Dracula (1979) [DVD]

I am so glad to see that this some times forgotten classic adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula has finally managed to make its way onto DVD. After growing up on the Hammer versions as a child my mother introduced me to this mainly british cast version of the story and in many ways this has stayed my favourite. The beautiful Frank Langella carries all the great attributes of his stage performance with him onto the big screen and gives an outstanding performance only re-inforced by the supporting cast. Never mind the Coppola version, if you are looking for the flamboyant extravagance of a stage production against the grittiness of a typical bristish costume drama than this is for you. Well worth a watch on too many levels to mention.

Like a lot of other psycho-sexually inadequate sickoes, I've had a pretty-much lifelong fascination with Vampires, so when this was released in 1979 I went along to see it. I was about 26 at the time, a more-or-less fully grown adult, with my own job and my own place, and (as I thought) enough experience of horror films to make me pretty immune to fright.
After I saw this film I spent the next four nights sleeping with the lights on.
It scared the living s**t out of me.
The film sticks only loosely to the overall plot of the book (I was disappointed at the end when it became clear that they wouldn't be going to Transylvania after all) and stays resolutely in Yorkshire. This is no bad thing in retrospect, however, as it concentrates the plot on the main elements of the story. It has wonderful touches, both of horror and humour. The scenes inside the Lunatic asylum are marvellously realised, with Laurence Olivier and Donald Pleasance grappling for screen-space and going gloriously over the top as Abraham Van Helsing and Dr. Seward respectively, while Tony Haygarth is simply wonderful as the simple-minded, querulous, bug-eating Renfield. The only less-than-perfect elements, to my mind, are the casting of Kate Nelligan as Lucy Seward, and Frank Langella as Dracula. Nelligan is too precious for words (as usual), while Langella (a good actor) is, to my mind, simply not right for the part, though he does his best and can be remarkably effective at times (see the part where he breaks into the asylum, kills Renfield - a really shocking moment - and makes off with Lucy).
The highlight of the film for me is where Van Helsing and Seward, having found that Van Helsing's niece Mina has been turned into a vampire by Dracula, unearth her coffin and find it empty. They go through a hole in the coffin's side into an old abandoned mine-working in search of her (Mine-workings don't appear in the original novel, but part of the film's ingenuity lies in making things like this add to the film's resonance and power). Van Helsing, searching the dark and dripping tunnels by flickering candlelight, drops his crucifix and, stooping to pick it up, catches sight of his niece reflected in a puddle at his feet. He looks up and sees what she has become. The beautiful Mina (played by the radiant Jan Francis) has become a thing of real horror, what a vampire would really be like if they actually existed - a loathsome, visceral fiend, living in the drains and feeding off rats and slugs. THIS is the bit that kept me awake for nights on end, and which still gives me the willies even now.
Though it takes liberties with the original novel, this is by far the very best film of the Dracula story ever to be committed to film. Its atmosphere is wonderful - dark, threatening and somehow real, with flashes of humour that make the shadows even deeper. If you want to run up your electric bill, watch this alone, with the lights off (and check behind the sofa first).

Absolutly brilliant film. A romance for sure, but still a horror with great atmosphere in the right time scale; not these remakes in modern times, they just don't work.
Frank Langella is excellent as is every other famous actor in the cast. Buy it.