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Bram Stoker's Dracula
(Vampire/literature) 7*******skulls
* Blood * Violent * No Strong Language * Some Nudity *
* Sexual Situations * Not Particularly Gory *
1992/Color/130 Min./Columbia Tristar Home Video & Columbia Pictures & American Zoetrope & Osiris Films/Rated R
Director............Francis Ford Coppola (Appocalypse Now, Godfather)
Screenplay......James V. Hart
Music...............Wojciech Kilar
Producer..........Francis Ford Coppola & Fred Fuchs
& Charles Mulvehill
Based on the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
Special Makeup effects by Greg Cannom
Dramatis Personae
Dracula.............Gary Oldman (Sid and Nancy, State of Grace, Track 29)
Wilhelmina.......Winona Ryder (Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice)
Dr. von Helsing..Anthony Hopkins (Magic, Silence of the Lambs)
Jonathan...........Keanu Reeves (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure)
Dr. Jack Seward..Richard E. Grant (Henry and June, The Player, Warlock)
Arthur Helmwood..Cary Elwes (Glory, Hot Shots, The Princess Bride)
Quincy P. Morris....Bill Campbell (Crime Story, The Rocketeer)
Lucy Wessenra.....Sadie Frost (Splitting Heirs)
Renfield...............Tom Waits (Down by Law, Ironweed, Rumble Fish)
Critique: Why is "Dracula" an eight despite all the hype? It should have chosen to show the development of the love story in more detail or concentrate on effecting some horror. It didn't. Still, the view of London on the verge of the twentieth century with its conflations of science and the occult is intriguing. Great makeup, acting, story and good movie.
Plot Summary: In 1462 Muslim Turks swept into Europe threatening all of Christianity. A Rumanian knight, Count Dracula, left his bride, the Princess Elisabethe, for battle. She commits suicide after false notice of his death and, by the church's lights, loses her soul. Dracula renounces the church he risked his life for and swears to return from his own death to exact a horrible revenge for hers. The film resumes in 19th century London with young Jonathan Harkin on his way to visit Dracula on business and tells the tale through the diaries and letters of Jonathan and his fiance Mina. The Count purchases ten houses, placed evenly around London, and, seeing the picture of Mina so resembling the lost Elizabethe, holds Jonathan prisoner in his castle. He then moves on to England to steal Mina. The bloody battle of seduction begins when Dracula adopts a consort in Lucy, Mina's best friend, while at the same time seducing the lonely Mina. Jonathan's escape from the castle and subsequent marriage to Mina only serve to retard the inevitable seduction. Von Helsing, who has seen to the destruction of Dracula's havens in London, leads Jonathan and a pack of Lucy's former boyfriends to Rumania in a race to intercept the fleeing vampire before he reaches his castle where he will be indestructible.
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