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Dracula 2000
(2000 DVD)

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Shadow of the Vampire
(2000 DVD)

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Dracula movies have never gone out of fashion it seems, but after Hollywood played out its Dracula-Meets-Wolf-Man-Meets-Frankenstein-Meets-Abbott-and-Costello string in the mid-1900s, the creative impetus switched to England.

In particular, the Hammer Film studio launched a series of horror flicks that many discriminating fans swear are superior to the American efforts that had dominated the popular imagination. Lush colour, intelligent scripts and classically trained actors are the hallmarks of these films. They are obviously produced on a tight budget and so the special effects are limited, often implied through characters' reactions. They also tend to forego dramatic camera tricks to present more straightforward staging with a distinctive stateliness that you get only with British film. Plus the emphasis is placed on psychological development of characters rather than on emotional hysterics.

This is not to make the Hammer films out to be great works of arts—they are still melodramatic takes on popular cultural obsessions. But within the horror genre they are among the classiest chillers and thrillers.

Hammer's great director was Terence Fisher who worked mainly in the horror genre and made all the studio's classic flicks. Its great stars were Christopher Lee, who usually played the count, and Peter Cushing as his usual nemesis, Van Helsing.

In the studio's first entry, Fisher's Horror of Dracula (1958, originally named just Dracula), the title character is presented without all the gothic theatrics of Lugosi's—no spider-webbed castle stairs or wolves howling in the night. Rather Dracula's castle is clean, tasteful and (like most Hammer sets) somewhat overlit. The host seems a polite, reasonable sort of aristocrat. This makes his unveiling as the blood-sucking monster even scarier. For the first time on screen, the inflamed Dracula has fangs and reddened eyes—and the film doesn't forego gore either. Lee's Dracula turns out to be more selfish and brutal than Lugosi's, probably closer to Bram Stoker's idea, but at the same time even more elegant.

And Cushing is beyond doubt the best Van Helsing we've seen, a sophisticated, intelligent but driven man, someone you could really imagine devoting his life to the pursuit and eradication of evil. Horror of Dracula is really his movie.

Great liberties are taken with Bram Stoker's plot and characters. Harker comes to Dracula's castle somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, not to sell him real estate but to kill him. He fails and is turned into a vampire himself before his colleague Van Helsing arrives on the scene to put him to rest. Then the drama moves to the home of Harker's fiancée Lucy and her friends the Homewoods, who become stalked by the evil count. The action never leaves eastern Europe and all the secondary characters are switched around from what we expect form the book and previous films. But these changes are smart, making the story both fresh and more believable. No wonder many acclaim this to be the best Dracula ever.

Interestingly, although sexual desire plays a role in this Dracula, as it does in most versions, a greater parallel is drawn with drug addiction, with Van Helsing himself making a direct comparison briefly in one scene. He's got a point. Think about it. The disease is introduced through punctures in the skin, directly into the blood system. It changes the perceptions and the drives of those infected. They become desperate to get more of the same, until the addiction progresses beyond the point of no return and the victims become the walking dead, deeply desiring to be released from their bondage but unable to stop themselves from preying on everyone around them. Van Helsing's mission is to strike at the heart of the affliction, the head drug dealer if you will, in the person of Count Dracula. So goes the theory of Dracula's appeal as expressing an allegory for the fear of drugs or other modern addictions taking possession of us. I'll leave it to others to sort out whether this really makes sense, but it is exemplified in the widely acclaimed Cushing-Lee Horror of Dracula.

Despite the film's reception, Lee turned down a chance to star in the first sequel, The Brides of Dracula (1960). His presence is missed there but his absence also allows the film to go in a different direction. Cushing is back as Van Helsing, this time on the trail of vampire Baron Meinster. Meinster is kept chained by his mother the Baroness to keep him from his evil deeds but sweet schoolteacher Marianne, visiting the old castle, sets him free. Following which he goes after her of course. Visually it's a lusciously rich film and the plot is clever enough to take us on unforeseen twists, despite us knowing the inevitable ending.

David Peel is a vampire we haven't seen before, a spoiled, self-centred and young villain—a harbinger of Draculas to come—rather than the experienced nobility of Lugosi and Lee. (Oddly this was Peel's last substantial role as he retired from acting shortly after.) His mother, played by Martita Hunt, is a deliciously decadent old aristocrat who protects her son from the world and the world from her son. The "brides" of the title, by the way, play only a minor role in the film, acting as Meinster's minions.

