I remember renting the VHS of Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a teenager, liking the idea of a modern film making the Count scary again after the numerous films I’d found silly growing up. However, I decided to watch it very late at night curled up in my bed. Through no fault of the film (but of the cosiness I’d entrapped myself in) I kept dozing off and suddenly waking up, unaware I’d missed chunks of the movie.
By the end I’d become completely lost, utterly confused about what I thought were different creatures and the lack of Dracula (in reality all of them were him in his various forms of course). But being a teenager I blamed the film, incorrectly thinking it was a confusing mess and I never tried watching it again.
However, with Gary Oldman’s phenomenal portrayal of the slob, Jackson Lamb in the fantastic Slow Horses (Apple TV+) I began to investigate his filmography. Add to that the fact ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ appeared in the comics checklists of Dark Horse International’s Jurassic Park comic and my curiosity got the better of me. Finally convinced a sleepy teen hadn’t been the best person to judge the film I dived in and bought it (convinced enough by the cast and director) on iTunes for Hallowe’en 2023.
I was in awe of it from the moment it started. The opening scenes immediately made me realise all those previous Dracula films I’d seen growing up were camp nonsense by comparison. This was where I found out Vlad was actually a soldier for the Christian god, who turned against the church when they denied the soul of his true love into heaven because she’d committed suicide (after being tricked into believing her lover had died in battle).
It’s a big film yet so intricately designed, both beautiful and gruesome to look at in equal measure, and I love how it eschewed the new found love of CGI. Instead, director Francis Ford Coppola went for monstrous sets, physical effects and models to give it an old-fashioned Hollywood feel, perfectly suiting an update of a classic tale. It’s sumptuous.
Dracula had become a laughing stock in cinema but this film changed that. Gary’s depiction and Francis’ direction returned him to the supremely scary but ultimately heartbroken monster he was always meant to be. In researching for this post I also found out the movie established some vampire tropes I’d assumed were always there, such as retractable fangs and his turning into an actual man-bat.
If you’ve never seen it, please ignore the bandwagon jumpers who laugh at the idea of Keanu ‘Bill & Ted’ Reeves as an Englishman. His accent is clearly English but with a slight American twang and there’s no reason why a character who had travelled so much couldn’t have had such an accent. (There’s also the fact we know nothing of the background to this particular version of him.)
I think he’s perfect for the role of Jonathan Harker
According to Wikipedia, Francis stated that Keanu worked harder on his accent than most people realised: “He tried so hard. That was the problem, actually—he 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.”
Described by the BBC as “the nicest man in Hollywood”, I think Keanu is perfect for the role of Jonathan Harker; there’s an innocence to his portrayal and for the fist half of the film he represents the audience as the world of the Count reveals itself to him, and to us.
So I think you can tell I’m now a fan of the movie! Actually, I’m glad I didn’t like it as a teen as it meant I was able to see it in 2023 fresh, with only the occasional scattered memory coming back. It equally enthralled and terrified me. I immediately began trawling eBay looking for the comic series and came across a mint condition complete set just a couple of months later in January 2024.
Unfortunately, by the time they arrived I’d missed the date of issue one’s original release by just two days! So Dracula has sat on my self, unopened (except for quickly counting the pages to make sure they were all there) for a year and finally I’ll get to open and read that first issue in a few days.
Overall there are ten issues and I’m not aware if the stories inside will get a chance to end properly or just suddenly stop, nor what stories will be told after the adaptation (no spoilers please). All I know is that the “Bram Stoker’s” part of the title is dropped and the logo changes, so I’m assuming it’ll be Dracula strips from comics unrelated to the film. We shall see. Because of DHI’s hope to eventually have had it as an ongoing ‘Dracula’ comic that’s the name we’ll go by for the most part.
This is something new and different for the blog and as such I’m very much looking forward to (I’m sorry, you can see this coming a mile off, can’t you?) sinking my teeth into another Dark Horse International comic. This will take me right up to the next Hallowe’en viewing of the film too! Close the curtains and turn out the lights on Sunday 19th January 2025 for Dracula #1.
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