Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992 film) – Wikipedia

Film directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American vampire horror film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and written by James V. Hart, based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.[4][5][6] The film stars Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, and Tom Waits. Set in 19th-century England and Romania, it follows the titular vampire (Oldman), who falls in love with Mina Murray (Ryder), the fiance of his solicitor Jonathan Harker (Reeves). When Dracula begins terrorizing Mina's friends, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Hopkins), an expert in vampirism, is summoned to bring an end to his reign of terror. Its closing credits theme "Love Song for a Vampire", is written and performed by Annie Lennox.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 1992, to positive reviews from critics,[7][8] though Reeves' performance and English accent were universally panned.[9][10][11] The film opened at the top of the box office, grossing $215.9 million against its $40 million budget, and was nominated in four categories at the 65th Academy Awards, winning Best Costume Design for Eiko Ishioka, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup, while also being nominated for Best Art Direction.

In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his beloved wife Elisabeta has committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. A priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church tells him that his wife's soul is damned to Hell for committing suicide. Enraged, Vlad desecrates the chapel and renounces the Christian God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. He then drives his sword into the chapel's stone cross and drinks the blood that pours from it, becoming a vampire.

In 1897, solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R. M. Renfield, who has gone insane and is now an inmate in Dr. Jack Seward's asylum. Jonathan travels to Dracula's castle in Transylvania to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisitions in London. Jonathan meets Dracula, who finds a picture of his fiance Mina Murray and believes she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be fed upon by his brides, while he sails to England with Transylvanian soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey.

In London, Dracula hypnotically seduces and bites Mina's best friend Lucy Westenra, with whom Mina is staying while Jonathan is in Transylvania. Lucy's deteriorating health and behavioral changes prompt former suitors Quincey Morris and Dr. Seward, along with her fianc Arthur Holmwood to summon Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Seward's mentor, who recognizes Lucy as being the victim of a vampire. Dracula, appearing young and handsome during daylight, meets and charms Mina. Mina develops feelings for Dracula, accompanying him on several outings. When Mina receives word from Jonathanwho has escaped the castle and recovered at a conventshe travels to Romania to marry him. A heartbroken Dracula transforms Lucy into a vampire. Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward, and Morris kill the undead Lucy the following night.

After he and Mina return to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead the others to Carfax Abbey, where they destroy the Count's boxes of soil. Dracula enters the asylum and kills Renfield for warning Mina of his presence. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters, and confesses that he murdered Lucy and has been terrorizing Mina's friends. Though furious at first, Mina admits that she still loves him and remembers Elisabeta's previous life; at her insistence, Dracula begins transforming her into a vampire. The hunters burst into the bedroom, and Dracula claims Mina as his bride before escaping. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and learns via her connection with Dracula that he is sailing home in his last remaining box. The hunters depart for Varna to intercept him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and evades them. The hunters split up; Van Helsing and Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while the others try to stop the Romani transporting Dracula.

At night, Van Helsing and Mina are approached by Dracula's brides. Mina succumbs to their chanting and attempts to seduce Van Helsing. Before Mina can feed on his blood, Van Helsing places a communion wafer on her forehead, leaving a mark that slows her transformation. He surrounds them with a ring of fire to protect them from the brides, then kills the brides the following morning. Dracula's carriage arrives at the castle, pursued by the hunters. A fight between the hunters and Romani ensues. Morris is fatally stabbed in the back and Dracula bursts from his coffin at sunset. Jonathan slits his throat with a kukri knife while Morris stabs him in the heart. Van Helsing and Jonathan allow Mina to retreat with the Count while Morris dies in the arms of Holmwood, comforted by his friends.

In the chapel where he renounced God, Dracula lies dying. He and Mina share a kiss as the candles adorning the chapel light up and the cross repairs itself. Dracula reverts to his younger self and asks Mina to give him peace. Mina thrusts the knife through his heart and as he dies, the mark on her forehead disappears freeing her from his curse. She then decapitates him and gazes up at a fresco of Vlad and Elisabeta ascending to heaven together, finally reunited.

