dracula and Mina. That's what we're supposed to follow and connect with. And it's those conservative bastards that break it up. Van Helsing may be the voice of reason, who doesn't treat Dracula like a terrible criminal, but everyone else in that entourage do.
Also, according to Coppola, the idea is the final of Mina being freed and Dracula going to Heaven to be with Elizabeta. But I do think it is a failure of the movie (along with casting Reeves) as this is not apparent and I will criticize it for it. In the original, and superior, ending Mina goes back to Jonathan without any dialogue and with a sense of relief and release. And they walk with the survivng hunters out of the castle over a cross and Van Helsing narrating. But this more romantic and operatic ending was done in reshoots on the suggestion of GEORGE LUCAS! GEorge! Mr. Lucas is bad.
I thought it was very apparent, actually. I didn't think that Dracula died, went to Heaven and lived happily ever after with Elizabeta though. I thought he died and found redemption. His love for Mina is forever, and eventually, they'll be together again.
Just because George Lucas and American Graffiti saved Coppola's ass and allowed him to make The Godfather does not mean you should listen to him creatively!!
Oh if you listen to the commentary on the new DVD, Coppola knows it could be more faithful to the book. He says he would have liked to make it scarier, but he was hired to do Hart's script and that is what he did. Though he added things back from the book and made it much more religious and dark. I agree with you on Hart though. But if you can get past the marketing campaign which is almost 20 years old, the movie stands on its own just fine as a riff on the original concept. Like Grendel to Beowulf.
I find it strange Coppola said that because on the Laserdisc commentary he says that "Very few people have gotten through the book, if truth be known. It's very hard going."
He's the director of the film. He wasn't hired to direct Hart's script because the script was given to him by Winona Ryder while it was languishing in development hell as a TV movie. Coppola could very well have done what he wanted to it. Perhaps if he wasn't so caught up in being lavish and surrealist and worrying about the look of the film, something he was interesting in doing since the beginning, he could have done it straight.
I disagree. Langella and Bardem think his Dracula is a romantic hero. Jonathan is made to be a real ass hole in the movie (not just because Reeves played him) and "Mina" goes to Dracula out of choice. There is no hypnosis or conflict in her. She wants to bang Dracula. When he finally ravishes her there is no sense of imboding doom or sacrilige like in Coppola's movie. It is just a wonderful night of sex. Mina is smiling because she loves Dracula as his cape flies away and expects to see him again.
Actually, Bardem said years later that he thought she was smiling because she was pregnant with Dracula's baby! How's that for a change from the book?! There is no sense of tragedy about Mina becoming a vampire or that her soul or life is in danger. Dracula is a romantic hero in the Twilight sense, even if he does kill people. There is no sense of damnation or fear of losing God in this version and honestly when Oldman turns on the evil, it is no contest.
Langella claims the character is about romance(i disagree fully), but frankly, when i watch his performance, all i see is a brutal, violent, evil character. Harker isn't an *******, so much as he is kind of a wimp, but he truly loves Mina. But Dracula comes charging in and uses his charming powers(because he's basically after her from the get go). But once he has her? He's a violent, evil son of a *****. And I would hardly call Harker and co. the villains. Van Helsing having to kill his own daughter(Lucy)? That scene is pretty heart-wrenching. Van Helsing has a revenge motive.
Mina goes to Dracula because she's fascinated by him, no doubt due to the sexual aura he has. That's no wonderful night of sex though. He's incapable of having sex with her. He seduces her and bites her, infecting her with his disease. He's all fluff though. Because Mina, in her semi-vampiric state, is animalistic, and it's unfortunate. And for all we know, once she's a vampire, she'll wind up looking like Lucy, all diseased looking(which is actually something that never made sense to me. Why does Lucy look like that?
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But Langella's Dracula is the evil seducer and murderer. He impales Van Helsing. Kills and turns Lucy and is now taking Mina. And when he dies, he's showing his true colors: a wild beast, an animal. And I can't feel sorry for him.
Badham knows not what he speaks. In the documentary on the film's DVD he says that Mina and Dracula have vampire sex. He penetrates her neck, as vampires can't make love in the traditional way. So how can she be carrying his baby?
I still think Langella could kick Oldman's ass though. Oldman would have to turn into a bat monster of a werewolf or something.(Why's he do that anyway? Perhaps because he's not intimidating enough when he looks normal? He's really a whimpering costume changer.) Guy vs Guy though? Langella would go ruthless badass on Oldman's whimpering sap.
No, the only Dracula novel I ever read was, well Dracula. I meant to read a short novel written from Renfield's POV in a secret journal that I bought in a bargain bin but never got around to it. Are these books sequels to Stoker's novel? As I'm always weary of reading extensions of that masterwork. Which it is.
They aren't sequels. They're actually alternate history. What if Van Helsing and co. failed to kill Dracula? What if Dracula actually came out on top? In the first novel, "Anno Dracula", he becomes Prince Consort of England.
The novels are geeky. A vampire and horror film lover's dream. It's similar to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and employs Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe in which loads of different literary and cinematic characters populate the world as well as real, historical people. In "Anno Dracula", once Dracula becomes Prince Consort, all the other literary vampires come out of hiding. Lord Ruthven is Prime Minister and Varney The Vampire is an overseas Ambassador. Devil's Island becomes a prison camp where most of Dracula's enemies and potential enemies go: Sherlock Holmes, Bram Stoker, etc...(in a nice little twist, the Dracula novel we know exists within the Anno-Dracula world as an underground propaganda piece to promote revolution against the crown and isn't published until the 1920s).
Great stories that span from the Jack The Ripper killings to WW1 to 1950's Fellini inspired Italy. Kim Newman also has several short stories that tie into the universe, one of my favorites being "Coppola's Dracula". It's about what if Coppola made "Dracula" instead of "Apocalypse Now" when he did, with the same cast and same production problems. It's pretty funny.
Aaaanyway...)
" because that's the intention of the film: To make you feel sorry for these two characters, who can't be together because a group of men said so. After viewing Mina's experience with Dracula, you feel sorry for her because now she has to go back to some mundane existence after getting a taste of the new, magnificent life Dracula gave her. You don't feel like cheering when Dracula gets the ax, because you feel bad for him. Or I should say, you could cheer when Dracula gets the ax, because he's leaving the physical realm to a better life of redemption. And as the viewer, you know that he and Mina will be together again: It's a happy ending, but the wrong kind. 
I thought it was funny so i didn't mind it . Reminded me of Blade 2 when the final fight turned into a wrestling match.
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