For anyone who wants to watch a horror movie every day of October, here's a list I've compiled for funsies: as many adaptations or interpretations of Dracula as I could think of, with episodes of Hellsing on Saturdays. I've already seen a few of these but a lot are new to me.
Welcome back to Dractober, where I watch and rank one film adaptation of Dracula for every day in October! I'll be ranking each film on two one to ten scales (was it a good adaptation of Dracula and did I enjoy it?) and giving the film a final score at the end by averaging out the other scores.
Today's film is Dracula 2000, released in, who could've guessed it, 2000. This movie is executive produced Wes Craven, known for being the man behind the Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, but (despite what the marketing and title will tell you) he actually had very little to do with the film as a whole. It follows a Count Dracula who has been let loose on the modern day, specifically in New Orleans. He's on a search for a women who shares his blood, and has been born, not made, to be like him. I could get more into specifics, but I'll try and save the spoilers for the review itself.
Let's get into it!
Well, here we are, the first film on my list that I did not enjoy. I knew it was coming eventually, and it coming with the first film that was actually trying to be a Dracula adaptation and that presented itself as such makes a lot of sense. So, let's answer our first question, was this a good adaptation of Dracula?
This film presents itself from the outset as an actual adaptation of Dracula. We open with a shot of the remains of the Demeter, before we promptly cut forward to the year 2000, and the office of Matthew Van Helsing, a collector of antiques, and his assistant, Simon Sheppard. Thieves break into Matthew's shit to steal a sealed coffin he keeps in the basement, convinced that it's got? Treasure? Or something? It's unclear on what they were specifically looking for, just that they believed it was valuable.
Turns out, that's Dracula's coffin! The entire crew gets attacked as they travel with the coffin by plane to the US. They're all killed, and their plane crashes in the bayou of Lousianna. This is our modern day Demeter crew, except they all also become vampires, and the only woman also becomes one of our stand ins for the brides. Van Helsing travels to America to follow Dracula's trail, and is followed by Simon in turn. Simon is kind of our Steward and kind of our Jonathan.
In New Orleans live two roommates, Mary and Lucy. Mary has had nightmares her entire life of a guy who we know to be Dracula, and Lucy- who's full name is Lucy Westenra!- is her friend who suffers the same fate as book Lucy but with way less screen time </3.
All our main characters come together when Dracula arrives in New Orleans to hunt down Mary. Unfortunately, this leans into one of my least favorite things that Dracula adaptations like to do- making Mina (who Mary is a stand in for) into someone particularly special to Dracula to justify her obsession with her. Thankfully, this film doesn't choose to make her his reincarnated lover (my least favorite variation of this trope). What it does do, however, is much weirder.
Matthew Van Helsing is actually Abraham Van Helsing, who first encountered Dracula back when Bram Stoker was alive, and indirectly inspired Stoker's novel. However, Dracula, unlike the other vampires, cannot be killed by any means (that Van Helsing has discovered). After capturing and subduing Dracula, Van Helsing vowed he would live as long as Dracula did, until he uncovered a way to kill him. He's stayed alive this long by injecting himself with Dracula's blood, which he's been extracting from him via leeches.
OKAY?????
The departures this movie takes from the original novel only get weirder from here. Van Helsing establishes early on that Dracula (and the other vampires) don't actually experience a real aversion to the cross or other symbols of God, but that Dracula just really, really hates Catholicism. Keep that in mind. The only ways the vampires can be killed, by this movie, are by stabbing them in the heart or cutting off their head, and they have a sensitivity to silver. Keep that in mind as well.
We then go through a whole lot of movie that I'm not gonna summarize here for the sake of brevity, but Dracula collects his three brides, one of whom is Lucy, and also kills Van Helsing. Sad! We do get one moment of book accuracy here, with Dracula briefly turning into his big dog form to hunt down Mary. Yay!
Eventually, we reach the climax of the movie, when Dracula kidnaps Mary and Simon gets kidnapped by the brides (only after he kills one of them, though). Now that Mary's in his grasp, Dracula decides to reveal to her his backstory, and who he was before he was a vampire.
With all the things you know so far, I want you to guess what historical figure they made be Dracula. There are more hints present in the movie that I didn't touch on, but let's see if you can get it.