In Stokers original novel, the Count is described through various terms of otherness. His foreign image and customs are translated into the monstrous Other, leading to an identity for the reader between the foreign and the monstrous. Dracula as a foreign Other is set as the marked term. The characters of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray in the novel represent the British Empire, which provides the unmarked, or normal, perspective in Dracula.[13] This binary set aligns with Edward Saids claim that the British have had a long tradition of coming to terms with the Orient as one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In the book, the threat of foreign infiltration is a palpable component to the social context in which it was written.[14] According to Deborah S. Wilson, "Dracula, produced at the apogee of Britains Empire, projects anxious themes of invasion and colonization upon a foreign culture, embodied in Count Dracula himself. As the feudal lord of a mysterious Balkan country, Dracula himself is described in consistently orientalist terms, terms that stress his racial alterity in all but purely negative terms".[15] Coppola's film reflects the change in attitude toward the racial Other that occurs over roughly a century by the 1990s, as in the film the general story and plot remain the same with certain important details changed to reflect the difference in racial understanding: the emotional connection between Mina Murray and Dracula in the film stretches beyond the racial boundaries and allowing a genuine interracial relationship to occur.[16] According to John Allen Stevenson the threat of the racial "Other" was "the real horror of Dracula, for he is the ultimate social adulterer, whose purpose is nothing if it is not to turn good Englishwomen...like Mina away from their own kind and customs".[17] Meanwhile in the film the interracial relationship between vampire (Dracula) and human (Mina) become permissible, culminating in the union of the human and the Other.[18]

Coppola's film makes a direct connection between Dracula's vampiric origin and occultism/satanism. In the opening scene of the film, after learning that his wife committed suicide and is denied salvation, Dracula denies God and makes a deal with the dark forces.This is symbolically verified with Dracula plunging his sword into the crucifix, which immediately starts to bleed excessive amounts of blood that Dracula drinks as a sign of "bloodpact" with the Devil.[19]

Upon release, The New York Times' Frank Rich suggested that the film drew upon the prevalent fear of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, a disease transmissible via contact/transfer of blood. Coppola, according to Rich, gives to the viewers a movie that both frightens and arouses them by playing off their unchecked fear of the spread of AIDS as an invasion of the national bloodstream.[20]

Van Helsing comments to his medical students that civilization and "syphilization" advanced together; this is viewed as much as a commentary on Coppola's timesduring the spread of HIV/AIDSas it was on Stoker's (who may have died of syphilis, as speculated in some biographies of Stoker).[21]

Ryder initially brought the script (written by James V. Hart) to the attention of Coppola.[22] The director had agreed to meet with her so the two could clear the air after her late withdrawal from The Godfather Part III caused production delays on that film and led her to believe Coppola disliked her.[23] According to Ryder: "I never really thought he would read it. He was so consumed with Godfather III. As I was leaving, I said, 'If you have a chance, read this script.' He glanced down at it politely, but when he saw the word Dracula, his eyes lit up. It was one of his favorite stories from camp."[24] Ryder also explained that "what attracted me to the script is the fact that it's a very emotional love story, which is not really what you think of when you think about Dracula. Mina, like many women in the late 1800s, has a lot of repressed sexuality. Everything about women in that era, the way those corsets forced them to move, was indicative of repression. To express passion was freakish".[24] Coppola was also attracted to the sensual elements of the screenplay and said that he wanted portions of the picture to resemble an "erotic dream".[25] In the months leading up to its release, Hollywood insiders who had seen the movie felt Coppola's film was too odd, violent and strange to succeed at the box office, and dubbed it "Bonfire of the Vampires" after the notorious 1990 box-office bomb The Bonfire of the Vanities.[25][26]

Gary Oldman has stated that he never considered Count Dracula to be a "bucket list" role for him. He said about the main reason why his younger self agreed to the role: "It was an opportunity to work with Coppola, who I consider one of the great American directors. That was enough, really. It was my first big American movie, made on a big set with lots of costumes. For a young actor, that was a tremendous experience."[27] Another reason why Oldman wanted to play Dracula was because he wanted to say: "I've crossed oceans of time to find you" and to him it was worth playing the role just to say that line.[28]

Christian Slater was offered the role of Jonathan Harker, but he turned it down (a decision he later regretted).[29] As for casting Keanu Reeves in the role, Coppola said of his casting choice: "We tried to get some kind of matine idol for the part of Jonathan, because it isn't such a great part. If we all were to go to the airport[...] Keanu is the one that the girls would just besiege."[25] Coppola has stated that Reeves worked harder on his accent than most people realized: "He tried so hard. That was the problem, actuallyhe wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it perfectly it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn't as critical of him, but that's because I like him personally so much. To this day he's a prince in my eyes."[30]

Coppola chose to invest a significant amount of the budget in costumes in order to showcase the actors, whom he considered the "jewels" of the feature.[23][25] He had an artist storyboard the entire film in advance to carefully illustrate each planned shot, a process which created around a thousand images.[23] He turned the drawings into a choppy animated film and added music, then spliced in scenes from the French version of Beauty and the Beast that Jean Cocteau directed in 1946 along with paintings by Gustav Klimt and other symbolist artists.[23] He showed the animated film to his designers to give them an idea of the mood and theme he was aiming for. Coppola also asked the set costume designers to simply bring him designs which were "weird". "'Weird' became a code word for 'Let's not do formula'", he later recalled. "'Give me something that either comes from the research or that comes from your own nightmares.' I gave them paintings, and I gave them drawings, and I talked to them about how I thought the imagery could work."[23]

The film's hair and makeup designer, Michle Burke, recalls: "Francis didn't want the typical Dracula that had already been done in Hollywood. He wanted something different; a new Dracula without the widow's peak, cape, or pale-white skin." Burke says she used her Catholic upbringing and angelic imagery for design inspiration, as well as the 19th-century attire created by costume designer Eiko Ishioka.[31]

Due to delays and cost overruns on some of Coppola's previous projects such as Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart, Coppola was determined to complete Bram Stoker's Dracula on time and on budget. To accomplish this he filmed on sound stages to avoid potential troubles caused by inclement weather.[23][25]

Coppola brought in acting coach Greta Seacat to coach Frost and Ryder for their erotic scenes, as he felt uncomfortable discussing sexuality with the young actresses.[23] However, he did ask Oldman to speak seductively off camera to Frost while they were filming a scene in which she writhed alone in her bed in ecstasy.[32] She later classified the things Oldman said to her as "very unrepeatable".[32][23][33] Winona Ryder found the intensity of Oldman's acting style too much at times; the two fell out early in the filming process and had difficulty working together from then on. Coppola stated, "they got along and then one day they didn'tabsolutely didn't get along. None of us were privy to what had happened."[32] Ryder has referred to the "trauma" of the experience and said that she "felt there was a danger" while working with Oldman.[34] However, she has also referred to her friction with Oldman as "teen drama", stating, "He [Gary] was going through a divorce, and I think I can say this because he's pretty open about it, but he's been sober for a long time now, and he's raised three kids, and he's a dream. He's a good friend of mine now".[35]

In 2020, Winona Ryder also said that Reeves and Hopkins once refused Coppola's direction to verbally abuse her to make her cry during a scene that required an emotional reaction.[36][37][38] However, Coppola denied that and described the situation as him instructing Oldmanin characterto whisper improvised words both to her and other actors on set to scare them. Ryder agreed with Coppola and a spokesperson for the actress stated that "He asked the actors in character to say horrible things to Winona as a technique to help her cry for the scene. Although that technique didn't work for her, she loves and respects him and considers it a great privilege to have worked with him."[39]

Coppola was insistent that he did not want to use any kind of contemporary special effects techniques such as computer-generated imagery when making the movie, instead wishing to use antiquated effects techniques from the early history of cinema, which he felt would be more appropriate given that the film's period setting coincides with the origin of film. He initially hired a standard visual effects team, but when they told him that the things he wanted to achieve were impossible without using modern digital technology, Coppola disagreed and fired them, replacing them with his son Roman Coppola. As a result, all of the visual effects seen in the film were achieved without the use of optical or computer-generated effects, but were created using on-set and in-camera methods. For example, any sequences that would have typically required the use of compositing were instead achieved by either rear projection with actors placed in front of a screen with an image projected behind them, or through multiple exposure by shooting a background slate then rewinding the film through the camera and shooting the foreground slate on the same piece of film, all the while using matting techniques to ensure that only the desired areas of film were exposed. Forced perspectives were often employed to combine miniature effects or matte paintings with full-sized elements, or create distorted views of reality, such as holding the camera upside down or at odd angles to create the effect of objects defying the laws of physics.[40] When filming Dracula's POV, Roman took individual images with his camera in an erratic way, sometimes only a few random frames per second, and then sudden bursts of several frames per second. For Lucy's movements, she did her performance backwards, and the film then processed in reverse.[41]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Overblown in the best sense of the word, Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Bram Stoker's Dracula rescues the character from decades of campy interpretationsand features some terrific performances to boot."[42] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[43]

Vincent Canby described the film as having been created with the "enthusiasm of a precocious film student who has magically acquired a master's command of his craft."[44] Richard Corliss said, "Coppola brings the old spook story alive[...] Everyone knows that Dracula has a heart; Coppola knows that it is more than an organ to drive a stake into. To the director, the count is a restless spirit who has been condemned for too many years to interment in cruddy movies. This luscious film restores the creature's nobility and gives him peace."[45] Alan Jones in Radio Times said, "Eerie, romantic and operatic, this exquisitely mounted revamp of the undead legend is a supreme artistic achievement[...] as the tired count who has overdosed on immortality, Gary Oldman's towering performance holds centre stage and burns itself into the memory."[46]

Roger Ebert awarded the film 3 out of 4 stars, writing, "I enjoyed the movie simply for the way it looked and felt. Production designers Dante Ferretti and Thomas Sanders have outdone themselves. The cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus, gets into the spirit so completely he always seems to light with shadows." Ebert did, however, voice criticisms over the film's "narrative confusions and dead ends".[47] Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film suffered from a "somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line" but that it "remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy."[48] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called the film "not particularly scary, not very sexy and dramatically over the top", criticizing the tone and several of the casting decisions.[49] Tom Hibbert of Empire was unimpressed. Awarding the film 2 out of 5 stars, he said, "Has a film ever promised so much yet delivered so little?[...] all we're left with is an overly long bloated adaptation, instead of what might have been a gothic masterpiece."[50] Geoffrey O'Brien of The New York Review of Books also had reservations: "[T]he romantic make-over of Dracula registers as little more than a marketing device designed to exploit the attractiveness of the movie's youthful cast[...] [it] rolls on a patina of the 'feel-good' uplift endemic in recent Hollywood movies."[51]

Empire's Tom Hibbert criticized Keanu Reeves's casting[50] and was not the only critic to consider the resultant performance to be weak. In a career retrospective compiled by Entertainment Weekly, Reeves was described as having been "out of his depth" and "frequently blasted off the screen by Gary Oldman".[52] Total Film writer Nathan Ditum included Reeves in his 2010 countdown of "The 29 Worst Movie Miscastings", describing him as "a dreary, milky nothing[...] a black hole of sex and drama".[53] Josh Winning, also of Total Film, said that Reeves's work spoiled the movie. He mentioned it in a 2011 list of the "50 Performances That Ruined Movies", and wrote: "You can visibly see Keanu attempting not to end every one of his lines with 'dude'. The result? A performance that looks like the young actor's perpetually constipated. Painful for all parties."[54] A feature by AskMen, called "Acting Miscasts That Ruined Movies", expressed a similar sentiment: "It's one thing to cast Keanu Reeves as an esteemed British lawyer, but it's quite another to ask him to act alongside Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins. The two Oscar nominees ran circles around the poor Canuck, exposing his lack of range, shoddy accent and abysmal instincts for all to see."[55]

