BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, psychological*

I'm sure others have said this before me, but this film's proper title ought to be FRANCIS COPPOLA'S DRACULA, given how often the director and writer James V. Hart diverge from the famous book. If there's one thing Coppola gets right, though, it's that he infuses this remake of the familiar story a great deal of high-octane action and sensuality. Even though some scenes go off the rails, Coppola's grand-opera version is still truer to the essence of Bram Stoker's blood-and-thunder opus than the many movies whose principal inspiration was the DRACULA stage-play.

Scripter Hart gives Dracula (Gary Oldman) a god-scorning "origin" with only tangential relevance to the vampire-lord's background in the novel. As Vlad the Impaler (whose impalings of enemies are visually compared to vampiric stakings), the 15th-century Romanian count distinguishes himself by defeating an Ottoman invasion of his land. But his beloved bride Elisabeta (Winona Ryder) believes him slain in battle, so she takes her own life. Pious Christian priests inform the grieving count that suicides cannot receive burial, so Vlad drives his sword into a Christian icon to signal his apostacy. The icon, possibly due to Coppola being Catholic, sheds blood, and Vlad blasphemes by drinking it, thus becoming a vampire who rules Transylvania with a heavy hand for the next four hundred years.

In the late 19th century, English solicitor Harker (Keanu Reeves) comes to Castle Dracula to arrange the Count's purchase of Carfax Abbey in England. (He is, incidentally, following up on a botched voyage by another firm-agent, Renfield, which seems to be an example of Hart wanting to reference the well known rewriting of Renfield for the 1931 DRACULA.) Despite the use of some impressive effect during Harker's arrival, reproducing the novel's use of a "St. Elmo's fire" phenomenon, the opening scenes of Harker meeting a powdered, periwigged version of Count Dracula almost sink the film. I don't know what Copppola and company were referencing with this odd imagery, but it seems counter-intuitive. After all, one of the major rewritings of Stoker in this DRACULA is that Oldman's Count is going to be a romantic seducer of Harker's fiancess Mina (also Winona Ryder), so why put your *homme fatale* in powder and wig?

Still, Stoker's material holds up, and Coppola gets good mileage out of the vampire-brides scene and the Count's ability to crawl up a castle-wall like a lizard. The Count departs for England, leaving Harker to the tender mercies of the brides. This actually makes a jot more sense than the novel, where Harker seems largely unsupervised when he finally escapes the castle. Novel-Harker manages to avoid being orally violated by the brides, but he's turned into fang-bang material here-- which may be a way of foreshadowing the fate of his fiancee.

The novel's original Mina is fairly straitlaced, and her friend Lucy, while she memorably fantasizes about marrying three men, is also a "good girl." But before either of the Coppola versions encounter the Count in any form whatever, it's clear that these girls of Victorian England are horny young chicks. As per the standard trope, Dracula preys on the randier Lucy (Sadie Frost) first, though Coppola is probably the first to suggest that Drac takes Lucy in a quasi-werewolf form. Lucy sickens from loss of blood, upsetting Mina and Lucy's three prospective fiancees. leading one of them to summon the help of renowned medical doctor Van Helsing (a tongue-in-cheek Anthony Hopkins). 

But hey, wasn't Drac supposed to be obsessed with being reunited with Mina, whom he believes the reincarnation of his lost Elisabeta? Maybe he just needed a pick-me-up? Anyway, he finally approaches Mina in the London streets, and despite her demure protests she's clearly fascinated with the stranger who wears dark sunglasses and discourses on that new cinematic invention, the Kinetograph. In theory Mina is tempted to "walk on the wild side," though she's not being forced the way her beleaguered fiancee was. Drac's seduction is interrupted when Mina gets news that the injured Harker is being cared for in a Romanian convent, so she goes to him. 

Meanwhile, while Mina collects the dissipated Harker and brings him back to London, Van Helsing discloses the truth of Lucy's condition to her aggrieved boyfriends, and enlists their aid to return the vampirized vamp to her eternal rest. Harker joins the fearless vampire hunters in destroying Dracula's back-up coffins of holy Romanian soil. The Count retaliates by turning Mina into an undead. This backfires somewhat in that both Drac and Mina now share an empathic link, and they can to some extent spy on one another. This parallels events of the novel, in which Mina helps the hunters track the Count while fighting her own attraction to the vamp life, though not to any reincarnated destiny.

Beset on all sides, Dracula flees back to Transylvania. The hunters pursue, and Coppola pulls off a great cinematic version of the novel's equally exciting chase scene, as Drac's gypsies try to get his coffin-bound form back to his castle while the pursuers hope to slay the bloodsucker before the sun goes down. Hart preserves the bloody fight between the humans and their undead enemy, but in deference to his inserted reincarnation theme, this time Mina gets to strike the killing blow, which is also something of a mercy killing to the tormented aristocrat.

Stoker's Dracula was not a charming seducer, but the author's juxtaposition of sex and death throughout the vampire lord's depredations inevitably lent itself to a greater emphasis on romantic conquest. As I said, some scenes are a trifle overbaked, but on the whole I prefer Coppola's operatic approach to the simplification of vampire mythology, as one sees in various Hammer iterations of Dracula. (And don't even get me started on Matheson's I AM LEGEND...)