Dracula (1979)

"I need your blood."

Unfairly maligned by all and sundry, this is a lavish and witty adaptation of the well worn tale, with a smouldering central performance from Langella as a particularly seductive Count. Returning to the theatrical inspiration behind Browning's 1931 version and radically restructuring the plot of Stoker's novel (the film opens with the spectacular wreck of the Demeter and the Count's subsequent arrival in Whitby), the film adds little new to the legend, but manages to emphasise the more romantic elements of the story with a lot more success and conviction than Coppola's subsequent Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).

Updated to a beautifully recreated Edwardian setting, the film revolves around the compelling performance of Frank Langella as the melancholy yet undeniably sexy vampire and his pursuit of Lucy (Kate Nelligan). Langella makes an unusually suave and sophisticated Count, foresaking the animal magnetism of Christopher Lee, the brutal menace of Jack Palance or the exotic incomprehensibility of Gary Oldman. Perhaps the closest performance was that given by Louis Jourdan in Philip Saville's impressive BBC production Count Dracula (1977). his seductive Latin charms had already proved successful on Broadway in a revival of the original play (which he was to later recreate for a 1982 TV special) and transfers well to the screen under Badham's assured direction.

Elsewhere, performances are less successful and alarmingly variable; Pleasance is just fine, as ever, and Haygarth makes for a suitable bitter and twisted Renfield, an angry working class man betrayed by the middle classes (his home had been sold from under him by an unusually unsympathetic Harker) and corrupted by the aristocratic Count. But Eve and Nelligan are insipid and lack conviction in two of the film's key roles and Olivier is unbelievably off form, his Van Helsing coming across as an absurd charicature with a silly mock-European accent. Francis is given little to do in a thankless role, but he does get the film's most arresting scene, emerging from a mine shaft to put the frighteners on the erstwhile vampire hunters, her eyes glowing red and her dead skin decaying and flaking.

Badham's direction is top notch and a far cry from his other work, like the gritty urban parable Saturday Night Fever (1977), the ruthlessly efficient hi-tech thrillers War Games (1983) and Blue Thunder (1983) and the hopeless kiddie comedy Short Circuit (1986). Aided by marvellous special effects and a lush and highly appropriate score from John Williams, his atmospheric direction is the perfect complement to Langella's portrayal. He brings one or two new wrinkles to the story - Van Helsing dies in his climactic confrontation with the Count, for instance, and there's a strange but effective interlude with the vampire hunters using a white horse to track down the grave of the undead Mina.

Not then the greatest film version of Dracula ever filmed, nor yet the worst, Dracula is a well made, well intentioned film burdened by familiarity with an oft told tale and Olivier's ludicrous Van Helsing, but blessed with excellent production values, a fine central performance from Langella and one of the best Count killing scenes yet committed to film - attempting to flee back to Transylvania (curiously, the film never sets foot beyond the confines of a perpetually overcast Whitby), the Count is finally cornered in the hold of a ship and hauled up into the sunlight aboard a hook and chain.

The version of the film shown on British television by the ITV network in the 1980s was a virtually unwatchable fiasco, badly panned and scanned from Badham's original masterly widescreen compositions - many shots were rendered meaningless and the screen was often filled by shots of out-of-focus backgrounds while the disembodied voices of the suddenly off-screen cast recite the dialogue.
KEVIN LYONS

Last Updated: 1 January, 2009