Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Collector’s Edition (1992/Francis Coppola/Blu-ray + DVD-Video)
Picture:
B-/C+ Sound: B- Extras: C Film: C
After
taking a long vacation from large production filmmaking, Francis Coppola
returned with his first hit in years turning Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) into his kind of film and story. This time, Dracula (Gary Oldman) would
surface in both his handsome and ugly personas, plus he would be a romantic and
victim instead of predator who was betray by Christianity. This was a very different take from the
previous film versions and though a surprise moneymaker (and one of the first
films to address AIDS in this context), I never thought it worked then and it
has not aged that well.
For a
more advanced background on Vampire Films, you may want to consult my essay on
the subject at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/essay/222/
To expand
upon what did and did not work about the film, there is no doubt the production
is top rate. Make up is better than the
usual latex slop, especially in the recent cycle of non Horror junk more
interested in gore, torture and murder, than telling a story. Costumes are good, though sometimes overdone,
as are some of the sets and visual references to earlier classics, sound and
silent. However, it is an ambitious
production that takes liberties not unlike John Badham’s 1979 version, but does
not succeed as much, though Badham’s version has problems of its own.
If you
cannot buy the premise, the film will not work.
If you try to buy the premise, the film still ruins into plenty of
trouble. Dracula denounces Christianity
and then some when love of his life Mina (Winona Ryder) kills herself because
she cannot stand his absence. This is
witnessed by a head of the church (Anthony Hopkins) who can see evil rise and
blood all over the place. The film then
forwards to the late 19th/early 20th Century period. Johnathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) is trying to
close a real estate deal with the Count alive and well in later centuries, but
his soul is the true real estate in question without him knowing it.
In the
meantime, Dracula schemes to return to his beloved Mina, who may have been
reincarnated as Elisabeth. From there,
it is a love story with some camera tricks, fancy editing, Tom Waits as
Renfield, more melodrama than Horror and a screenplay by Jim V. Hart
(Spielberg’s Hook) that proves once
again that multiple changes to a classic and its mythology do not equate either
innovation, weighty revision or a film that adds up to a well-rounded
experience.
Coppola
really tries here and only a master filmmaker with his level of cinematic
literacy could even begin to attempt this, but for this viewer, this is a film
that was lucky it was a hit thanks to timing.
The experimentation that makes the likes of One From The Heart (reviewed elsewhere on this site) a more
enduring work after all these years.
Still, it has its fans, but purists of the book and even vampire genre
in film would consider it a betrayal of the evil dark side Dracula is supposed
to represent. Is the film meant to be
forgiveness to his character? Possibly.
Others
like yours truly will not be so generous.
Many want their Dracula to be evil and not just as a scapegoat. When Hopkins shows up as Van Helsing in the
later period the film takes place in (and it does go back and fourth through
time in odd ways), the performance is so over the top that any suspense (where
any is intended) is killed immediately.
Reeves seems out of his element and Oldman (purposely not given any
initial direction by Coppola, upsetting him a good bit) cannot break the shadow
of Lugosi’s voice.
Within
five years, the first Blade film
arrived, making everyone forget this film, getting back to the basics of the
genre, becoming its own brief-lived franchise and even launching the Marvel
Comics film cycle still going strong billions of dollars later. Coppola produced a companion Frankenstein
film to this one directed by Kenneth Branagh that rightly bombed. So, how are these new versions?
The
prized collector’s item continues to be the 12” Criterion Collection LaserDisc
that still has extras even these new versions do not. Previously, the best DVD was the Superbit
edition with more room for picture and sound.
Unfortunately, both did not capture the film well and the Superbit
version even had an HD master. The 1080p
digital 1.85 X 1 High Definition image on the Blu-ray (and to a lesser extent,
the anamorphically enhanced DVD picture, where shadow detail is weak(er)) was
expected to be a correction of years of inadequate telecine work. The film was shot by the great Michael
Ballhaus, with amazing work on his resume, including with Rainer Werner
Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese. His work
here is sometimes complex and is the one thing that appreciates after years of
awful digital work. Unfortunately, it
looks like the Superbit’s HD master is being used here and that is bad. It is even worse on the DVD set, where the
picture is a tad weaker than the Superbit release.
Why
anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me, but it is not good and the
Blu-ray by default is the slimmest bit better than the Superbit. That master must have been 1080i, but could
it have been 720p? So what does that
mean for the sound? More bad news.
Before
the fall of Cinema Digital Sound and rise of three new digital sound formats
that all survived (DTS, Dolby and SDDS), Sony issued the film in Dolby Digital
theatrical and that was a 5.1 mix that won the Sound Effects editing Academy
Award. The DTS on the Superbit Edition
was even better than the Dolby on previous version, that version or this new
DVD set, but the Dolby here is especially compressed in English. If that was not bad enough, the French Dolby
Digital 5.1 track has more detail than the English mix!
What’s
worse, you would think the PCM 16/48 5.1 mix sounds compressed too and the
Superbit DTS could easily rival it. What
happened? Down to Wojciech Kilar’s
score, nothing sounds as good as it should or look as good as my Dolby Digital
35mm screening when the film opened.
Compare to the Superbit DTS, French Dolby on both of these new versions
or even the PCM 16/44.1 2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic surrounds on the Criterion
LaserDisc and you’ll hear what is missing.
Both
versions have the same extras, including an new on-camera intro by Coppola shot
in HD, audio commentary by Coppola that is more interesting than the film (DVD
One), a half-hour of deleted scenes, eleven trailers (two for this film) and
four brand new making of “documentaries” that are really featurette length with
the longest under a half-hour (DVD Two).
That is as complete as it is going to get, outside of what Criterion
still offers. Too bad the playback is so
problematic.
- Nicholas Sheffo
