Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Sadie Frost, Richard E. Grant, Tom Waits, Cary Elwes, Bill Campbell. [R]

Coppola pulled out all the stops for this baroque, blood-soaked reimagination of Bram Stoker’s horror novel, steeped in operatic tragedy and the sexual throes of a trashy bodice-ripper. In this telling, Oldman’s cursed count (née Vlad the Impaler, Prince of Wallachia) carries the eternal torch for his departed beloved (Ryder) in his decrepit Transylvanian castle, but when he discovers that the fiancée of visiting solicitor Reeves is her spitting image, the vampiric romantic feeds the dupe to his bloodsucking wives and travels to England to make her his own (and maybe snack on her best friend, too). The fragmented storytelling may be tough to follow for anyone not educated in the lore and characters, and the performances vary wildly—Ryder is sensuous, Reeves is wooden, Hopkins (as Van Helsing) is a glazed ham, and so on—but as an unbridled feast for the senses, imagination, and raw emotions, it’s almost in a category all by itself. Long after the sketchy plot details and fustian dialogue have faded from memory, the images remain, bold and shadowy and voluptuous, without any semblance of logic or restraint, as if the entire film was designed to be a long, hazy dream that lurches in and out of skin-crawling nightmare. Oscar winner for Costume Design, Makeup, and Sound Effects Editing. One of Dracula’s brides is played by Monica Bellucci.

79/100