Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film)
Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American vampire horror film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and written by James V. Hart, based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.[4][5][6] The film stars Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, and Tom Waits. Set in 19th-century England and Romania, it follows the titular vampire (Oldman), who falls in love with Mina Murray (Ryder), the fiancée of his solicitor Jonathan Harker (Reeves). When Dracula begins terrorizing Mina's friends, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Hopkins), an expert in vampirism, is summoned to bring an end to his reign of terror. Its closing credits theme "Love Song for a Vampire", is written and performed by Annie Lennox.
Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Francis Ford Coppola
- Fred Fuchs
- Charles Mulvehill
- Nicholas C. Smith
- Glen Scantlebury
- Anne Goursaud
- American Zoetrope
- Osiris Films
- November 13, 1992 (United States)
128 minutes
United States
English
$215.9 million[3]
Bram Stoker's Dracula was theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 1992, to positive reviews from critics,[7][8] though Reeves' performance and English accent were universally panned.[9][10][11] The film opened at the top of the box office, grossing $215.9 million against its $40 million budget, and was nominated in four categories at the 65th Academy Awards, winning Best Costume Design for Eiko Ishioka, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup, while also being nominated for Best Art Direction.
Plot[edit]
In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his beloved wife Elisabeta has committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. A priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church tells him that his wife's soul is damned to Hell for committing suicide. Enraged, Vlad desecrates the chapel and renounces the Christian God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. He then drives his sword into the chapel's stone cross and drinks the blood that pours from it, becoming a vampire.
In 1897, solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R. M. Renfield, who has gone insane and is now an inmate in Dr. Jack Seward's asylum. Jonathan travels to Dracula's castle in 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 Transylvanian soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey.
In London, Dracula hypnotically seduces and bites Mina's best friend 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 mentor, who recognizes Lucy as being the victim of a vampire. Dracula, appearing young and handsome during daylight, meets and charms Mina. Mina develops feelings for Dracula, accompanying him on several outings. When Mina receives word from Jonathan—who has escaped the castle and recovered at a convent—she travels to Romania to marry him. A heartbroken Dracula transforms Lucy into a vampire. Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward, and Morris kill the undead Lucy the following night.
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 and kills Renfield for warning Mina of his presence. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters, and confesses that he murdered Lucy and has been terrorizing Mina's friends. Though furious at first, 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 Romani 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 that slows her transformation. He surrounds them with a ring of fire to protect them from the brides, then kills the brides the following morning. Dracula's carriage arrives at the castle, pursued by the hunters. A fight between the hunters and Romani ensues. Morris is fatally stabbed in the back and Dracula bursts from his coffin at sunset. Jonathan slits his throat with a kukri knife while Morris stabs him in the heart. Van Helsing and Jonathan allow Mina to retreat with the Count while Morris dies in the arms of Holmwood, comforted by his friends.
In the chapel where he renounced God, Dracula lies dying. 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 freeing her from his curse. She then decapitates him and gazes up at a fresco of Vlad and Elisabeta ascending to heaven together, finally reunited.
Production[edit]
Development and casting[edit]
Ryder initially brought the script (written by James V. Hart) to the attention of Coppola.[22] 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.[23] 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 favorite stories from camp."[24] 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".[24] 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".[25] 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.[25][26]
Gary Oldman has stated that he never considered Count Dracula to be a "bucket list" role for him. He said about the main reason why his younger self agreed 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."[27] 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.[28]
Christian Slater was offered the role of Jonathan Harker, but he turned it down (a decision he later regretted).[29] 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."[25] 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."[30]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critics 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."[42] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[43]
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."[44] 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."[45] 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."[46]
Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 out of 4 stars, writing, "I enjoyed the movie simply for the way it looked and felt. Production designers Dante Ferretti and Thomas Sanders have outdone themselves. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, gets into the spirit so completely he always seems to light with shadows." Ebert did, however, voice criticisms over the film's "narrative confusions and dead ends".[47] Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film suffered from a "somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line" but that it "remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy."[48] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called the film "not particularly scary, not very sexy and dramatically over the top", criticizing the tone and several of the casting decisions.[49] Tom Hibbert of Empire was unimpressed. Awarding the film 2 out of 5 stars, he said, "Has a film ever promised so much yet delivered so little? [...] all we're left with is an overly long bloated adaptation, instead of what might have been a gothic masterpiece."[50] Geoffrey O'Brien of The New York Review of Books also had reservations: "[T]he romantic make-over of Dracula registers as little more than a marketing device designed to exploit the attractiveness of the movie's youthful cast [...] [it] rolls on a patina of the 'feel-good' uplift endemic in recent Hollywood movies."[51]
Bram Stoker's Dracula: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Home media[edit]
In 1993, the film received both a standard VHS release and a limited edition VHS release, the latter being a box set in the shape of a coffin. The limited edition release contained the film on VHS, which included a behind-the-scenes documentary, and the original Dracula novel by Bram Stoker in paperback. Grey, gothic statue heads (as seen on the original film poster) adorned the front cover of the book against a gray stone background. That same year, the Criterion Collection released a special edition LaserDisc of the film.
