Is Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) A Masterpiece?

What did Francis Ford Coppola make?

Summer is over. Fall is here. Spooky season is upon us. I didn’t watch many (or any) horror movies as a kid because I was too chicken, but I have grown to love them as an adult. Especially during the pandemic, when I realized that no movie could possibly be as scary as our current reality. My nightmares were no longer filled with childish images of monsters and witches and goblins - they were the stress dreams of an increasingly anxious grown-up. As such, horror movies became…comforting? It’s a phenomenon anyone who is a fan of the genre experiences. A sacred, two-ish hour block of time where we can be scared by proxy, forgetting about whatever is actually keeping us up at night while getting a little adrenaline rush. It’s divine. 

On my journey to better educate myself in the genre, I found Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I was looking for something pulpy and pulse-racing to pass the time, and what I got was one of the most memorable movie-watching experiences of my life. If you haven’t seen it, you really should, and I am going to tell you precisely why. It is, without exaggeration, the most bonkers, coo-coo bananas, buck wild and horny movies I have ever seen. The script has the heightened and clipped dialogue of a '70s Hammer Horror classic. The costumes are luscious and incredible. The wigs are expensive. The sets are not. The acting is both impressive and inexcusably over the top. The direction is completely unhinged. To this day, I cannot tell you if I like this movie ironically because it’s fabulously ridiculous, or if I genuinely appreciate it as a cinematic achievement. And the truth is, it doesn’t really matter. I never get tired of watching this movie. It’s a masterpiece, and it’s a massive fuck-up. This is a film that swings for the fences and whiffs it in a way that makes me want to salute Coppola for the genius he is. But before we get too deep into the idiosyncrasies of this film, let me set the scene. 

Vampire movies are a time-honored tradition in horror, and the '90s were a great time for vampire flicks. Coppola’s contribution came early in the decade that would also see the release of classics like Interview with a Vampire, John Carpenter’s Vampires, and Blade. Guillermo del Toro’s film Cronos came out the same year, which is easily one of his best. The same can not be said of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I have spent endless hours wondering how the man that made The Godfather and Apocalypse Now also made a movie where Keanu Reeves has an orgy that includes Medusa and Gary Oldman sounds more like The Count from Sesame Street than Bela Lugosi. That being said, there is a lot to recommend about the film on balance. Its visual style and old-school approach to filmmaking made it influential - even if its more out-there aspects keep it from hitting its mark. All of the special effects are practical and/or in camera and Coppola, with the help of his son Roman, used a lot of techniques developed in the days of early film: double exposures, miniatures, forced perspectives, the list goes on. It’s a film that takes the craft of filmmaking so seriously that other things, like character, plot, and logic, become less important. 

The plot of the film adheres closely to the original novel. After an opening sequence narrated by Anthony Hopkins (who will return halfway through the film as Van Helsing) that tells the origin story of Dracula, we follow Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves), a middle-class banker engaged to Mina Murray (Winona Ryder), on his way to Transylvania to meet with Count Dracula (Gary Oldman). Dracula has been buying an inordinate amount of real estate in London, and Jonathan is replacing his predecessor Renfield as liaison to the eccentric Count. Once there, he is held captive and Dracula returns to London to woo Mina for himself. While he’s at it, he also seduces and turns her best friend Lucy into a vampire. A guy’s gotta eat, after all. On the brink of winning back the woman he loves, Mina flees to Romania where Jonathan has escaped, and they are married. They go back and forth from London to Romania one more time before the final showdown, where Dracula is eventually defeated. 

We see Dracula in vampire form for the first time about thirteen minutes in, pale-faced and in a wig and outfit I can only describe as fierce, holding a decorative lantern that looks like it came from Cost Plus World Market. And this really sums up the conflicting aspects of this movie. It’s highbrow and lowbrow, it’s so good and it's so so silly. It’s a costume that probably cost thousands of dollars to make, paired with a lantern that cost $10.99. Coppola is not known for subtlety, but I would put money on this movie being his least subtle. It’s clear that so much thought went into making this movie, so much respect and admiration for the form, and yet it is still so half-baked. This is mainly because Coppola, who was notorious for having his shoots go way past their initial schedule and wildly over budget, was determined to have this one in the can on time and relatively on the cheap. The stylistic choices that make it unique had the added advantage of being economical - no expensive computer-generated effects were used. Not only that, the whole film was shot on sound stages to save money and time. And it shows. 

The film is unquestionably ambitious in style and theme, taking a more “adult” approach to a classic story while still remaining faithful to the source material. As with most vampire movies, vampirism is taken as a metaphor for our baser instincts: lust, greed, selfishness, violence. Set in Victorian England, a notoriously repressed culture, the temptations of carnal desire are explored through Dracula’s quest to be reunited with the reincarnation of his wife from medieval Romania. Don’t think about it too hard. 

There is also something deeply weird (and somehow dorky) about how sexual this movie is. All vampire stories are essentially about seduction, but this one really takes it to a new level. The movie has major theater kid energy (I say this as a theater kid!), it is extra in every sense of the word. The scenes of sensuality and sexuality range from the coquettish to the borderline pornographic, but never in a way that achieves true eroticism. It feels too theatrical to be taken too seriously. And Coppola doesn’t help his actors much to navigate these tempestuous waters. Oldman and Ryder have little chemistry, most of their scenes just come off as a little creepy, and though Ryder’s chemistry with Reeves is better, there is precious little Keanu in the movie. The accent and dialect work is all over the place, making what are supposed to be compelling love scenes ripe for parody. At the time, Keanu in particular was blasted for his poor dialect work, but the truth is no one is very good, which only adds to the fun. The movie was intended to be a gothic melodrama and awards season contender, but without a bankable love story to anchor it, the film devolves into a frilly sexed-up romp with a lot of fake blood and way too many scenes of ladies moaning in their boudoir. 

For example, there’s a scene about a third of the way through where Lucy and Mina are hanging out in the garden, as ladies do, and it starts to rain. This makes them giggle uncontrollably - we’ve all been there - and the next thing you know they’re skipping through the garden’s maze making out. Which I’m pretty sure was not in the book. But there’s more! Sometime later, Lucy slinks back into the garden, having changed into a very revealing red negligee, which I’m assuming is only for special occasions, and floats around like she’s in a Kate Bush music video. Mina follows the sounds of her sighing and moaning until she turns a corner and sees her good buddy Lucy getting absolutely railed by Dracula in wolf bat form. The sequence is as crazy as it sounds. I think it’s supposed to be equal parts titillating and disturbing, but to a modern audience, to me anyway, it’s just goofy. 

None of this is to say that the film is not enjoyable. Even at its most absurd, the film is extremely entertaining. It’s worth watching for the cast alone. Reeves, Oldman, Ryder, and Hopkins are joined by the likes of Tom Waits, Cary Elwes, and Richard E. Grant and everyone is trying very hard to be serious in a movie that is anything but, coaxed into maximalist performances not by the spell of a vampire, but by the allure of a great auteur. There is something so charming and humanizing about one of the titans of American cinema making a movie that is so unintentionally campy, that it smooths all of the film’s blemishes into a seamlessly enjoyable experience. The beauty of the horror genre, like pizza, is that even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. Loving big genre films like this one taught me that a movie doesn’t need to be “good” to be fun or worthwhile. And there’s more room for imagination and experimentation than in other very codified genres like the Western or the Action movie. The nature of experimentation is the uncertainty, you don’t know if what you’re doing will work or not. It’s an ethos that appears less and less in mainstream Hollywood’s output, but a steadfast ethic of the horror world. One that keeps me coming back for more.