DRACULA (1979) Is there some law against Dracula having normal hair? Goddammit, Frank Langella! If I didn't like your acting so fucking much, I'd hate this movie. As it is, I almost like this movie. Goddamn sexy-vampire shit! Fuck it! Fuck it all! This one is based both on Stoker's novel and the same play that the Universal Dracula was based on. Count Dracula wants to move into Carfax Abbey, a ghastly-looking castle nobody else wants. He gets to know the locals, including Jonathan Harker (Trevor Eve), Lucy (Kate Nelligan) and her father (Donald Pleasance), a former doctor who now operates a mental institution. Just how seriously he takes his work is hinted at when he lets slip the phrase "...since I practiced real medicine". When Lucy's friend Mina Van Helsing (Jan Francis) falls ill and dies (well, we see a little more than that), her father (Laurence Olivier!) comes to town and wants to kick some vampire butt. This appears to be set in the early 20th Century, since when Harker pulls up in a car, shocked observers refer to his vehicle as a "contraption". This sets up a climactic car chase, with a bunch of climactic car chase clichés. I'm surprised they didn't crash through a watermelon stand. Lots of weird little things, some expected (ooh, Harker can't repel Dracula with a cross because he doesn't have enough faith!), some not (Van Helsing has a horse which sniffs out and digs up vampires like a pig looking for truffles). I was always under the impression that this was made for TV, but I have no idea why. Now, like I said, even though he's going for that goddamned "sexy Dracula" thing, even though his hair is hilarious, even though he could impale a man on the collar of his cape, I really liked Frank Langella as the Count. Unlike so many movie Draculas, he's charismatic, articulate, gentlemanly, and has enough acceptable social skills that one can hardly blame the rest of the cast for taking a while to figure out he's a vampire. For that matter, it's almost hard to blame Lucy for falling for him as hard as she does; this is the only Dracula I've seen who gets a woman to fall in love with him seemingly without using that vampire sex charm vampires are always doing. No wimp-out last-minute finding of her "true will" or whatever for her; she keeps on wanting him right up until the end. That aside, she doesn't much distinguish herself, and Trevor Eve is as charmless and bland a Jonathan Harker as could possibly be asked for, and we've all seen Keanu in the role. I've come to the conclusion that Jonathan and Lucy are to Dracula movies as Lancelot and Guenevere are to King Arthur movies - the one aspect which never seems to work, often due to bad casting. I'd probably love Coppola's film if he'd found somebody other than the two worst actors of their generation to play those roles. Even Renfeld, as played by Tony Haygarth, bores the shit out of me here. Just as Jonathan and Lucy seem bound by an iron-clad rule which says they must be played by the worst actors the casting director can find, some other unwritten rule seems to cause the inevitable casting of the BEST actor one can find as Van Helsing. I mean, Laurence Olivier, people! He and Langella are great against each other. This movie needed a hell of a lot more of it. The sets are great and the effects a mixed bag (love the scene where Dracula crawls down a wall, but the Drac-bat is one aspect of vampire movies which is rarely pulled off), but the makeup is usually terrible, particularly on the Van Helsing girl. The worst failure from both an effects and story angle has to be the crushingly disappointing ending, which gives us such a cool setup for Dracula's death by sunlight...and then gives us the lamest death by sunlight I've ever seen. (oh, don't tell me I've spoiled the end for you) And even then, it sets itself up for a sequel. What, didn't the sunlight have enough faith? Directed by John "Another Stakeout" Badham, not exactly a name that comes to mind when I think of hidden horror talent. I guess it's worth a look if you're a big Langella fan, or a Dracula completist. To be fair, though, it's my impression that this is one of the better-regarded Dracula movies, and my appreciation of Dracula movies has long been a little at odds with accepted norms. BACK TO THE D's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE