Dracula (1979)

Count Dracula: "You fools! Do you think with your crosses and your wafers you can destroy me? Me! You do not know how many men have come against me. I am the king of my kind! You have accomplished nothing, Van Helsing. Time is on my side. In a century, when you are dust, I shall wake and call Lucy, my queen, from her grave. I have in my time had many brides, Mr. Harker. But I shall set Lucy above them all.”

Taking a detour from my planned trip through the Universal classics, I recently rewatched this one and felt it would be a good time to review this often overlooked but enjoyable take on Dracula.

With an impressive main cast – Frank Langella as a dramatic and magnetic Dracula, Laurence Olivier as Doctor Abraham Van Helsing, Kate Nelligan as Lucy Seward, Donald Pleasance as Doctor Seward, Jan Francis as Mina Van Helsing, Tony Haygarth as Milo Renfield, and Trevor Eve as Jonathan Harker – the film immerses us in their version of the story, despite several deviations from the original tale.

One of these main deviations is that Mina and Lucy are reversed, with Lucy being the leading lady and Mina being the friend that finds the count so enchanting at first. Lucy being Seward’s daughter and Mina being Dr. Van Helsing’s is also a key difference from the original. Lucy and Mina have an almost identical relationship as they were originally presented, despite these differences. This is important to know out of the gate, as it’s such an unusual choice for these two important characters, so wanted to mention it before getting into the meat of the review.

This version of Dracula wastes no time going its own way. Gone is the initial visit of Harker or Renfield to Transylvania; this one begins dramatically at sea. The Demeter is battered by a storm, while a desperate crew attempts to throw a large box overboard, but this doesn’t turn out well for them, with just a single survivor making his way to a cave near the shore as the sun rises. Mina finds this bedraggled man, who just so happens to be our undead count, and this sets up the intersection between Dracula and rest of the cast nicely.

The settings for this film are mostly dramatic like that initial scene on the doomed ship, with the imposing if decrepit Carfax Abbey, the cloistered cacophony of the sanitarium, the lonely, forlorn graveyard, and the claustrophobic mines below, there’s nary a scene that doesn’t spark immediate emotions in the viewer. The special effects are decent enough, with the transformation scenes being more convincing than most before it and watching Dracula’s intense glare as he scales up vertical surfaces is great, even if it reminds me a bit of the 60s Batman scenes where Batman and Robin are scaling walls. The times Dracula changes into a bat, a wolf, or mist are all decent as well, although often staged specifically to avoid showing them at bad angles or stages.

This movie is more sensual than the Dracula films that came before it, with this vampire being more active and having more screen time than we were accustomed to before this version of the tale. Langella may lack Lee’s imposing presence or sonorous voice, but he makes up for that with his own version of the count. He’s less feral, less blood-soaked, and more debonair, more comfortable around the rest of the cast. Make no mistake, he’s dangerous and powerful, something he demonstrates more than once, even before the protagonists discover his true nature, but he isn’t as capricious as Lee’s Dracula was, or as stilted as Lugosi’s. He also did not affect an accent for the role. Lugosi was chosen partially due to his Hungarian accent, and Lee of course used his regular voice with his rich British accent for the role, but Langella spoke in his natural voice, although his natural voice reflected the character well. He especially shines when angered or when slipping into his more seductive aspects, as his talent shines through so well in those moments.

"Hmm, this worked for Darth Vader!"

Jonathan Harker here is a far more active and interesting version of the main protagonist than either the English or Spanish version of the 1931 films, while Hammer’s take on Harker in their 1958 film was vastly different from the traditional Jonathan we’re used to. That’s welcome to be sure, but he’s also so jealous and downright possessive of Lucy at times that I wanted to smack him. He has good reason for this of course, as he’s dealing with a vampire that longs for his betrothed, but he starts off like that before anyone even suspects the count is a monster, so I really did not like Harker in this picture, and his attitude at the end of the film didn’t help my opinion of him at all. While he could be heroic and even sympathetic at times, he was more often a scowling, envious jerk that was hard to like very much.