Did you guess JUDAS ISCARIOT? BECAUSE I SURE DIDN'T WHEN I STARTED THIS MOVIE.
This also falls into another trap that adaptations of Dracula tend to fall into. They think that Dracula is the main character of the story, or at least that he should be, so they try to give him some backstory or tragic motivation or something to make him land more as a protagonist. I hate when this happens!
The movie ends with Mary killing Lucy and Simon killing the remaining bride, and Mary getting into a fight with Dracula. Eventually, she realizes she can kill him by hanging him, as Judas Iscariot did when he killed himself. She hangs him off the side of the building they were fighting on, and he releases her from her vampirism before bursting into flames in the sunrise. You might remember that Dracula doesn't burn in the sunlight in the original novel, but frankly, this is like, the smallest slight this film has against it.
Now, back to the question at hand. Ranking this one as a Dracula adaptation is surprisingly difficult with the parameters I've previously given myself. I gave Evil of Dracula, which wasn't really a Dracula adaptation of all, a 6/10 due to it grasping the actual spirit of the novel and the characters pretty solidly. In hindsight, this was WAY TOO HIGH, but I'm gonna stick with it. But here's the thing- the previous two films on this list weren't really trying to be adaptions. Van Helsing wasn't trying, and had nothing to do with the novel at all, and Evil of Dracula wasn't trying, but it captured the spirit of the novel for the most part. Dracula 2000 was trying to be a Dracula adaptation, if a looser one in order to put in the modern day.
But I think it failed to do so in an actually interesting or effective way. It leans into some of my least favorite failings for a Dracula adaptation, as mentioned above, and anything that could've actually been interesting about the way this film adapts the story is overridden by the absolute craziness of it or the wildly underwhelming nature of the film itself (I'll get into that).
Mainly, I think this film fails to understand what makes Dracula what it is- our main characters. It's fine if we don't have direct one to ones of the main characters, I can live with that for the sake of moving the story into the modern day or making the plot a bit less convoluted (by cutting the whole suitors thing, for example). But the main characters of this film barely interact. We get maybe two scenes of Mary and Lucy interacting before Lucy dies, we never see Mary and Van Helsing interact despite their relationship, and Simon and Mary don't start interacting consistently until half the main cast is dead. Dracula is undeniably the main character here, as mentioned above, but I don't fucking care about this guy or like him! I'm here for the human characters, but the movie isn't, and it's a complete misunderstanding of what made the book good!
So I think I'm going to give this film a 4/10 for the Dracula adaptation scale. I have to appreciate some of the smaller things that manage to make it's way into the film, such as the Demeter, Dracula's wolf form, and the cutting off of the heads thing. But it fundamentally misunderstands the point of it all. This film focuses extremely heavily on the religious aspects of the original novel, which could have been interesting but again, falls flat. So much of what this film is trying to do as an actually accurate adaptation goes nowhere, or goes somewhere new and insane yet entirely uninteresting.
Now, did I enjoy this movie? I think you may have already gathered the answer, but let's keep going.
I was expecting a lot better from this movie. At least, in theory. Wes Craven is a big name horror director for a reason (though I have not actually seen any of his other films), and I was hoping the bad reviews were either a result of this being a cult-classic level actually good movie or a so-bad-it's-good film. It was neither of these things.
The movie definitely had it's moments- the fight between Marcus and Simon in the town hall was one I really enjoyed, for one. But it was greatly overshadowed by Everything Else. Firstly, there was the adaptation factor- I wanted this to be at least a decent adaptation, so the longer the movie went on, the more frustrated I became in that regard and the less I could enjoy it. But there was also the overwhelming misogyny of it all.
