- Director: John Badham
- Writers: W.D. Richter, Hamilton Deane
- Stars: Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6QlpJWNTvw
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
As a handsome and charming Dracula, Frank Langella does a fine job in the title role. A strong cast backs him up. The movie is based on the stage play, which is based on the book, so the basic story is unchanged. There are differences here and there in the characters and their relationships. It clearly had a nice-sized budget, with very effective special effects. Overall it’s a winning version, one of the best.
Synopsis
It was a dark and stormy night. A ship is tossed in the waves. There’s growling and howling being heard, and there’s a box labeled “Count Dracula.” The ship approaches the rocky shore. As they prepare to throw the box overboard, a claw reaches out and kills the man. A wolf then attacks the man steering the ship…
It’s also a wild night at the asylum. Dr. Seward’s lost control of his lunatics. Upstairs, Mina Van Helsing and Lucy Seward read a letter from Jonathan, who is still in law school. Lucy goes downstairs to help calm the loonies.
Mina watches out the window as the ship breaks up on the rocks. Mina sees the wolf running away from the crash site. She follows the wolf into a cave and finds a man there.
The next morning, the whole town is swarming over the wrecked ship. Jonathan talks to Seward. The new owner of Carfax was on the ship; he’s actually the only survivor. Mina found him last night. Jonathan is Dracula’s lawyer, and he takes possession of Dracula’s other boxes. Seward tells Renfield to ask Dracula over for dinner tonight.
Renfield whines about lugging the boxes around, to Dracula, who turns into a bat and attacks him. Dracula does decide to join the others for dinner. They talk about the fate of the ship and about the word “vampire” which appeared in the final entry of the ship’s log. Dracula has come to England to walk in the crowded streets. “You have a great lust for life,” says Mina. Mina swoons, and Dracula hypnotizes her to relieve her headache.
Lucy wants to dance with Dracula, and he’s really good it; Jonathan is not amused. Much later that night, Dracula crawls down the outside of the building and stops outside Mina’s window for a bite.
Meanwhile, Renfield wakes up and suddenly has a craving for cockroaches. The next morning, there’s something wrong with Mina; she can’t breathe. She quickly dies. Could those two wounds on her neck have anything to do with it?
Jonathan soon starts to see Dracula as a rival for Lucy’s affections. Renfield attacks Jonathan, so they commit him to the asylum. Mina’s father, Professor Van Helsing, will be arriving tonight. Seward picks him up at the station and explains everything that happened.
Meanwhile, Lucy goes to dinner alone with Dracula. They talk about the sad song of the howling wolves. They kiss, but he doesn’t bite her.
There’s trouble at the asylum. The patient claims it was Mina there, sucking the blood from her baby. The baby, is, in fact, dry as bone. Van Helsing puts garlic on Mina’s grave the next day. He also gives Lucy a cross to wear around her neck. Afterward, Dracula rides up on a horse and meets Van Helsing.
Van Helsing releases a horse into the cemetery, thinking it will indicate where the vampire lies. It goes crazy over Mina’s grave. They dig her up and find the coffin empty. There’s a tunnel under the entire town, and one entrance is right under her grave. While they’re doing this, Dracula comes to Lucy and hypnotizes her. This time, he does bite her. He also has her drink some of his blood.
Van Helsing enters the tunnel system under the graveyard. He finds Mina down there, and she’s not looking so good. Seward burns her with a cross, and Van Helsing stakes her.
Jonathan arrives home early and finds Lucy in bed, covered in blood. She also has two wounds on her neck. They save her with a transfusion.
Dracula comes into Van Helsing’s room and smashes the mirror. Van Helsing knows what’s going on by this point. Dracula recoils from garlic. He drops the garlic when Dracula hypnotizes him. He pulls out a cross wafer and Dracula runs away from that. Van Helsing explains to Seward and Jonathan what’s been going on before he cuts out Mina’s heart to kill her for good.
Lucy watches that through her bedroom window and then steals the carriage, hurrying to Dracula’s place to warn him.
Jonathan and Van Helsing go to Carfax and find Dracula’s box of soil. He’s not in there. Dracula can move around during the day just fine, he just can’t be in direct sunlight. Van Helsing knocks a hole in the wall to let in the sunlight, and Dracula flies off.
Dracula stops by the asylum to kill Renfield and steal Lucy away. Van Helsing, Seward, and Jonathan rush to the port, as Dracula looks to be heading out of town the same way he came in. There’s a high-speed chase, and Dracula gets away.
The three men get a motorboat and chase down the schooner. They find Lucy and Dracula sleeping, but he wakes up just in time, staking Van Helsing instead. Dracula turns on Jonathan and is ready to kill him, but dying Van Helsing swings a heavy cargo hook into Dracula’s back. It sticks there out of reach, and before he can get loose Jonathan hoists him up into the sunlight. Dracula burns and ages rapidly, and soon, all that’s left is his cloak. Lucy is completely cured now that Dracula is dead. Unless he got away in the end…
Commentary
People always say how sexy and seductive Christopher Lee’s Dracula was, and I’ve never understood that. Langella, on the other hand, just oozes class. He’d be invited to all the parties and wouldn’t have any trouble getting necks to bite even without hypnosis.
It’s technically the same old Bram Stoker story, but there’s enough new drama here and things are mixed up enough to keep it interesting. This time around, we start aboard the ship Demeter, there’s none of the proceeding stuff with Dracula’s castle, the Brides, or Harker being imprisoned. He just arrives in London one day after having a rough voyage.
The production values are high, the acting is top notch (Olivier doesn’t slack, and please is always fun), and the story is good. It had a big budget, and it shows.