Rated: R

106 minutes

Written by: Dario Argento, Enrique Cenezo, Stefano Piani, Antonio Tentori

Directed by: Dario Argento

 

The story of Dracula told by horror master Dario Argento. The story follows the Count as he feeds, and courts a woman named Mina. Jonathan Harker is lured to the castle in order to be killed (he is the husband of Mina). During the second half of the film, everyone’s favorite monster hunter, Dr. Van Helsing (Rutger Hauer) appears, and it ends in classic Dracula fashion.

Positives:

• Good atmosphere and music.

• It’s throwback look and feel.

Negatives:

• Lame F/X

• Pretty bad acting.

• Not a good pace. Slow moving.

Dario Argento’s Dracula (aka Dracula 3D) creates a world that harkens back to the days of Shelley Duvall’s Fairy Tale Theater, but with boobs and blood. It has that strange, sound stage look, but ultimately it works to create the weird atmosphere and universe that Dracula lives in. The music has cool tinges of warble and helps increase the tension in the lulls of the film that happen frequently. It also reminds me of some old school Mac games that revolved around Dracula and Jack the Ripper. The look and feel is there for this film.

Unfortunately, nothing else is there to make this movie worth watching.

The film is low-budget and the special f/x and bad acting are very prominent throughout the picture. A small conceit I will afford the film is that it was clearly dubbed, and therefore a lot of the possible feeling and emotion gets lost in stunted and ultimately bad dialogue. Also, the film suffers from its slow pacing, as even when action happens it’s normally underwhelming. All in all, the film was not very good, the scares were not there, and even the master that is Argento could not get much out of the oft told story of Count Dracula.

3/10