This movie does not treat any of it's female characters well. All of the brides (Solina, Valerie, and Lucy) fall into the "slut who has to die" trope, and have very little character outside of that. Lucy is definitely the worst example of this. She shows up briefly in a few scenes with Mary, but her greatest amount of screen time comes when Dracula goes into the record shop (CALLED VIRGIN SUPERSTORE BY THE WAY. FRUSTRATINGLY ON THE NOSE.) that Mary works at in search of her. He instead finds Lucy, who is instantly attracted to him and invites him to their house, despite not even knowing his name. She and Dracula then have a weird as fuck sex scene- part of which is ON THE CEILING. BECAUSE HE FLOATS SO THEY'RE ON THE CEILING FOR SOME REASON.- and he kills her. It's unclear how much of this is Lucy actually acting of her own volition and how much was Dracula manipulating her mind, but after this scene she (and the other brides) all only exist to be catty and bitchy towards Mary about the fact that she's Dracula's favorite girlfriend and to be sexy and tempting to Simon. You see why this makes the movie unenjoyable, right?
There's also a scene involving Solina after she becomes a vampire that... I'm not gonna describe too in depth, because it's literally just her being insufferably horny towards a police officer and a doctor. But I bring it up at all because it serves no point for the plot. Most of the horny scenes in this film you can argue, at least a little, that they're relevant to the plot. This scene has no relevance to the plot, outside of establishing that Solina is hanging out with Dracula after the town hall scene, which, y'know, definitely could have been done in any other fashion!
Mary also has basically no agency up until the end of the film. She spends most of this movie running around scared, up until the final 15 minutes where she's actually allowed to do stuff. And look, I know that the original novel is wildly sexist. I know! But that is actually something I'm fine with being left out of an adaptation! That's allowed!
I know I gave Van Helsing a lot of praise, despite it's poor treatment of the female characters, but the key difference here is that Van Helsing actually let the female characters do things sometime. Their motivations were pretty wonky, but at least they had some.
Dracula 2000 also has a lot of humor that fell flat for me. Some of the jokes did actually land, ("Sorry I'm an atheist"/"God loves you anyway" and "I don't drink [prolonged pause] coffee" for example) but most of it felt like it was trying way too hard. Specifically, the script felt like it was trying really hard to do the same thing this movie's marketing was trying to do- pretend this is an actual Wes Craven movie. It didn't work for me.
Frankly, I found myself too frustrated with Dracula 2000 to actually enjoy myself most of the time. There was promise in this movie. The character concepts could've, maybe, been executed well, and at the very least some of the fight scenes were actually really enjoyable, and it made me so mad that they were sandwiched into this otherwise really disappointing film. 3/10 on the enjoyment scale. Part of me is tempted to put it lower, but I have a feeling if I do another film on this list will be so frustrating that I'll regret it. Ultimately, this film wasn't bad, just not very good and deeply frustrating, so we'll keep 0-2 for films that are actually, verifiably, bad.
Overall, Dracula 2000 gets a 3.5/10. I could give you a TL;DR about all that, but frankly, I think you've heard enough from me. Hopefully tomorrow's movie is better.
I said to myself at eight that I wasn't going to do the drawings. But my sketchbook was open... and my references were pulled up...
Drac. The bastard. What do I even say of him? He's slimy and gross. There's this very expensive gaudy suit store in the mall that I think would be perfect for clothing references for Murray Mysteries Dracula. But as I started this late, I just pulled a suit out of my mind's eye.
He has definitely gotten plastic surgery before, this is not how he looked before modern day, that's a new nose. Mind you, that's not a judgment against surgery whatsoever, but Drac did do it to dodge criminal charges, so...
EDIT: i want to use this design for something else now. dunno what. it could be a modern Dracula AU or something just Dracula-inspired. just not MM anymore.
Another #inktober done! This one was “mummy”- I figure since YA vampire romances have had their day, it’s only a matter of time before mummy romances are a thing. Featuring mummy man bun! #inktober2017 #ink #inking #dractober #characterdesign #illustration #drawing #art #instaart
The first day of Drac-tober is upon us! I will be upfront with y’all, the likelihood that these will actually be daily updates continues to slim. I am a college student, first and foremost, but the wi-fi in my dorm has also totally shit the bed, and until that gets resolved (and I don’t know when that will be), watching all these films will be way more inconvenient. But, we’ll see how it all goes!
If you missed the update, I decided to use a random wheel to determine my watch order, rather than the chronological order I listed the films in originally. This film, however, was not decided by the wheel, but by the fact that my roommates really wanted to watch it with me, so it got first dibs.
For the first day of Drac-tober, we will be reviewing… Van Helsing (2004)!