This Lee-less Brides of Dracula is still a modest success, but the imposing actor is back some years later as the master vampire in the third instalment, Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966). However, this time Cushing is missing. The nemesis role is taken up by stout Andrew Keir as Father Kandor.

Prince of Darkness is not as good as Lee's first outing. The film begins with a recap of Van Helsing's disposal of Dracula at the end of Horror of Dracula, reshowing the last several minutes of that film. After that the prince of darkness doesn't return to the screen until halfway through. His recovery from certain destruction is logically unconvincing but makes for thrilling cinema. But his vocal cords must not have been reconstituted because we never get to hear Lee's sonorous voice again. (Actually the story is that Lee remains silent because he refused to utter the inane dialogue he was given). We do however get to hear some rather yappy victims of the vampire, four travellers who—in classic horror form—decide to spend the night in the mysterious castle. One of them, who nearly steals the show from Lee is Barbara Shelley, who became known as Britain's scream queen for her horror histrionics. (Ironically, her screams in this film are said to have been dubbed by co-star Suzan Farmer.)

The film wraps up according to formula, albeit with a few creative twists. In the end a new way to kill a vampire is found.

But not for long. In Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), an attempt to exorcise the spirit of Dracula from his castle ends up reviving him—and this time really ticking him off because he's banned from his home. So of course the local townsfolk become his prey once more, starting with the beautiful daughter of the monsignor who tried to exorcise him. This is the first of Hammer's Draculas not to be directed by Terence Fisher, but his cinematographer Freddie Francis fills in, making one of the more stylish films in the series. It's also the most sexually open Dracula film yet, with horny young lovers and occasional female nudity. And a memorably ghastly ending for the count.

Hammer continued to turn out Dracula films with various combinations of Lee, Cushing and other actors, though without Terence Fisher, including The Scars of Dracula (1970), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Dracula AD 1972 (1972), and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974). They never reached the heights of Fisher's first three Draculas though.

Don't get taken in by the title of Countess Dracula (1971). It's a decent Hammer horror flick based on the bloody deeds of a real-life character from the eighteenth century in Hungary, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, but it's got nothing to do with vampires, except that as she awaits execution at the end of the film the crowd starts chanting "Countess Dracula! Countess Dracula!" See it for the shots of bodacious scream queen Ingrid Pitt nakedly bathing in blood, but not to add to your Dracula lore.

The major Dracula movies that have come out more recently are quite different than those that went before. While the early Universal films were gothic horror flicks and the Hammer films brought more intelligence to the genre, later films would try with varying success to delve psychologically into what lies behind the horror.

A joint U.S.-British production of Dracula in 1979, for example, obviously sees it as a story of romantic possession. The iconic shot in this film is of a dashing, young Frank Langella, hair and cape streaming behind him, breaking into the bedroom of his female victim for an evening of passionate and bloody love.  In some ways this can be seen as an updating of the Lugosi version of 1931 and, sure enough, the  screenplay is based on the same Deane-Balderston play as the original. Like Lugosi, Langella is reprising on screen the role he played to acclaim on Broadway.

A few changes are made however. The action starts with Dracula arriving by ship in Yorkshire, England; Harker never went to Transylvania. In fact, the geography is also updated somewhat and the count is now said to be from Romania—though his sultry voice is without an East European accent.

Names also get switched around. In England his first victim, Mina, is Van Helsing's daughter. His second intended, Lucy, is Dr. Seward's daughter, as well as Jonathan Harker's fiancée. Van Helsing, played wearily by Laurence Olivier no less, is not much of a nemesis for Dracula either. For one thing he seems to have no prior knowledge of such paranormal phenomena, as Stoker's Van Helsing does, but rather he looks it all up in an encyclopedia. In the end it is left to Harker—usually the hapless cast-aside lover—to deliver the final blow.

Or does he? The ending is ambiguous, with Dracula defeated but seemingly escaping, and his lover Lucy is left with a smile on her lips.

This Dracula is a tragic love story, the closest to date that any serious adaptation comes to sympathizing with the vampire's point of view. Langella is vital, potent, and even slightly pathetic, in his attempt to find a mate to live through the centuries with him, raising her to live with him on another plane, high above mere mortals upon whom they will feast. Their coming together on that fateful night was an explosion of red heat. And his demise (if it is a demise) comes in the burning red light of a sunrise.

