This week, in honor of the wide release of Megalopolis, MovieJawn is looking back at some of Francis Ford Coppola’s lesser-discussed work. No Godfathers, Conversations, or Apocalypses right Now. Read the other articles here.

by Shayna Davis, Staff Writer

A personal philosophy of mine when it comes to filmmaking is that looking cool is always better than looking realistic. Naturally, I love Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (try saying that three times fast).

If you’re unfamiliar with the story of Dracula–whether it be the original or Coppola’s rendition–let me catch you up to speed. The story follows five main characters: Jonathan, a young lawyer, Mina, his fiancee/wife, Lucy, Mina’s best friend, Dr. Jack Seward, an asylum-ward doctor with a taste for morphine, and Dr. Van Helsing, a quirky Dutch vampire enthusiast and Dr. Seward’s mentor. This crew in the film are played respectively by Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Sadie Frost, Richard E. Grant, and Anthony Hopkins. Dracula is also boosted to main character status in this film (ironically he’s more of a looming presence in the novel) and played by Gary Oldman. The story takes off with Jonathan being summoned to the Transylvanian castle of Count Dracula to help the Count secure property in England. Jonathan is basically held prisoner in the castle but escapes after realizing Dracula is a vampire. The Count moves to England and begins preying on the locals, including Lucy and, eventually, Mina. Dr. Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Jonathan, and a few of Lucy’s suitors band together to investigate, hunt, and kill Dracula.

Story-wise, Coppola set himself up for success when choosing to be (mostly) faithful to the book. Grand locations, lots of fun characters with interpersonal ties, and a vampire terrorizing all of them–what’s not to love? The few story edits Coppola chose to make were smart. Fleshing out Count Dracula to include a love-stricken, anti-hero backstory shifts him into more human territory. He’s more of a man who made a deal with the devil than the devil himself. The choice to have Mina fall in love with Dracula, while still having love for Jonathan, gives a more sexy, who-will-she-choose tension, but it also took away some of the victim-y qualities she had in the book. This is no longer a woman mourning the loss of her good Christian values; this is a woman who wants to lick on an ancient vampire’s chest with no regrets!

With a killer story already in place, other elements like visuals and sound become all the more important. These can be the determining factors of how a retelling rises above the rest. Think of other famous book-to-movie adaptations that used style to elevate the source material such as Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice (2005), Brian Henson’s The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022), and Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby (2013), just to name a few. These stylized adaptations may not be everyone’s cup of tea (although if you don’t like The Muppet Christmas Carol, there may be no saving you), but they all carved out a significant space in film culture, as did Coppola’s stylized take on Dracula. 

The influences in Coppola’s Dracula run deep. A lush mix of silent film nods, modern art inspirations, Hammer horror vibes, and bits from bygone Drac’s come together in one crazy compound. In many online discussions of this movie, I see judgments of how the movie “shouldn’t work as well as it does,” but I feel like Coppola knew exactly what he was doing with this film and it shows. Obviously some things will always be out of one’s control (like almost every accent in this movie), but with such solid source material to work with, all Coppola had to do was discern a unique tone and run with it. I’m sure an over-dramatic, borderline sexploitation tone wasn’t everyone’s first expectation, but during an era where sex was a huge selling point (the film was released the same year as Basic Instinct, Single White Female, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, and more), it could be considered a strategic move. 

Two of the most well known fine art influences integrated into the film are Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss and František Kupka’s The Black Idol. Coppola showed costume designer Eiko Ishioka The Kiss, and she constructed Dracula’s ‘Gold Costume’ as a result. The Black Idol translated into the design for Dracula’s castle–a monstrous, looming structure taking on the shape of its main resident. 

The silent film era techniques Coppola pulled into Dracula gives a nearly timeless look to the film. If it weren’t for the casting, I can’t say I’d necessarily be able to pinpoint what year the film was made, and that’s an achievement in itself. It scratches some significant itch in my human brain that everything I’m looking at on screen actually exists. It’s real; it’s tangible. There’s actual texture and weight to everything. There’s nothing inherently wrong with CGI, but using it methodically is a technique that major studios seem to have completely forgone. With the Dracula novel being released in 1897, and taking place in the same era, Coppola envisioned his film paying homage to the ‘birth of cinema’ years. 

Film culture lore says that at the beginning of production, Coppola’s assembled VFX team insisted that what he envisioned with practicals was too challenging. They couldn’t conceive of how it would be done, so he fired them all and hired his magic enthusiast son, Roman Coppola, to handle visual effects. It’s not only a sweet-in-theory move for a dad to make, but it’s also a hilarious and GOATed choice to say, ‘My son seems to have a few tricks up his sleeve (literally); I’m sure he’ll figure something out.’ And figure it out he did! He brought the film to life employing classic effects from early cinema development, including rear projection, reverse motion, matte painting backgrounds, miniature effects, front projection, forced perspective, and multiple exposures. 

Stills from In Camera: the naive visual effects of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

In the 32 years since its release, Coppola’s rendition of Dracula has gone up and down in public opinion. It perpetually lives just behind The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now in Coppola’s filmmaking legacy. It’s garnered numerous deep-dives, think pieces, and Reddit threads concerning every aspect of its production (I highly recommend this one for further reading). Ultimately though, I think the most important take-away is that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the result of taking chances on people and having faith in human creativity.