Dracula | |
---|---|
Directed by | John Badham |
Screenplay by | W. D. Richter |
Based on |
|
Produced by | Marvin Mirisch Walter Mirisch |
Starring | Frank Langella Laurence Olivier Donald Pleasence Kate Nelligan |
Cinematography | Gilbert Taylor |
Edited by | John Bloom |
Music by | John Williams |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 109 minutes |
Countries | United Kingdom United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $12.2 million |
Box office | $31.2 million |
Dracula is a 1979 gothic horror film directed by John Badham. The film starred Frank Langella in the title role as well as Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence and Kate Nelligan.
The film was based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula and its 1924 stage adaptation, though much of Stoker's original plot was revised to make the film—which was advertised with the tagline "A Love Story"—more romantic. The film received mostly positive reviews and was a moderate box office success. It won the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film.
In Whitby, Yorkshire in 1913, Count Dracula arrives from Transylvania via the ship Demeter one stormy night. Mina Van Helsing, who is visiting her friend Lucy Seward, discovers Dracula's body after his ship has run aground and rescues him. The Count visits Mina and her friends at the household of Lucy's father, Dr. Jack Seward, whose clifftop mansion also serves as the local asylum. At dinner, he proves to be a charming guest and leaves a strong impression on the hosts, especially Lucy. Less charmed by this handsome count is Jonathan Harker, Lucy's fiancé.
Later that night, while Lucy and Jonathan are having a secret rendezvous, Dracula reveals his true nature as he descends upon Mina to drink her blood. The following morning, Lucy finds Mina awake in bed, struggling for breath. Powerless, she watches her friend die, only to find wounds on her throat. Lucy blames herself for Mina's death, as she had left her alone.
At a loss for the cause of death, Dr. Seward calls in Mina's father, Professor Abraham Van Helsing, who suspects what might have killed his daughter: a vampire. He begins to worry about what fate his seemingly dead daughter may now have. Seward and Van Helsing investigate their suspicions and discover a roughly clawed opening within Mina's coffin, leading them to the local mines. It is there that they encounter the ghastly form of an undead Mina and it is up to a distraught Van Helsing to destroy what remains of his daughter.
Lucy has in the meantime been summoned to Carfax Abbey, Dracula's new home. She reveals herself to be in love with this foreign prince and openly offers herself to him as his bride. After a surreal "wedding night" sequence, Lucy, like Mina before her, is now infected by Dracula's blood. The two doctors manage to give Lucy a blood transfusion to slow her descent into vampirism, but she remains under Dracula's spell.
Now aided by Jonathan, the doctors realize that the only way to save Lucy is by destroying Dracula. They manage to locate his coffin within the grounds of Carfax Abbey, but the vampire is waiting for them. Despite it being daylight, Dracula is still a very powerful adversary. Dracula escapes their attempts to kill him, bursts into the asylum to free the captive Lucy and also scolds his slave, Milo Renfield, for warning the others about him. Renfield apologizes and pleads for his life, but Dracula kills him by breaking his neck. Dracula makes preparations to return to Transylvania with Lucy.
Harker and Van Helsing board the ship carrying Dracula and Lucy as cargo bound for Transylvania. Below decks, Harker and Van Helsing find Dracula and Lucy sleeping in a coffin. Van Helsing attempts to stake Dracula, but Lucy protests, waking Dracula. In the struggle, Van Helsing is fatally wounded by Dracula as he is impaled with the stake intended for the vampire. Dracula now concentrates his attention on Harker. Van Helsing uses his remaining strength to throw a hook attached to a rope, tied to the ship's rigging, into Dracula's back. Harker seizes his chance and hoists the count up through the cargo hold to the top of the ship's rigging, where he dies a painful death when the rays of the sun burn his body.
Van Helsing dies from his wounds. Lucy is now apparently herself again. Lucy smiles enigmatically as she notices Dracula's cape blow away into the horizon.
Like Universal's earlier 1931 version starring Bela Lugosi, the screenplay for this adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is based on the stage adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which ran on Broadway and also starred Langella in a Tony Award-nominated performance. Set in the Edwardian period, and strikingly designed by Edward Gorey, the play ran for over 900 performances between October 1977 and January 1980. Langella also appeared in the play for a limited run in the West End. The play is also known for switching the names of the characters of Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra. When Badham was asked why he had also switched their names in his film, he said that he could not quite remember but that maybe he and Richter "felt like Mina was a dopey name and that Lucy was kind of a nice name". [1]
The film was shot on location in England, at Shepperton Studios and Black Park, Buckinghamshire. Locations in Cornwall doubled for the majority of the exterior Whitby scenes; Tintagel (for Seward's Asylum), and St Michael's Mount (for Carfax Abbey). The Castle Dracula was a glass matte painted by Albert Whitlock. [2]
Gilbert Taylor was the cinematographer, and the original music score was contributed by John Williams.
