Friday, October 30, 2020

13 Rats of Halloween #12



I am never sure which I love more -- the person-shaped rat-pile that Gary Oldman turns into in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula, or...

... Cary Elwes' slow-motion shock-n-stache reaction 
to said rat-pile. I'm gonna call it a toss-up. 

(But only because I already wrote up this movie's mustaches last year.) God I do adore this movie so. And thankfully we've indoctrinated another member into our cult -- our pal Michael Cusumano wrote up a splendid piece at The Film Experience just yesterday, admitting he'd somehow never seen this movie until now, and how very very empty his life had been without it. I added the "empty" part but come on! Obviously!

Also, a happy one-day-belated birthday to our gal Winona Ryder! I love that Coppola shows one of the rats nipping at her toes in this moment -- do recall that thirty seconds earlier she'd been banging the hell out of that pile-of-rats. Sexually speaking. Makes one wonder which part of Dracula that rat nipping at her heel comprises. 

Anyway like all good re-tellings of the Dracula story there are rats all over Coppola's film -- and, spoiler alert, more on this tomorrow with our final entry in this year's "13 Rats of Halloween countdown! -- but this is really their moment to shine. Out of all the on-screen forms that Drac takes in this version -- green mist, erect werewolf, John Lennon -- the pile-o-rats has always been my favorite. It just has that certain je ne se quoi you're looking for. I think it's the dramatic unfolding of its arms, all like, "Here I am, bitches! Come'n get me!" that really seals the deal.



No comments: