Dracula (1979 film)

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Dracula
Directed by John Badham
Produced by Marvin Mirisch (executive)
Walter Mirisch
Written by Novel:
Bram Stoker
Stage play:
Hamilton Deane
John L. Balderston
Screenplay:
W.D. Richter
Starring Frank Langella
Laurence Olivier
Donald Pleasence
Kate Nelligan
Music by John Williams
Cinematography Gilbert Taylor
Editing by John Bloom
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) July 13, 1979
Running time 109 min.
Country United States
United Kingdom
Language English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Dracula is a 1979 horror/romance film starring Frank Langella as Count Dracula. The film was directed by John Badham. The original music score is composed by John Williams. The film's tagline is: "Throughout history, he has filled the hearts of men with pure terror and hearts of women with pure desire."

The film also starred Laurence Olivier as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Jack Seward, Kate Nelligan as Lucy Seward, Trevor Eve as Jonathan Harker, Tony Haygarth as Milo Renfield, and Jan Francis as Mina Van Helsing. It won the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film.

Like Universal's earlier 1931 version starring Bela Lugosi, the screenplay for this adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is based on the Hamilton Deane/John L. Balderston play which ran on Broadway and also starred Langella in a Tony Award-nominated performance. Notable for its Edwardian setting, and strikingly designed by Edward Gorey, the play ran for over 900 performances between October 1977 and January 1980.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

At the turn of the 20th century (circa 1920s), a schooner is wrecked off Whitby, England. The sole survivor is Count Dracula, who has arrived with large amounts of Transylvanian soil to take up residence in Carfax Abbey, London. He makes friends with Dr. Jack Seward, who runs the local insane asylum; with his daughter Lucy; with her friend Mina Van Helsing; and with the solicitor Jonathan Harker, Lucy's fiancé. But almost immediately, Mina dies from loss of blood, and just possibly this may not be a coincidence. Professor Abraham Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Harker and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Lucy from becoming one of the undead. For Van Helsing, Harker, and Seward, the battle has just begun.

[edit] Critical response

In 1979, no less than three major Dracula movies were released simultaneously around the world: Werner Herzog's arthouse re-telling Nosferatu the Vampyre, and released just prior to John Badham's romantic update, the comedy Love At First Bite. The success of the jokey George Hamilton starring film may have had something to do with the muted response Badham's film would subsequently experience. The film performed modestly at the box office and was met with mixed reviews, some feeling the film was too light on actual horror, especially in the wake of two bloody decades of Hammer Horror interpretations; while others found the movie to be an atmospheric take on the legend, praising the impressive sets and John Williams lush classical score. The film also boasts some stand out moments: such as Dracula's seduction of Lucy (Kate Nelligan) in his newly acquired gothic ruin, Carfax Abbey, and the chilling mine shaft sequence as Van Helsing (Laurence Olivier) is forced to stake his vampirized daughter Mina (Jan Francis) (not your usual voluptuous bride of Dracula, but a hideous rotting corpse with red, red, eyes).

Although John Badham's Dracula wasn't quite the hit the studio were expecting, eventually falling into relative cinematic anonymity in more recent years (partly due to it having a limited VHS and DVD release outside of the USA), one thing critics and audiences did agree on however was Frank Langella's commanding and erotic interpretation of the Count, some regarding Langella as the best Dracula since Bela Lugosi.

[edit] Main cast

[edit] DVD and video re-coloring

The theatrical version of the movie is noticeably different from the DVD release as John Badham re-visited the movie in the 1990's and altered the color balance (initially for laserdisc release). Badham had originally wanted to shoot the film in black and white, but Universal blankly refused. While the 1979 version is full of warm 'golden' colors, which help show off the stunning production design, the newer prints are virtually colorless, prompting many arguments on internet DVD forums.

[edit] Trivia

  • The so-called 'wedding night' scene, when Dracula finally sinks his fangs into Lucy, and making her his bride, was in fact directed by famed James Bond title sequence helmer, Maurice Binder. Binder employed lasers, which were borrowed from rock band The Who whilst they were on tour, to achieve the distinctive look.
  • Controversially, Langella’s Dracula is never seen with either fangs or wolf eyes (though the female vampires in the film do sport this classic attire). This was due to the insistence of Langella, who argued the case for a more believable monster, against strong opposition from the studio and the director.
  • During the shoot Laurence Olivier had been suffering from a long term degenerative muscle disorder (for certain scenes a stand-in had to be used) however, this didn't mean the Academy Award winning veteran would let an illness compromise his art; during the scene when Abraham Van Helsing performs an exorcism on Dracula's coffin, Olivier ad libed the scene in Latin.

[edit] External links


Characters of Dracula
Dracula | Jonathan Harker | Mina Harker | Abraham Van Helsing | Lucy Westenra | Renfield
Film Adaptations of Dracula
Nosferatu | Dracula (1931) | House of Dracula | Dracula (1958) | Count Dracula (1969) | Dracula (1979) | Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht | Love At First Bite | Bram Stoker's Dracula | Dracula: Dead and Loving It | Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
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