Reeves's attempt at London vernacular has been cited as one of the worst accents, if not the worst, in the history of recorded film.[a] Virgin Media journalist Limara Salt, in listing the "Top 10 worst movie accents", wrote: "Keanu Reeves is consistently terrible at delivering any accent apart from Californian surfer dude but it's his English effort in Dracula that tops the lot. Overly posh and entirely ridiculous, Reeves's performance is as painful as it is hilarious."[61] Salt said that Winona Ryder is "equally rubbish",[61] an opinion echoed by Glen Levy in Time.[60] In his "Top 10 Worst Fake British Accents", he said that both actors "come up short in the accent (and, some might argue, acting) department", and that their London dialect made for "a literal horror show".[60] Conversely, Marc Savlov, writing for The Austin Chronicle, opined that Ryder was more impressive than Reeves and suited the role: "Ryder, seemingly the perfect choice for Dracula's obscure object of desire, Mina Harker, is better by far than Reeves".[64]

Bram Stoker's Dracula opened at number one at the US box office with a November record of $30,521,679, beating Back to the Future Part II.[65][66][67] This record was quickly surpassed by Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.[68] The film dropped off in subsequent weeks, losing 50.8% of its audience after its first weekend in release[69] and exiting the top five after three weeks. It became a box-office hit, grossing $82,522,790 in the United States and Canada, becoming the 15th-highest-grossing film of the year.[70] The film set an opening weekend record in the United Kingdom of $4 million, beating the record set by Batman Returns.[71][72] Internationally, the film grossed another $133,339,902 for a total worldwide gross of $215,862,692,[73] making it the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year worldwide.[74]As of 2023, adjusted for inflation, the movie's box office is $473.5 million, making it one of the highest-grossing vampire movies of all time.[75]

In 2018, the soundtrack had 3-CD set Limited Edition re-release: Disc One and Two of this re-issue presented the premiere of Kilar's "composed score", his music as originally written for the film. Disc Two also featured a bounty of alternate bonus cues from this material. Disc Three showcases the original 1992 album assembly, remastered, with additional bonus tracks.[83]

In 1993, the film received both a standard VHS release and a limited edition VHS release, the latter being a box set in the shape of a coffin. The limited edition release contained the film on VHS, which included a behind-the-scenes documentary, and the original Dracula novel by Bram Stoker in paperback. Grey, gothic statue heads (as seen on the original film poster) adorned the front cover of the book against a gray stone background. That same year, the Criterion Collection released a special edition LaserDisc of the film.[citation needed]

Dracula was first released to DVD in 1999[84] and again as a Superbit DVD in 2001.[85] The DVD included several extra features: filmographies, the original theatrical trailer, a documentary (Dracula: The Man, The Myth, The Legend), costume designs and DVD trailers. The Superbit version did not contain any extra features.[86]

A two-disc "Collector's Edition" DVD[87] and Blu-ray[88] was released in 2007. Special features include an introduction and audio commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola, deleted and extended scenes, teaser and full-length trailers, and the documentaries "The Blood Is the Life: The Making of Dracula", "The Costumes Are the Sets: The Design of Eiko Ishioka", "In Camera: The Nave Visual Effects of Dracula", and "Method and Madness: Visualizing Dracula".

A 4K release was put out in 2017 using a new 4K scan of the original negative as the source.

