Psycho's Movie Reviews #162: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American Gothic horror film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker.

Dracula was theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 1992, to positive reviews, though Keanu Reeves' performance and English accent received criticism. The film grossed $215 million against a production budget of $40 million. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, of which it won three for Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup while also being nominated for Best Art Direction. Its score was composed by Wojciech Kilar and its closing credits theme "Love Song for a Vampire", written and performed by Annie Lennox, became an international success.

Plot

In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his wife Elisabeta committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. The priest tells him that his wife's soul is damned to Hell for committing suicide. Enraged, Dracula desecrates the chapel and renounces God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. He then stabs the chapel's stone cross with his sword and drinks the blood that pours from it.

In 1897, solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague Renfield who has gone insane and is now an inmate in Dr. Jack Seward's insane asylum. Jonathan travels to Transylvania to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisitions in London. Jonathan meets Dracula who finds a picture of his fiancée Mina Murray and believes she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be fed upon by his brides, while he sails to England with boxes of Transylvanian soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey (which he has recently bought), with Renfield's ravings foretelling his arrival.

In London, Dracula emerges as a wolf-themed creature amid a fierce thunderstorm and hypnotically seduces, then bites Lucy Westenra, with whom Mina is staying while Jonathan is in Transylvania. Lucy's deteriorating health and behavioral changes prompt former suitors Quincey Morris and Dr. Seward, along with her fiancé Arthur Holmwood to summon Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Seward's teacher, who recognizes Lucy as the victim of a vampire. Dracula, appearing young and handsome during daylight, meets and charms Mina. When Mina receives word from Jonathan — who has escaped from the castle and recovered at a convent — she travels to Romania to marry him. Upon hearing of this, a heartbroken Dracula furiously transforms Lucy into a vampire, and Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Morris kill the undead Lucy the following night before she can feed on a young girl.

After he and Mina return to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead the others to Carfax Abbey, where they destroy the Count's boxes of soil. Dracula enters the asylum, where he kills Renfield for warning Mina of his presence. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters while the others hunt Dracula, and confesses that he murdered Lucy and has been terrorizing Mina's friends. Confused and angry, Mina admits that she still loves him and remembers Elisabeta's previous life; at her insistence, Dracula begins transforming her into a vampire. The hunters burst into the bedroom, and Dracula claims Mina as his bride before escaping. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and learns via her connection with Dracula that he is sailing home in his last remaining box. The hunters depart for Varna to intercept him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and evades them. The hunters split up; Van Helsing and Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while the others try to stop the gypsies transporting Dracula.

At night, Van Helsing and Mina are approached by Dracula's brides. Mina succumbs to their chanting and attempts to seduce Van Helsing. Before Mina can feed on his blood, Van Helsing places a communion wafer on her forehead, leaving a mark. He surrounds them with a ring of fire to protect them from the brides, then infiltrates the castle and decapitates them the following morning. Dracula's carriage arrives at the castle, pursued by the hunters. A fight between the hunters and gypsies ensues. Morris is stabbed in the back during the fight and Dracula bursts from his coffin at sunset. Jonathan slits his throat with a kukri knife while the wounded Morris stabs him in the heart. As Dracula staggers, Mina rushes to his defense. Van Helsing and Jonathan allow her to retreat with the Count. Morris dies of his wound, surrounded by his friends.

In the chapel where he renounced God, Dracula lies dying in an ancient demonic form; he and Mina share a kiss as the candles adorning the chapel light up and the cross repairs itself. Dracula reverts to his younger self and asks Mina to give him peace. Mina thrusts the knife through his heart and as he dies, the mark on her forehead disappears as Dracula's curse is lifted. She decapitates him and gazes up at a fresco of Vlad and Elisabeta ascending to Heaven together, finally reunited.

Production

Ryder initially brought the script (written by James V. Hart) to the attention of Coppola. The director had agreed to meet with her so the two could clear the air after her late withdrawal from The Godfather Part III caused production delays on that film and led her to believe Coppola disliked her. According to Ryder: "I never really thought he would read it. He was so consumed with Godfather III. As I was leaving, I said, 'If you have a chance, read this script.' He glanced down at it politely, but when he saw the word Dracula, his eyes lit up. It was one of his favourite stories from camp." Ryder also explained that "what attracted me to the script is the fact that it's a very emotional love story, which is not really what you think of when you think about Dracula. Mina, like many women in the late 1800s, has a lot of repressed sexuality. Everything about women in that era, the way those corsets forced them to move, was indicative of repression. To express passion was freakish". Coppola was also attracted to the sensual elements of the screenplay and said that he wanted portions of the picture to resemble an "erotic dream". In the months leading up to its release, Hollywood insiders who had seen the movie felt Coppola's film was too odd, violent and strange to succeed at the box office, and dubbed it "Bonfire of the Vampires" after the notorious 1990 box-office bomb The Bonfire of the Vanities. Due to delays and cost overruns on some of Coppola's previous projects such as Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart, Coppola was determined to bring the film in on time and on budget. To accomplish this he filmed on sound stages to avoid potential troubles caused by inclement weather.