Dracula was first released to DVD in 1999[84] and again as a Superbit DVD in 2001.[85] The DVD included several extra features: filmographies, the original theatrical trailer, a documentary (Dracula: The Man, The Myth, The Legend), costume designs and DVD trailers. The Superbit version did not contain any extra features.[86]
A two-disc "Collector's Edition" DVD[87] and Blu-ray[88] was released in 2007. Special features include an introduction and audio commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola, deleted and extended scenes, teaser and full-length trailers, and the documentaries "The Blood Is the Life: The Making of Dracula", "The Costumes Are the Sets: The Design of Eiko Ishioka", "In Camera: The Naïve Visual Effects of Dracula", and "Method and Madness: Visualizing Dracula".
A 4K release was put out in 2017 using a new 4K scan of the original negative as the source.
Merchandise[edit]
A novelization of the film was published, written by Fred Saberhagen.[89] A four-issue comic book adaptation and 100 collectible cards based on the movie were released by the Topps company with art provided by Mike Mignola and a full script provided by Roy Thomas, using dialogue derived almost entirely from the film's script.[90][91] In 2018, IDW Publishing collected all four issues and released them in a trade paperback.[92] Various action figures and model sets were also produced. In addition to these items, accurate licensed replicas of Dracula's sword and Quincey's Bowie knife were available from Factory X.[93] Other merchandising for the film included a board game;[94] a pinball machine, which[95] was also adapted as a digital pinball game and re-released as downloadable content for The Pinball Arcade until June 30, 2018; and video game adaptations for various platforms.
In 2021 Funko POP vinyl figures from the film were announced for release: Van Helsing and three different versions of Dracula (in his old form, his young form in gray suit and top hat and as Vlad Tepes in red armor).[96] Thus, the film became the third live-action adaptation of Dracula that got Funko POPs (previous ones were Nosferatu based on 1922 film,[97] and Dracula based on 1931 film[98]).
The film had a considerable impact on popular culture and vampire representation in media. Costume design by Eiko Ishioka created a new image for the Count and for the first time freed him from the black cape and evening wear the character had become associated with since Bela Lugosi's portrayal in 1931.[99] The film was also a landmark in vampire horror as it is the only Dracula adaptation to win Oscars.[100]
The film is seen as a game changer by many critics, which established a tone and style that redefined cinematic vampires. It created a host of new vampire film tropes, like retractable fangs, vampires turning into literal bat-men, and a steampunk aesthetic.[101] Bram Stoker's Dracula, its partisans contend, is significant in the way that The Exorcist and The Shining were significant, in showing that a horror story can be worthy of an A-list cast and production values, and that a truly imaginative filmmaker can take even a story as hoary as Dracula and give it a new luster.[101]
Coppola's film began the cycle of prestige monster movies with big stars and name directors, as well as high production values and lavish costumes: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Robert De Niro as Frankenstein's Monster, Wolf (1994), directed by Mike Nichols and starring Jack Nicholson as Wolfman and Mary Reilly (1996), directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Malkovich as Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde and Julia Roberts as a maid, who develops a crush on the mad doctor and his crooked other self.[102][103] Coppola's film also influenced next big vampire movie/literatory adaptation - in 1994 Interview with the Vampire directed by Neil Jordan was released starring Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt, Brad Pitt as Louis and Kirsten Dunst as Claudia. According to Jordan: Up to that point, Francis Ford Coppola with Bram Stoker's Dracula, he introduced opulence and theatricality. Normally, before that one, I always thought of vampire movies as cheap, cobbled together, brilliant use of minimal resources. Francis made it this epic, didn't he? So when I was given the opportunity to make Interview with the Vampire, I thought, "Oh, it would be really great to expand on that epic sense of darkness and to give these characters huge, kind of romantic destinies and longings and feelings.[104]
The film was ranked as the best vampire film ever in Forbes' "Top 10 Best Vampire Movies Of All Time" list.[105] The film was also included in Entertainment Weekly's "5 best vampire movies",[106] Esquire's "20 Best Vampire Movies"[107] and "Sexiest Horror Movies Ever Made",[108] IndieWire's "The 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time"[109] and "The 12 Best Vampire Movies Ever Made".[110] Oldman's Dracula featured in Forbes's list of "Hollywood's Most Powerful Vampires",[111] as well as The Guardian's "10 best screen vampires".[112] He also was ranked as best version of Dracula by Screen Rant.[113] In honor of Syfy's 25th anniversary in 2017, the channel compiled "25 greatest" lists celebrating the last 25 years of all science fiction, fantasy, and horror: Oldman's Dracula was included in "The 25 Greatest Movie Performances from the Last 25 years".[114]