According to Frank Langella, Count Dracula was "a dominant, aggressive force. He must have Miss Lucy or he dies. He wants what he wants and he doesn't analyze it. Dracula as a character is very erotic. ... A woman can be totally passive with Dracula: 'he made me drink, I couldn't help it.' ... Dracula seems to represent a kind of doorway to sexual abandonment not possible with a mere mortal. Besides, he's offering immortality. Actually, I can't think of a woman who wouldn't like to be taken if it's with love. If you take a woman by force and at the same time gently, you can't fail." [3]
Langella wanted to explore sides of the character which weren't shown before: "I decided he was a highly vulnerable and erotic man, not cool and detached and with no sense of humour or humanity. I didn't want him to appear stilted, stentorian or authoritarian as he's often presented. I wanted to show a man who, while evil, was lonely and could fall in love". [4]
Langella held this view many years after the release of the movie. In his 2017 interview during SITGES film festival he said that he "saw a gentleman in [Dracula], while the bad guys were the ones who wanted to destroy him, and we see that today in many instances: ignorance leads to the desire to destroy different people, there is the suffering of homosexuals, or women." Langella remembers that the beginning of shooting was very disorganized. The cinematographer was changed and they had continual changes of plans. However, the actor said that the process "turned out well" in the end. [5]
However, Langella's most vivid memories were his efforts to create a different Dracula. "I did not want to look like Bela Lugosi, or Christopher Lee", remembers Langella. He thus read the novel and found the character to be "gothic, elegant, lonely, without anyone who understood his problem, which consisted of the need for blood to survive." Langella also understood that the attraction that the character produced among women was key to realize his enormous "power of seduction", which Langella did not hesitate to use. [6]
Badham hired composer John Williams to write the musical score for the film. Williams was originally set to score Ronald Neame's sci-fi disaster Meteor , but numerous production delays forced Williams to step back from the project, freeing him to work with Badham. Williams recorded the score with the renowned London Symphony Orchestra in the spring of 1979. The original soundtrack album was released by MCA Records, followed by a Deluxe Edition encompassing the complete score by Varèse Sarabande in 2018.
In 1979, at least three Dracula films were released around the world: this film, West German director Werner Herzog's retelling as Nosferatu the Vampyre , and the comedy Love at First Bite . The success of the jokey Love at First Bite, starring George Hamilton, may have been relevant to the muted response this version experienced. The film opened at number one at the US box office with an opening weekend gross of $3,141,281 nationally from 455 theaters [7] [8] but performed modestly at the box office, grossing $20,158,970 domestically, and was seen as something of a disappointment by the studio.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times , gave the film 3½ stars out of 4, writing: "What an elegantly seen Dracula this is, all shadows and blood and vapors and Frank Langella stalking through with the grace of a cat. The film is a triumph of performance, art direction and mood over materials that can lend themselves so easily to self-satire...This Dracula restores the character to the purity of its first film appearances..." [9] Janet Maslin of The New York Times , stated: "In making this latest trip to the screen in living color, Dracula has lost some blood. The movie version ... is by no means lacking in stylishness; if anything, it's got style to spare. But so many of its sequences are at fever pitch, and the mood varies so drastically from episode to episode, that the pace becomes pointless, even taxing, after a while." [10] Film historian Leonard Maltin gave the film 1.5 out of a possible 4 stars, describing it as "Murky...with Langella's acclaimed Broadway interpretation sabotaged by trendy horror gimmicks and ill-conceived changes to Bram Stoker's novel." [11]
Year | Award / Film Festival | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
---|---|---|---|---|
1979 | 9th Paris International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Film | Golden Licorn (Best Film) | Dracula | Won |
1979 | Saturn Awards | Best Horror Film | Dracula | Won |
Best Actor | Frank Langella | Nominated | ||
Best Supporting Actor | Donald Pleasence | Nominated | ||
Best Director | John Badham | Nominated | ||
Best Make-up | Peter Robb-King | Nominated |
The movie made it onto Variety 's All-Time Horror Rentals in 1993, but it fell into relative cinematic obscurity for several years, partly due to it having a very limited video release outside of the US.[ citation needed ]
The 1979 theatrical version looks noticeably different from later prints. When the film was reissued for a widescreen laserdisc release in 1991, the director chose to alter the colour timing, desaturating the look of the film.
John Badham had intended to shoot the film in black and white (to mirror the monochrome 1931 film and the stark feel of the Gorey stage production), but Universal Studios executives objected. Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor was prompted to shoot the movie in warm, "golden" colours, to show off the distinctive production design. The original version has not been widely screened since the 1980s. Other than an occasional broadcast, such as on TCM in a pan and scan format, the movie has effectively been out of print.
In 2018, a 2.35:1 aspect ratio fan edit restored the theatrical colour timing based on the original laserdisc and VHS releases, as well as set photography and reference materials prompting an official release the following year.
A July 2019 Shout! Factory announcement revealed that the movie had been licensed to release the original 1979 theatrical colour version of Dracula on Blu-ray; it was released in November 2019.[ citation needed ] This is the first time the original 1979 Dracula has been made commercially available since first being released on VHS and laserdisc in 1982.[ citation needed ] It also includes the previously available desaturated version on another disc.
