Bram Stoker's Dracula
1992 · Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Original language: English
- romance
- horror
The story
Count Dracula, a 15th-century prince, is condemned to live off the blood of the living for eternity. Young lawyer Jonathan Harker is sent to Dracula's castle to finalise a land deal, but when the Count sees a photo of Harker's fiancée, Mina, the spitting image of his dead wife, he imprisons him and sets off for London to track her down.
What it’s like
Lush, theatrical and overheated: practical in-camera effects, layered double exposures, smoky candlelit interiors and gaudy gothic production design in saturated reds, golds and bruised blues, with a jittery, old-fashioned quality that feels like a hand-cranked magic lantern show. Coppola favours rich, painterly compositions and frequent swooping camera moves, while Eiko Ishioka's costumes and Wojciech Kilar's swelling, Wagnerian orchestral score push everything toward operatic excess. The mood is doomed romance more than fright: a restless, sensual melancholy that swings between tender and feverish. Pacing is brisk and episodic, lurching from Transylvanian gloom to foggy Victorian London to a wintry, tragic finale. Its people are driven by longing, with a grieving aristocrat and a woman caught between desire and duty. Horror arrives in bursts: bloody bites, grotesque transformations and some sexual heat, including nudity and explicit sensuality, but more lurid than truly frightening. Suited to viewers who want a gorgeous, decadent gothic romance with a few shocks, rather than quiet suspense.
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