Coppola chose to invest a significant amount of the budget in costumes in order to showcase the actors, whom he considered the "jewels" of the feature. He had an artist storyboard the entire film in advance to carefully illustrate each planned shot, a process which created around a thousand images. He turned the drawings into a choppy animated film and added music, then spliced in scenes from the French version of Beauty and the Beast that Jean Cocteau directed in 1946 along with paintings by Gustav Klimt and other symbolist artists. He showed the animated film to his designers to give them an idea of the mood and theme he was aiming for. Coppola also asked the set costume designers to simply bring him designs which were "weird". "'Weird' became a code word for 'Let's not do formula,'" he later recalled. "'Give me something that either comes from the research or that comes from your own nightmares.' I gave them paintings, and I gave them drawings, and I talked to them about how I thought the imagery could work." The film's hair and makeup designer, Michèle Burke, recalls: "Francis didn't want the typical Dracula that had already been done in Hollywood. He wanted something different; a new Dracula without the widow's peak, cape, or pale-white skin." Burke says she used her Catholic upbringing and angelic imagery for design inspiration, as well as the 19th-century attire created by costume designer Eiko Ishioka.

Coppola brought in acting coach Greta Seacat to coach Frost and Ryder for their erotic scenes as he felt uncomfortable discussing sexuality with the young actresses. However, he did ask Oldman to speak seductively off camera to Frost while they were filming a scene in which she writhed alone in her bed in ecstasy. She later classified the things Oldman said to her as "very unrepeatable". Winona Ryder found the intensity of Oldman's acting style too much at times; the two fell out early in the filming process and had difficulty working together from then on. Coppola stated, "they got along and then one day they didn't—absolutely didn't get along. None of us were privy to what had happened." Ryder has referred to the "trauma" of the experience and said that she "felt there was a danger" while working with Oldman. However, she has also referred to her friction with Oldman as "teen drama", stating, "He, Gary. was going through a divorce, and I think I can say this because he's pretty open about it, but he's been sober for a long time now, and he's raised three kids, and he's a dream. He's a good friend of mine now..."

In 2020, Winona Ryder also said that Reeves and Hopkins once refused Coppola's direction to verbally abuse her to make her cry during a scene that required an emotional reaction. However, Coppola denied that and described the situation as him instructing Oldman — in character — to whisper improvised words both to her and other actors on set to scare them. Ryder agreed with Coppola and a spokesperson for the actress stated that "He asked the actors in character to say horrible things to Winona as a technique to help her cry for the scene. Although that technique didn't work for her, she loves and respects him and considers it a great privilege to have worked with him."

Gary Oldman himself thinks that Dracula was never a "bucket list" role for him in the first place. He said about the main reason why his younger self said yes to the role: "It was an opportunity to work with Coppola, who I consider one of the great American directors. That was enough, really. It was my first big American movie, made on a big set with lots of costumes. For a young actor, that was a tremendous experience." Another reason why Oldman wanted to play Dracula was because he wanted to say: "I've crossed oceans of time to find you" and to him it was worth playing the role just to say that line.

Christian Slater was offered the role of Jonathan Harker, but he turned it down (a decision he later regretted). As for casting Keanu Reeves in the role Coppola said of his casting choice: "We tried to get some kind of matinée idol for the part of Jonathan, because it isn't such a great part. If we all were to go to the airport... Keanu is the one that the girls would just besiege." Coppola has stated that Reeves worked harder on his accent than most people realized: "He tried so hard. That was the problem, actually — he wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it perfectly it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn’t as critical of him, but that’s because I like him personally so much. To this day he’s a prince in my eyes."

Coppola was insistent that he did not want to use any kind of contemporary special effects techniques such as computer-generated imagery when making the movie, instead wishing to use antiquated effects techniques from the early history of cinema, which he felt would be more appropriate given that the film's period setting coincides with the origin of film. He initially hired a standard visual effects team, but when they told him that the things he wanted to achieve were impossible without using modern digital technology, Coppola disagreed and fired them, replacing them with his son Roman Coppola. As a result, all of the visual effects seen in the film were achieved without the use of optical or computer-generated effects, but were created using on-set and in-camera methods. For example, any sequences that would have typically required the use of compositing were instead achieved by either rear projection with actors placed in front of a screen with an image projected behind them, or through multiple exposure by shooting a background slate then rewinding the film through the camera and shooting the foreground slate on the same piece of film, all the while using matting techniques to ensure that only the desired areas of film were exposed. Forced perspectives were often employed to combine miniature effects or matte paintings with full-sized elements, or create distorted views of reality, such as holding the camera upside down or at odd angles to create the effect of objects defying the laws of physics.