In November 2020, Black Hill Pictures and KOCH Media released a newly restored "cinema edition" featuring the 1979 colour version of Dracula on Blu-ray (Region B/2). This is the second time the original 1979 version has been made commercially available making use of higher quality source materials after the release of Shout! Factory's more aged uprint.[ citation needed ]
Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a fictional character from the 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula written by Bram Stoker. Van Helsing is a Dutch polymath doctor with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, partly attested by the string of letters that follows his name: "MD, D.Ph., D.Litt., etc.", indicating a wealth of experience, education and expertise. He is a doctor, professor, lawyer, philosopher, scientist, and metaphysician. The character is best known through many adaptations of the story as a vampire slayer, monster hunter and the arch-nemesis of Count Dracula, and the prototypical and the archetypal parapsychologist in subsequent works of paranormal fiction. Some later works tell new stories about Van Helsing, while others, such as Dracula (2020) and I Woke Up a Vampire (2023) have characters that are his descendants.
R. M. Renfield is a fictional character who appears in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. He is Count Dracula's deranged, fanatically devoted servant and familiar, helping him in his plan to turn Mina Harker into a vampire in return for a continuous supply of insects to consume and the promise of immortality. Throughout the novel, he resides in an asylum, where he is treated by Dr. John Seward.
Dracula: Dead and Loving It is a 1995 comedy horror film directed by Mel Brooks and starring Leslie Nielsen. It is a spoof of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and of some of the story's well-known adaptations. Brooks co-authored the screenplay with Steve Haberman and Rudy De Luca. He also appears as Dr. Van Helsing. The film's other stars include Steven Weber, Amy Yasbeck, Peter MacNicol, Harvey Korman, and Anne Bancroft.
Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code supernatural horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi in the title role. It is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Lugosi portrays Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée.
Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character and the main female character in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula.
Quincey P. Morris is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic novel Dracula.
Dracula, the Musical is a musical based on the original 1897 Victorian novel by Bram Stoker. The score is by Frank Wildhorn, with lyrics and book by Don Black and Christopher Hampton.
Jonathan Harker is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. An English solicitor, his journey to Transylvania and encounter with the vampire Count Dracula and his Brides at Castle Dracula constitutes the dramatic opening scenes in the novel and most of the film adaptations.
Count Dracula is a 1970 horror film directed and co-written by Jesús Franco, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. It stars Christopher Lee as Dracula, Herbert Lom as Van Helsing, and Klaus Kinski as Renfield, along with Fred Williams, Maria Rohm, Soledad Miranda, Paul Muller, and Jack Taylor.
John "Jack" Seward, M.D. is a fictional character appearing in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
"Dracula" is a video-taped television play adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, part of the series Mystery and Imagination. Denholm Elliott played Count Dracula with Susan George as Lucy Weston.
Count Dracula is a British television adaptation of the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Produced by the BBC, it first aired on BBC 2 on 22 December 1977. It is among the more faithful of the many adaptations of the original book. Directed by Philip Saville from a screenplay by Gerald Savory, it stars Louis Jourdan as Count Dracula and Frank Finlay as Professor Van Helsing.
Count Dracula is the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula. He is considered the prototypical and archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. Aspects of the character are believed by some to have been inspired by the 15th-century Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler, who was also known as Vlad Dracula, and by Sir Henry Irving and Jacques Damala, actors with aristocratic backgrounds that Stoker had met during his life.
Dracula, also known as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Dan Curtis' Dracula, is a 1974 British made-for-television gothic horror film and adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. It was written by Richard Matheson and directed by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis, with Jack Palance in the title role. It was the second collaboration for Curtis and Palance after the 1968 TV film The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Dracula is a television adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, produced by Granada Television for WGBH Boston and BBC Wales in 2006. It was directed by Bill Eagles and written by Stewart Harcourt.
Dracula is a stage play written by the Irish actor and playwright Hamilton Deane in 1924, then revised by the American writer John L. Balderston in 1927. It was the first authorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. After touring in England, the original version of the play appeared at London's Little Theatre in July 1927, where it was seen by the American producer Horace Liveright. Liveright asked Balderston to revise the play for a Broadway production that opened at the Fulton Theatre in October 1927. This production starred Bela Lugosi in his first major English-speaking role.
Dracula is an adaptation, first published in 1996, by American playwright Steven Dietz of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel by the same name. Though it has never run on Broadway, the author lists it among his most financially successful works, and it is frequently performed near Halloween in regional and community theaters. Closely following the plot of the novel, the play chronicles Count Dracula's journey to England, his stalking of two young women, and his pursuit and eventual defeat by the heroines' suitors and their associates.
Dracula: A Chamber Musical is a 1997 Canadian musical adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. The book and lyrics are by Richard Ouzounian and the music and orchestration are by Marek Norman. After premiering at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1997, Dracula in 1999 became the first Canadian musical to be staged at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
Dracula the Un-dead is a 2009 sequel to Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula. The book was written by Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt. Previously, Holt had been a direct-to-DVD horror screenwriter, and Stoker a track and field coach.
Hrabě Drakula is a Czechoslovakian 1971 black and white TV film adaptation of Bram Stoker's original novel Dracula.
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