The period of this film is also moved ahead a few years, which allows the use of early motor vehicles in the chase scenes. But Dracula remains a Gothic horror with great sweeping camera work, ghostly atmosphere and romantic acting in the title role.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) goes further, stripping away the romance to reveal naked sexual heat below it. Director Francis Ford Coppola purportedly goes back to Stoker's novel, rather than to the play, for his basic story—though I doubt Bram Stoker would appreciate his sexy interpretation. Also this film adds a back story by which Dracula is seeking in Mina the reincarnation of a love lost centuries ago.

Gary Oldman is a fussy old vamp of a vampire who seduces...I mean, imprisons...Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker in Transylvania and then, rejuvenated as a jaunty young toff, travels to Victorian England where he takes up seducing—and I do mean seducing this time—Winona Ryder as Mina. Led by Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, Mina's friends rally to drive Dracula from England and chase him across Transylvania. This is the only version of Dracula I can think of that includes all these plot points from the novel.

Why then am I not crazy about it as many movie-goers seem to be? Perhaps because I found the novel itself rather laborious between the first few chapters and the concluding chase sequence. The Hollywood and Hammer films freely revised the narrative to bring out the exciting and fascinatingly repellent aspects of vampirism, while burying the tedious explication. Sure they glamourized and sensationalized it, but with Dracula that's not necessarily a bad thing. By remaining true to the original narrative, Coppola's film both gains and loses. Still it is one of the serious Dracula films you have got to see to understand the many ways Bram's Stoker's creation has touched us.

Bringing us into—or at least to the edge of—the twenty-first century, is Dracula 2000. This film is generally hated by Dracula buffs, mainly because of its last twenty minutes in which the vampire's origins are tied in with the betrayal of Christ by Judas. It's a clever idea but so wrong, wrong, wrong. Whatever your theory of Dracula's appeal, it has to do with something primal, sensual, pagan—definitely not the Easter story.

But aside from that unfortunate speculation, it's not a bad vampire flick. Gerard Butler is a sexy and dashing, if thoroughly evil, incarnation of the undead count, somewhat in the Langella mould. Christopher Plummer is a terrific Van Helsing, who has survived to current times due to having been infected by Dracula himself (Van Helsing periodically injects himself with a counter-agent). Plummer could have surpassed even Cushing as the greatest if given more screen time. Mary Heller is spunky as his daughter. The other actors are mainly TV stars who seem to be having a lot of fun camping it up as victims and/or servants of the dark master. Decent plot, dramatic twists, something like a good episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel. Worth a watch if you're into the genre.

Dracula fans, as well as film buffs, might also appreciate the aforementioned Shadow of the Vampire (2000), which is supposedly about the making of that original silent film, Nosferatu. Shadow of the Vampire imagines lead actor Max Shreck—an unrecognizably gaunt, bald and hideous Willem Dafoe—to be a real vampire who keeps eating the crew. John Malkovich is the obliging director Murnau intent on getting his masterpiece on film whatever—and whoever—it takes. It's blackly humorous, as well as artsy in a way John-Malkovich films often are. The sequences moving between the colourful reality of the film set and the greytoned footage seen through the camera lens are quite well done. If anything, this take-off may encourage you to have a look at the original film. (And watch for Udo Kier, the title character of Warhol's kitschy 1970s' Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, in a major role here a couple decades later.)

Then there are the out-and-out comic Draculas. The best and funniest for me is Love at First Bite (1979), a surprise hit in which George Hamilton plays Dracula for laughs. The count comes to New York to chase Susan Saint James as his bride to be. Arte Johnson is his Renfield and Richard Benjamin a youngish Van Helsing-type character. Very funny in a throwback kind of way. Biggest joke: how does Dracula get the tan that Hamilton famously sports?

Not quite as good is Mel Brooks's Dead and Loving It (1995), starring Leslie Nielson. This is actually a straight-ahead spoof of the original story, possibly inspired by Coppola's Dracula. If you like slapstick and obvious humour (I admit I do), you'll enjoy it. If not, you really don't need to see this. Except maybe to help you stop taking Dracula too seriously.