{"id":3793,"date":"2007-02-22T00:07:19","date_gmt":"2007-02-22T05:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=3793"},"modified":"2007-02-22T00:07:19","modified_gmt":"2007-02-22T05:07:19","slug":"dracula-masterpiece-theatre-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/22\/dracula-masterpiece-theatre-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Dracula – Masterpiece Theatre (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s a requirement that anyone playing Lucy Westenra should possess a great deal of sexual allure, for the simple fact that it gives logic to Dracula\u2019s hunt on her before going after Mina. And Sophia Myles hands the requirement like a pro. Myles is utterly ravishing in \u201cDracula\u201d and she\u2019s lusted after, for good reason, throughout much of the film, possessing her usual charm and likable charisma that makes her such a memorable actress. Myles also has a palpable chemistry with Leonidas, who manages to portray the charming innocence with Myles as the blonde siren that eventually gets bitey.<\/p>\n

\u201cDracula\u201d is not an awful film, and it excels with rather dreamy direction, and an interesting story that would have worked much better as another \u201cDracula\u201d sequel, and not as a proclaimed \u201cfaithful\u201d and truncated version of the novel. I hang around a lot of horror buffs. They\u2019re people I often disagree with, and love to debate with, and one of the most mutual thoughts among them is that the novel of \u201cDracula\u201d just wasn\u2019t good. It also benefited from adaptations that strayed from the story. And I\u2019ll have to take their words for it. \u201cDracula\u201d a la \u201cMasterpiece Theater\u201d is a less than faithful adaptation of the novel, with a much less menacing Dracula. Why Dracula always has to be some super model or soap opera look alike, I\u2019ll never actually know. Christopher Lee was menacing but charming in a gruff manner.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, this is not so much an adaptation, but more a vast re-imagining of the story, with many liberties taken involving a theme of syphilis and using Dracula\u2019s immortality as a means of a cure. This isn\u2019t the \u201cDracula\u201d we\u2019ve seen before. Very little from previous adaptations is evident here.Which is sad. Dracula has his castle again, flies to England again, and often resembles a decrepit Christopher Lambert. Lord Holmwood marrying Lucy Westenra, is told he has the possibility to fall ill to syphilis after his father rots away from it. Meanwhile Jonathan Harker is called to Dracula\u2019s presence where he suffers an ill-fate, but Holmwood is tempted with the prospect of eternal life. The eschewed logic behind this character action is only one of the flaws behind this revision for the millennium. Harker who ventures to Dracula\u2019s castle, is turned into a sap. He\u2019s a gaping, often outlandish schmuck, who plays the hapless victim to Dracula, rather than the intelligent man who is overpowered by Dracula\u2019s force.<\/p>\n

Surviving only for thirty minutes, Harker is given a sad death accidentally stumbling upon Dracula and is killed rather brutally. Once he\u2019s disposed of, Dracula heads to Lucy, and proceeds to follow the novel by slowly killing her, which is odd considering much of the first half of the film is completely in her focus. I don\u2019t mind different looks at stories, consider that Broadway play that turns the Wicked Witch in \u201cWizard of Oz\u201d into a protagonist. But, \u201cDracula\u201d suffers because it lacks any style, or real menace within its story. Dracula is a young man who gazes angrily whenever anyone is talking to him, and no one really seems to gather that perhaps Dracula is to blame. Meanwhile, the story of Holmwood attempting to use Dracula as a device is vastly under-developed.<\/p>\n

The producers would have done well to add a different title, dispose of the notion that this is an adaptation, and focus on Lucy\u2019s marriage, and her husband\u2019s attempts to control Dracula to save himself. Now that would have been a great film. Meanwhile, Van Helsing is reduced to a rambling old fool being imprisoned for some reason, there\u2019s a mysterious cult whose intentions I could never understand, and much of what occurs feels like \u201cPride and Prejudice\u201d guest-starring Dracula. Your best bet for your fanged fix would be to sit down and watch \u201cBram Stoker\u2019s Dracula,\u201d instead, and for the hell of it, \u201cHorror of Dracula,\u201d and Universal\u2019s \u201cDracula,\u201d because they\u2019re worthy variations. This isn’t, however, because it’s far from anything resembling a true Dracula adaptation. It’s not awful, but it’s still rather anemic. Even if Sophia Myles is a stunning beauty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a requirement that anyone playing Lucy Westenra should possess a great deal of sexual allure, for the simple fact that it gives logic to Dracula\u2019s hunt on her before going after Mina. And Sophia Myles hands the requirement like a pro. Myles is utterly ravishing in \u201cDracula\u201d and she\u2019s lusted after, for good reason, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[64,249,299,302,367,477,874,1013,1087,1130,1151],"class_list":["post-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-tv-tomb","tag-adaptation","tag-d","tag-dracula","tag-drama","tag-foreign","tag-horror","tag-romance","tag-suspense","tag-thriller","tag-tv-movie","tag-vampires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}