A novelization of the film was published, written by Fred Saberhagen.[89] A four-issue comic book adaptation and 100 collectible cards based on the movie were released by the Topps company with art provided by Mike Mignola and a full script provided by Roy Thomas, using dialogue derived almost entirely from the film's script.[90][91] In 2018, IDW Publishing collected all four issues and released them in a trade paperback.[92] Various action figures and model sets were also produced. In addition to these items, accurate licensed replicas of Dracula's sword and Quincey's Bowie knife were available from Factory X.[93] Other merchandising for the film included a board game;[94] a pinball machine, which[95] was also adapted as a digital pinball game and re-released as downloadable content for The Pinball Arcade until June 30, 2018; and video game adaptations for various platforms.

In 2021 Funko POP vinyl figures from the film were announced for release: Van Helsing and three different versions of Dracula (in his old form, his young form in gray suit and top hat and as Vlad Tepes in red armor).[96] Thus, the film became the third live-action adaptation of Dracula that got Funko POPs (previous ones were Nosferatu based on 1922 film,[97] and Dracula based on 1931 film[98]).

The film had a considerable impact on popular culture and vampire representation in media. Costume design by Eiko Ishioka created a new image for the Count and for the first time freed him from the black cape and evening wear the character had become associated with since Bela Lugosi's portrayal in 1931.[99] The film was also a landmark in vampire horror as it is the only Dracula adaptation to win Oscars.[100]

The film is seen as a game changer by many critics, which established a tone and style that redefined cinematic vampires. It created a host of new vampire film tropes, like retractable fangs, vampires turning into literal bat-men, and a steampunk aesthetic.[101] Bram Stoker's Dracula, its partisans contend, is significant in the way that The Exorcist and The Shining were significant, in showing that a horror story can be worthy of an A-list cast and production values, and that a truly imaginative filmmaker can take even a story as hoary as Dracula and give it a new luster.[101]

Coppola's film began the cycle of prestige monster movies with big stars and name directors, as well as high production values and lavish costumes: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Robert De Niro as Frankenstein's Monster, Wolf (1994), directed by Mike Nichols and starring Jack Nicholson as Wolfman and Mary Reilly (1996), directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Malkovich as Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde and Julia Roberts as a maid, who develops a crush on the mad doctor and his crooked other self.[102][103] Coppola's film also influenced next big vampire movie/literatory adaptation - in 1994 Interview with the Vampire directed by Neil Jordan was released starring Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt, Brad Pitt as Louis and Kirsten Dunst as Claudia. According to Jordan: Up to that point, Francis Ford Coppola with Bram Stoker's Dracula, he introduced opulence and theatricality. Normally, before that one, I always thought of vampire movies as cheap, cobbled together, brilliant use of minimal resources. Francis made it this epic, didn't he? So when I was given the opportunity to make Interview with the Vampire, I thought, "Oh, it would be really great to expand on that epic sense of darkness and to give these characters huge, kind of romantic destinies and longings and feelings.[104]

The film was ranked as the best vampire film ever in Forbes' "Top 10 Best Vampire Movies Of All Time" list.[105] The film was also included in Entertainment Weekly's "5 best vampire movies",[106] Esquire's "20 Best Vampire Movies"[107] and "Sexiest Horror Movies Ever Made",[108] IndieWire's "The 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time"[109] and "The 12 Best Vampire Movies Ever Made".[110] Oldman's Dracula featured in Forbes's list of "Hollywood's Most Powerful Vampires",[111] as well as The Guardian's "10 best screen vampires".[112] He also was ranked as best version of Dracula by Screen Rant.[113] In honor of Syfy's 25th anniversary in 2017, the channel compiled "25 greatest" lists celebrating the last 25 years of all science fiction, fantasy, and horror: Oldman's Dracula was included in "The 25 Greatest Movie Performances from the Last 25 years".[114]

Awards for Bram Stoker's Dracula

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Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 film) - Wikipedia