Tuesday, April 07, 2020

Bram Stoker's Dracula Came & Conquered

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There are maybe half a dozen movies I could point at and say, "This is the movie that made me a Movie Nerd," and Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is a biggie. And I don't mean just a Horror Movie Nerd -- I mean an all-around Nerd About The Movies, of any and all genres. As a 14-year-old at the time it came out I wasn't allowed to see anything R-rated in the theater due to my religious upbringing -- I kicked a hole in my mother's bedroom door throwing a fit when she refused to take me, proving yes it's true, I have always been a little bitch. It's probably for the best she said no though -- Keanu getting his dick bitten by three topless vampire concubines would've been a real awkward watch with my mother sitting beside me. 

I didn't see the film until it hit home video -- for some reason what I rented at the video store hardly got policed -- but I already knew it pretty well by then thanks to the companion book about the making of the film that came out alongside it, a copy of which I managed to snag at the bookstore at the mall while on my own. I studied that book like the bible, reading it back to front several times, and what a smashing introductory film education it proved for a kid who didn't know jack-shit about The Movies. 

Coppola (who by the way is celebrating his 81st birthday today) utilizes all sorts of classic techniques over the course of the film -- I learned about rear-projection, about running the film backwards, about playing with exposures and matte paintings and forced perspective. The section about Eiko Ishioka's astonishing and over-the-top costumes was also real formative -- hearing what went into the choices she and Coppola made, the way they were referencing not just film history but all sorts of outside arts, and why they were making those choices, gave me an understanding of the film crafts, the reach of them, for the very first time. This film is a treasure trove for cinema home-schooling.

Anyway for today's "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" over at The Film Experience I wrote up my thoughts on probably my favorite performance in the film, that of Sadie Frost as Mina's tragic friend Lucy, and how her work alongside Ishioka's specifically walks the perfect line -- the film flies highest, if you ask me, where the twain meet. The overheated tone, the gothic posturing, the big swings towards silent cinema and kabuki theater, they all come together like nothing else ever put on screen with Frost's work, a fireball for the ages.

5 comments:

schmiedepaul said...

Word. Will always have a special place here, since me and my schoolfriends saw it after all just turning 18. And guess what, that day we all gave blood for the first time and right after went to see this :-) Nobody fainted.
Love Song For A Vampire / Little Bird was also a big hit in the UK. I love these tunes despite not really being an Annie Lennox fan.

Selenne Dionne said...

That was the movie that gave Monica Bellucci some exposure (she was one of the cock bitters)

shaun said...

I had a renaissance with Love Song for a Vampire last year -- that is a SOLID song -- holds up very well.

Lucy also was the highlight of the movie for me, and each of her suitors was a rather impressive specimen as well ;)

Laramie Dean said...

I was obsessed with that movie the summer of '93. My thoughtful parents gifted me with the script you've described for Christmas that year, and I spent the entire summer poring over it. The design elements continue to hold up, especially Lucy's frilled lizard wedding/death dress!

Anonymous said...

The scariest monster of my childhood the vampire and this particular Dracula is the scariest. That hair and the long train when he walks on the walls...

Now that I look back it's a straight male's film though (and lesbians by default ;)) - Monica Bellucci's breasts and a monster having sex with a nude woman :(

Damn when will we have a movie with a male beauty and a female beast (or male). Imagine the classic beastilaity allegations against us...