As a reminder, I will be rating each film on two 1-10 scales: its accuracy as a Dracula adaptation, and how much I enjoyed it. This is a different scale than “was it good”. This disclaimer is particularly important for today’s film.
Van Helsing follows Gabriel (I KNOW) Van Helsing, monster hunter for the Vatican circa the 1880s. Van Helsing, played by Hugh Jackman, is peak 2000s eye candy, tragic but amnesiac past and all. He’s sent on a quest to slay Count Dracula and help Romani (not the word they use) prince and princess Velkan and Anna Valerious lift the curse on their family line. This movie includes most of the iconic movie monsters you can think of in some capacity (Dracula and his brides, of course, alongside Dr. Frankenstein and his monster, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and various werewolves), and is, to say the least, only barely a Dracula adaptation.
Now, onto our first scale- is this a good adaptation of Dracula?
No. Of course not. But I did not expect it to be, and as far as I’m aware, it didn’t really market itself as such. Just about the only thing this film had down about Dracula was the Count’s horny tension with literally everyone, but that’s just sort of a given for any film with vampires in it, frankly. Easy 1/10 on the accuracy scale. They couldn’t even get Van Helsing’s first name right.
Now, as previously stated, I watched this film with two of my roommates. This greatly upped the enjoyment factor. First of all, watching my roommates lust after Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale was extremely funny. Second of all, the value of being able to shout, together, in complete surprise at the twists and turns of this movie cannot be overstated. My favorite example is when the credits began, and the dedication to the film was to the director’s deceased father. We were flabbergasted.
This movie was also laughably strange, most of the time. The plot moved quickly enough and was stupid enough that I had fun with it, despite the fact that it had absolutely nothing to do with any of the characters involved in the film. Frankly, the most accurately adapted character was probably Frankenstein’s monster, since he was actually fully articulate (though that’s where most of the similarities to his book counterpart end).
There was also the element of the brides, who are given quite a bit more screen time and motive in this film than in the actual novel. They all have names, which is nice, and while their motive of wanting to bring their children with Dracula to life is… interesting, at least it’s there. There was also a wild amount of homoerotic tension between Aleera (the bride who lives the longest) and Anna (the female lead) which I did not see coming, but did appreciate.
That, however, is where my praise for the women in this film ends. While the brides have names and motivations, a step up from the novel, this movie is not good to its women. They are sex objects, first and foremost (and I suspect this is why the lesbian tension is there at all). They are motivators for the men above all else and literally all of them end up dead by the film’s conclusion. I cannot describe the disappointment and anger that was in the room when we realized Anna died.
There is also, of course, the fetishization and misrepresentation of Romani people present in the film. The script refers to them using the G-slur, for one, but all these supposedly Romani characters are played by white people, and are also getting saved by this random white man. The Romani heritage of the Velarious clan is basically forgotten past the first 30 minutes of the film, and thank god for it, because I know it wouldn’t have been handled well.
All in all, was this, by any stretch of the imagination a good movie? No, absolutely not. But it was a great movie to watch with my roommates on a Friday night. 7/10 on the enjoyment scale.
In conclusion, was Van Helsing (2004) a particularly good film, as an adaptation of Dracula or otherwise? No, absolutely not. But you knew that already. I would, however, recommend giving it a watch if you have friends to enjoy it with and maybe a beer or two. I don’t know if I’ll ever be returning to this film, but I had a great time watching it. It’s score may be a 4/10 overall, but it was a great start to the month.
Welcome back to Dractober, where I watch and rank one film adaptation of Dracula for every day in October! I'll be ranking each film on two one to ten scales (was it a good adaptation of Dracula and did I enjoy it?) and giving the film a final score at the end by averaging out the other scores.
Today's film is Love At First Bite (1979) staring George Hamilton as Dracula who, after being evicted from his Transylvania castle, travels to New York to pursue the only woman he's ever loved, who's been reincarnated into a model. Also, I did actually watch this movie on the fourth, but I watched it in a triple feature movie night with my roommates, and then instantly went to bed, so you're getting two reviews today once I watch my next film.
Let's get into it!
So, if you couldn't tell from the brief description, today's film is a parody and comedy film. As such, the "is this a good adaptation of Dracula?" question seems very easy to answer.