Reception/Box Office

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 75% based on 61 critics with an average rating of 6.70/10. The site's consensus reads, "Overblown in the best sense of the word, Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Bram Stoker's Dracula rescues the character from decades of campy interpretations—and features some terrific performances to boot." Vincent Canby described the film as having been created with the "enthusiasm of a precocious film student who has magically acquired a master's command of his craft." Richard Corliss said, "Coppola brings the old spook story alive...Everyone knows that Dracula has a heart; Coppola knows that it is more than an organ to drive a stake into. To the director, the count is a restless spirit who has been condemned for too many years to interment in cruddy movies. This luscious film restores the creature's nobility and gives him peace." Alan Jones in Radio Times said, "Eerie, romantic and operatic, this exquisitely mounted revamp of the undead legend is a supreme artistic achievement...as the tired count who has overdosed on immortality, Gary Oldman's towering performance holds centre stage and burns itself into the memory." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.

The film opened at number one at the US box office with a November record $30,521,679. It dropped off in subsequent weeks, losing 50.8% of its audience after its first weekend in release and exiting the top five after three weeks. It became a box-office hit, grossing $82,522,790 in the United States and Canada, becoming the 15th-highest-grossing film of the year. The film set an opening weekend record in the United Kingdom of $4 million, beating the record set by Batman Returns. Internationally, the film grossed another $133,339,902 for a total worldwide gross of $215,862,692, making it the 9th-highest-grossing film of the year worldwide.

Budget $40 million

Box office $215.9 million

My Review

There were several reasons why I wanted to see Bram Stoker's Dracula, and after seeing the film finally I was really impressed. No seriously I was. It is not perfect, but on the whole it is very well done.

I have read Bram Stoker's book several times and love it to death, it is rich in detail, it is haunting and it is shocking. This film is not the truest film version of the book, and that's putting it mildly, but it is one of the more visually beautiful and intriguing ones. That is no way a flaw, I am not the sort of person who says if this adaptation is untrue to the book I pan it, or at least I try not to. Speaking of flaws there are two significant flaws, one is more significant than the other, that stop the film from perfection. At over two hours the film is probably a little too long. But the biggest problem is Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker. I know it is not old news to rag on Reeves's performance, and I will say I am not a fan of his, sure he has been in some very good films but he is nearly always one of the weaker assets which is exactly the case here. Jonathan Harker is an estate agent who is threatened by Dracula, but I found Reeves's acting far too too inept, flat and emotionless, complete with a very unimpressive accent. For instance, when he says "Oh, I'm very sorry"- Keanu I know there aren't many ways to say that phrase strictly speaking, but do actually try to sound as though you're sorry.

Flaws aside, Francis Ford Coppola's film is very, very good. It is eerie, it is romantic and it is even operatic. For one thing, it is exquisitely mounted, very grandiose in its visual approach. From the sumptuous costumes, the lovingly crafted settings, the superb make up and the basic yet atmospheric lighting complete with more sophisticated techniques it is a feast for the eyes. Another strength is the score, it was very like an opera, rich, soulful, haunting and melancholic. I also liked the script, it was poetic, it was intelligent and it was sophisticated, and the plot is coherent with some effective scenes such as Mina following Lucy into the garden when Lucy is later attacked by Dracula. And the direction is wonderful, a lot of fashioned touches are made to make this film very watchable at least once.

With the exception of Reeves, the acting is very good. Winona Ryder is an improvement certainly, she is beautiful and intense thus she becomes the object of Dracula's devastating desire. Her chemistry with Reeves wasn't quite there, but with Gary Oldman it was pretty much smouldering. Anthony Hopkins was one of the main reasons why I wanted to see this film in the first place, he is a brilliant actor, one of the best there is actually. See him in The Elephant Man, Shadowlands, Howards' End and the Remains of the Day, all wonderful films, and he is impeccable in all of them. I enjoyed him here, here he plays Dr Van Helsing, a famed doctor who dares to believe in Dracula and in the end even dares to confront him, and gives a delicious performance making the most of some inventive one-liners. Richard E.Grant, Cary Elwes and Bill Campbell all give great support, but it is Gary Oldman's towering performance as Dracula that dominates the film. An excellent, underrated actor(Immortal Beloved is just living proof of his talent), Oldman is menacing, suave, handsome, charismatic, tragic and just amazing here, his transitions from old to young and from man to beast are completely believable, in short it was one of the more interesting interpretations of Dracula. Also look out for Monica Belluci as one of Dracula's wives, she is breathtakingly beautiful, even Sadie Frost was surprisingly good as Lucy.

Overall, if you want a faithful adaptation of the book, you may be disappointed. However, if you want a visually stunning, richly scored and compelling movie this is perfect for you. Regardless of how it deviates from the book, I liked it a lot, and would definitely see it again. 8/10

{Also, 'Love Song For A Vampire' by Annie Lennox is probably my new favourite Annie Lennox song}