Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
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Jonathon Harker is a lawyer going to Romania to sew up property purchases that A "Count Dracula" is making in London. Once there Harker can’t seem to find the willigness to leave and instead Dracula finds his way into society and to people’s veins. But Val Helsing won’t let this happen and chases Dracula back to Romania but not before he needs to save Harker’s woman, Mina Murray.
Overall - Movie: Good film with nice work by Gary Oldman. He really delves into the lore that begat Vlad the Impaler, the reasons he chose to close his eyes to God and the turning to the dark side. That was nice and something the book failed to include. A little too much of Dracula running around London and even more unfortunate is this love story between Dracula & Mina, with a little reincarnation thrown in. In addition the description of sailors being “eliminated” aboard the ship on the way to England was left out. The book makes Dracula seem like an evil monster but let’s you pity him for the fact too many years have passed by to make him feel anything strong. The film breaks out with Dracula as a Don Juan with a small appetite problem and an obsessive fan. The accents are also missing but we all know Americans can’t do British accents worth anything. So overall I think the graphics are good (nice blood seen at the beginning!) and the story flows alright and the film gets the job done. Overall - Book: I think this film shows everything how Bram Stoker’s novel failed. The book spends the 1st half with Dracula and gets you into his world and creating a nice protagonist in it then switches and follows everyone else but Dracula the 2nd half and shows him as the antagonist. This is where the failure lies...it’s like watching the original and the sequel. It sucked! (that’s right, I said it) Stoker would have been better off spending the entire book with one main character seen from that angle and go with it. The diaries sequences are fine but after ½ the book Dracula is everywhere and by the end, it’s been 200 pages since you last heard of him. And the film "Van Helsing" just happens to be nearby...sounds like a bad horror film to me!!! I’ve been to Vlad the Impaler’s birthplace and also his castle...did the Romanian “Dracula Tour” which started in Hungary (back at Halloween 1993). Great place to go and maybe one day I’ll put my pics on the web. Meanwhile as for the book, the schizophrenic style just ruined the experience of both the book and the film for me. I’m not denying the place of Stoker in film and book lore. Without this, would we ever have a knowing of Vampires? Would any of us have cared or just placed this idea of the Chupacabra, as a small-time monster which 3/4rds of this nation has never heard of? This was a book needed for it’s time to stir up the world, bring excitement to the masses and provide a much needed start to the film industry with the 1920’s monster films. But the book by itself still isn’t that good. Sorry folks! |
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