No. No it is not!
However, this is somehow the first film I've watched this month that actually included Renfield, so at least there's that as a point towards it. He even eats bugs and rodents!
However, immediately negating that point, there's the whole reincarnated lover thing going on with Dracula and Cindy. I was hoping beyond hope that she wouldn't be Mina reincarnated, but alas, she was. Shakes my fist at the sky. I've established this is one of my least favorite Dracula adaptation/Dracula inspired story tropes and it did make me go "GOD DAMNIT" aloud when he said it, though it thankfully only came up like one time after that.
So, on the Dracula adaptation scale, I'll be giving this film a 1/10. Certainly some of the characters were there! That's about it though!
Now, did I enjoy this film? Yes! Yes I very much did!
This was another film that has my enjoyment upped by the fact that I watched it with my roommates, but it was also very solidly funny on it's own merit. George Hamilton was a really funny Dracula, and Richard Benjamin, who played Jeffrey Rosenburg (Abraham Van Helsing's grandson and Cindy's therapist/uncommitted boyfriend) stole almost every scene he was in.
I would usually use this portion to summarize the film and talk about my favorite parts, but I think that style is generally more suited to drama films or films that are actually trying to be adaptations. With this film, I think you can get from the one sentence summary what this movie is and if you'd be interested in it at all. But I can confirm, this was a lot of fun.
Honestly, I might be giving this movie a 9 or 10 for enjoyment, if not for one notable factor. There are about four scenes in this movie that are just... straight up racist. These are all very weird and uncomfortable scenes centering around various Black minor characters, and they're basically only in there to make race jokes. These scenes are, thankfully, easily skipable and pretty short, but I wish they just hadn't been in the film at all.
There were also a few gay jokes and occasional moments of misogyny but honestly the gay jokes were (to me) a little funny, and the misogyny was significantly better than some other movies I've already watched this month, so it was significantly easier to brush off.
Overall, I had a really good time watching this movie and it was mostly extremely funny. However, those few random racist scenes took down my enjoyment, for obvious reasons. So while this could have gotten a much better score, I'm going to knock the enjoyment score down to a 7/10.
In the end, Love at First Bite gets a 4/10. Nonetheless, I do recommend it if you're looking for some campy and fun comedy this Halloween season! Just... put on fast forward in a few scenes.
Welcome back to Dractober, where I watch and rank one film adaptation of Dracula for every day in October! I'll be ranking each film on two one to ten scales (was it a good adaptation of Dracula and did I enjoy it?) and giving the film a final score at the end by averaging out the other scores.
Today's film is Evil of Dracula (1974). This is a Japanese horror film directed by Michio Yamamoto and distributed by Toho films, who you may recognize as the distributors of the Godzilla series, for one. The film follows Professor Shiraki, the new hire at a girls' school in a rural area of Japan, where a mysterious monster is looking to prey upon him and the students. This film is the third in a trilogy called The Bloodthirsty Trilogy, but it stands perfectly well on it's own (I didn't even know it was the last in the trilogy until I looked it up).
This review will contain spoilers, so if any of this sounded interesting to you, I highly suggest checking out the film before you read my review. If you are interested, please keep in mind that this film deals heavily with physical and sexual assault of underage girls.
Now, let's get into the review!
All of the films I'm watching this month (except for the 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula and the Francis Ford Coppola film) are ones I've never seen in full before, and Evil of Dracula was no different. As such, when doing research on these films and where to watch them, I tried to keep myself as un-spoiled as I possibly could. From what I did read about this film before I went into it, I was expecting this to be a Dracula adaptation in no more than name. I was pleasantly surprised to find this was not entirely the case!
While the general story of the novel was obviously not adapted, I think this film managed to grasp the spirit of the novel and it's characters quite well. The movie is a slow creep of horror, which suits the tone of the novel quite well. The first 15 or so minutes of the movie, despite the locale shift, feel exactly like what it's like to read the opening chapters of the novel for the first time. You know that Jonathan/Shiraki is in danger from the moment he enters the house. You know that Dracula/the Principal is a vampire and that he only holds bad intentions for our main character. But he doesn't know that yet, and you get to watch in horror (and delight) as he figures it out.