Olivier is an actor I don’t hear about as much today, but as a child, he was one of the most famous actors around, and he does well as Van Helsing, although his version is out for direct revenge thanks to Mina being his daughter, which makes him a little less of a noble benefactor than he is normally. He’s still sympathetic of course, but the fact that he seeks revenge for his own child makes him feel more driven than usual. Unlike Langella, who did not try to emulate a Romanian accent for the count, Olivier affects a Dutch accent for the film, and I feel he was good at the role, and very convincing.

Donald Pleasance, no stranger to fans of horror or James Bond, takes on the somewhat comical role of Dr. Seward. Unlike the original where he was one of Mina’s suitors (and Lucy and Mina swapping roles as I stated earlier), he is instead Lucy’s father. He plays in stark contrast to Van Helsing, who is more serious and focused on the situation. He does help them combat the vampire, and his concern for his daughter is real, but he also feels like he wasn’t meant to be taken seriously 100% of the time, and it shows.

Mina is quite good, even if she’s not the show-stopper Lucy is. Once she’s transformed, she’s scary and creepy, and she plays that aspect of the character convincingly. She’s enamored with the count early on, and while his focus is Lucy, they still have an attraction that you can almost feel through the screen. Her relationship with Lucy is charming and enjoyable too, but of course, we don’t get to witness it for long.

Renfield is good here, but he pales in comparison to the both the English and Spanish 1931 versions. He doesn’t get a ton of screen time, but he’s good when he is present, and his obsession with insects is quite disturbing and believable here. The revenge Dracula inflicts upon him is downright scary, and one of the best scenes in the film.

"Would you like to buy some undead girl scout cookies?"

But I saved the best character for last, and that is Lucy. Lucy is the star of this film, more than Jonathan, more than Van Helsing, and even more than Dracula. Kate Nelligan is simply fantastic as the leading lady. Unlike Mina, who was dominated by Dracula almost immediately, Lucy initiates their relationship. Dracula does become the dominant figure in the couple, but he is the undead noble after all, and she holds her own quite well. She’s also amazing even when she is compelled to go to him, and they move to stop her. They do indeed stop her, but not easily! She’s lovely indeed as befits Dracula’s love interest, but she sells the role far beyond just being pretty and under his spell. Her mannerisms mirror her personality and how it morphs as she deals with her changing situation in the film perfectly and convincingly. Her reaction at the end is especially interesting and leaves the audience wondering what she’s thinking.

"I have a message for you from Dracula!"

I’ve read some complaints about how it’s not just horror, that it’s horror mixed with romance, but Dracula has always been like that from the beginning; this version just focuses more on the romantic angle than usual. Between the excellent characters, settings being so emotionally evocative, and the amazing musical score, this movie is gothic to its core, and it’s not ashamed of that fact one bit. Horror in the 70s moved largely away from the gothic classics of the 60s and earlier times, but this movie showed that it could still work. Faster paced and focused more on Dracula’s relationship with Lucy than its predecessors, it told its own version of the classic tale in a way more in line with the sensibilities of the late 70s, and it works very well. I can’t quite give it the maximum rating, with its lack of Castle Dracula, Borgo Pass, and the mixing up of main characters, but it's still great, and more people should see it.

Three and a half impressive Langella glares out of four.

-Sylvester McCoy, the 7th Doctor, has a supporting role as Walter Myrtle, one of the sanitarium’s staff.

-John Williams wrote the musical score, and it’s great stuff. A nice mix of suspense and grandeur that I feel fits the film perfectly.

-Langella wanted to take a different tack with the count, and avoided trying to emulate either Lugosi or Lee, and I found his version of Dracula excellent. I still prefer Lee’s version the most, but Langella is brilliant here.

-John Badham directed this film and several other popular films as well. These include Blue Thunder, Saturday Night Fever, Wargames, and more.

-At one point, Van Helsing asks Seward if he gave Lucy laudanum. His reply is a terse ‘No, not my own daughter!’. This is after he had given Mina, Van Helsing’s daughter, laudanum earlier. I half expected Van Helsing to smack him there!

-For those that may not know, laudanum is powdered opium in a liquid solution. It’s reasonably common in old horror movies and video games.

Morella is a Gen Xer who likes strange things a bit too much.

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