Prime Video Movie of the Day: Bram Stoker’s Dracula is Campy, Vampy, and Pretty Sexy
Vampires are sexy, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula know. With Francis Ford Coppola at the helm and a cast that includes Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Gary Oldman, it’s a lush, stunning and highly erotic horror film that’s so suspenseful it’s almost unbearable.
It’s grand. It’s operatic. It’s wildly over the top. And it’s not afraid to be silly. No wonder it’s so beloved. It’s one of the best Prime Video movies for goths, for film buffs, for anyone who wants a movie to, oh yeah, sink their teeth into.
They used to do things differently, and by used to I mean about 30 years ago: back then Bram Stoker’s Dracula was released in 1992, it was a breath of fresh air – if slightly coffin-smelling – compared to the rather tired Dracula films we had become accustomed to. That’s not to say there weren’t some great vampire films made in the years leading up to its release – The Lost Boysanyone? – but we had strayed some way from the true Gothic horror of Bram Stoker’s 1897 tale.
As Stoker’s name in the title suggests, this film was an attempt to address that, but it was mainly there to avoid a lawsuit: the author’s name is in the title because another studio owned the rights to the unique film. Dracula.
It is a beautiful production. Roger Ebert wrote that “the sets are a grand opera, a Gothic extravaganza interspersed with Victorian London of gaslights and foggy streets, villains in top hats and bad girls in bustiers,” and that lushness helps distract from the wooden dialogue and Keanu Reeves’ less-than-stellar performance: “I enjoyed the movie simply because of the way it looked and felt,” Ebert said.
Gary Oldman was an inspired choice for the Count. If The guard said in a 2022 retrospective review: “Oldman’s performance is excellent”; he is “the fierce and tormented earl who, hundreds of years ago, denied God and embraced an eternity of parasitic horror in his rage over the unjust death of his countess.” As for Keanu, he was just Keanu: “Reeves plays Jonathan with that innocent, slightly languid calm that audiences would come to know and love over the next three decades.”
As far as Squire As far as the film is concerned, this is “more than gothic horror. It’s a love letter to filmmaking,” a “deafening clap in an endless line of otherwise largely forgettable Dracula films.” Reviewer Dom Nero claims the film is “no different than Apocalypse Nowa terrifyingly terrifying work so full of ideas and ambitions that it always seems on the verge of complete self-immolation.”