The rest of our main cast also fill in the roles of the rest of the protagonists of the novel. Dr. Shimomura fills a similar role to Dr. Van Helsing, and the girls (Kumi, Kyoko, and Yukiko) fill the roles of Mina, Lucy, and occasionally the suitors (Prof. Shiraki also occasionally fills Mina, Van Helsing, or the suitors' roles, by nature of him being the protagonist and by nature of how many of these characters don't make it out alive). Renfield is also present, with role in the novel split directly down the middle between a previous professor of the school who's now in an insane asylum and a current professor who acts as the principal's right hand man.
To be clear, however, this is far from a one to one adaptation of the novel. Even outside of the very different location and inciting incidents, the similarities to the plot of the novel stall out around the second act. From the third act onward, the film takes it's own spin on vampirism and the fate of our unlucky protagonists- only two of whom make it out of the film alive.
This film takes numerous liberties with the story of Dracula, which is exactly what I expected from the outset. However, it's not trying to be a one to one, it's trying to be a horror film taking inspiration from Dracula, and I think it does that quite well. The two most notable types of horror in the novel (to me) are the creeping horror of the unknown and the horror of bodily violation, and this film does a great job preserving those elements.
So, is this film a good adaptation of Dracula? I'd say it gets a 6/10 in that regard. It's far from one to one, and as the film goes on it takes more and more liberties with the plot of the original novel, but it nonetheless manages to maintain the spirit and tone of the novel pretty effectively.
On to our next category! How much did I enjoy the film?
This film was my first ever foray into Japanese horror and I had a great time. I see why everyone says it's awesome now! I don't watch a lot of horror in the grand scheme of things (mostly because I'm a wuss when it comes to visual gore, lol), but this film really did it for me. I've mentioned the slow, creeping horror of the film already, but I can't stress enough how much that worked for me.
I briefly mentioned above the horror of body violation, and I wanted to get into that more here. As I've said in my previous posts about Dracula, vampirism and blood transfer in the novel is a very sexual thing. It's also a very horrific thing, and sometimes these two traits can be difficult to balance. This film did so very well, primarily because most of the Principal's victims are his students, and it's an inherently horrific thing to watch these girls be preyed upon. I mention this here both because, to me, Dracula is a novel about sexual assault, and I greatly appreciated this film for maintaining that in a way that did not feel like it was pandering to the male gaze, but also because this means this is a film that deals heavily with sexual assault of underage girls. I mentioned it above, but I'd be remiss to not hone in on this fact, both because this is a very sensitive topic and because you might interpret wildly differently than me. While I personally found the film to be focusing on the horror of the situation rather than the sexuality of it, you may think otherwise, and that's fine! But from my point of view, I really appreciated the way in which the sexual themes of the novel were handled in this film, and that's a highlight to me.
This film was certainly not perfect, however. The film relies primarily on lengthy, dialogue heavy scenes to communicate the vast majority of it's plot points. I was personally fine with this, but it can definitely make the movie feel a bit sluggish at times. The acting from our main character also left things to be desired at times, and his acting did not help this feeling in these expository scenes.
The other main issue this film has is it's budget. A lot of the actual horror and fight scenes in the film feel very cheap, and as a result, cheesy. The blood often looked watery, and the special effects weren't great, even taking into account that this is a 70s film. The fight scenes where we actually got to see Dracula/the Principal fight someone rather than just bite them felt particularly comical, like no one really knew how to fake fight but more so how to flail. While the creeping horror of the film was nice, it can't be everything, we have to see the conclusion of that build up at some point, and unfortunately, said climaxes almost always fall flat. In the end, I think this movie gets a 7/10 for enjoyment. I enjoyed the movie, but it was far from perfect.
Overall, I'm giving Evil of Dracula a 6.5/10. The film's loyalty to the novel was a pleasant surprise, and the slow building horror was a great fit for a Dracula adaptation. However, the film was far from an extremely loyal adaptation, and the adrenaline-filled moments that were meant to give conclusion to the slow creep of horror often felt cheap and silly, rather than actually scary. Nonetheless, I recommend giving Evil of Dracula a watch sometime this spooky season!
