Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9776 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-10-23
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Chalk this one up as something that seemed like a good idea at the time. Frank Langella had just taken Broadway by storm in a revival of the play based on Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel. He was tall, elegant, and almost painfully romantic--all qualities that failed to translate to this garish, tarted-up film version. The story remains the same, if told in greater length than in Bela Lugosi's version. The film even offered Laurence Olivier as vampire-hunter Van Helsing (in one of several roles he played during the period that required a middle-European accent) and a young Kate Nelligan as the woman whose love (and blood) Dracula most wants. But director John Badham, working from W.D. Richter's clunky script, makes a hash of most of it, relying on special effects to do the heavy lifting. --Marshall Fine

Synopsis
This stylish production of the classic gothic horror tale has Frank Langella repeating his electrifying, award-winning stage performance as the blood-thirsty count, and Laurence Olivier as his arch-nemesis, the devout vampire hunter, Van Helsing. High atop a foggy seaside cliff lies a foreboding asylum, home to the doctor (Donald Pleasence) who runs it, and his beautiful and free-spirited daughter, Lucy (Kate Nelligan). The doctor and Lucy have taken in Mina (Jay Francis), a weak and sickly young friend of Lucy's, whom they are attempting to nurse back to health. On a dark and gloomy night, a torrential storm ravages their coastal home and a ship crashes to its doom on a nearby craggy shore. The only survivor of the shipwreck is a seductive and mysterious young man named Dracula (Frank Langella). The debonair count charms the willing and nubile Mina, who is soon discovered dead from mysterious causes. In horror, her father is contacted and Van Helsing arrives in haste, only to discover the real identity of the suave and beguiling count, just as he has picked his new bride, the lovely Lucy. This fabulous John Badham-directed adaptation of the classic tale combines camp, a superbly atmospheric score by John Williams, and a remarkable ensemble cast for a wildly seductive horror spectacle.

Customer Reviews

Great 1970's Dracula adaptation
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.

An intriguing near-miss
There's more than just a touch of disco to Frank Langella's costumes in John Badham's 1979 Dracula, and along with the copious amounts of dry ice accompanying his seductions and a Maurice Binder laser light love scene it occasionally hovers on the edge of turning into Saturday Bite Fever. But this is more of a lavishly mounted old-school interpretation, with W.D. Richter's screenplay reworking both the novel and the stage play to interesting effect: the film is set entirely in England, bracketed by two violent scenes at sea, and Dracula here is more of a serial seducer than a creature of the night. But by emphasizing the Byronic seductiveness of the role there's never an real sense of menace or threat: this Dracula is more like that smooth git who steals your girlfriend at a nightclub than the embodiment of evil, and it's only in the snarling violence of the finale that you get a sense of the animal beneath. That the forces of good are such a lifeless lot doesn't help much either: Laurence Olivier isn't quite as embarrassingly OTT as my memory had him, and Donald Pleasance's habit of eating in his every scene isn't as tiresome on the small screen as the large, but along with Trevor Eve's ey-upp lad northern lawyer type Jonathan Harker they don't exactly have you cheering them on. But despite the problems, the films is full of great little moments, such as the Count clawing away at the putty in a window to get to his first victim, boasts beautiful production design (the shipwreck and Carfax Abbey are particularly impressive) and has a wonderful romantic score by John Williams. The eagle-eyed will spot future Doctor Who and holder of the Guinness World Record for stuffing live ferrets down his trousers (it's genuine: look it up) Sylvester McCoy in a cough-and-a-spit part.

The transfer, sadly, loses the rich colour of the theatrical release for the prefered desaturated look Badham originally wanted - one of those occasions where you can't help but agree with the studio, I'm afraid.

You can Count on this version!
I've just vented my anger on the new BBC version of Dracula and felt, in order to balance it out, I had to write something good about the most famous Horror character of all time. Dracula the novel has NEVER been put up on screen accurately. A film of that would probably be about 3 hours long (though I wouldn't mind that so much actually). Until that happens, if ever, I will be more than content with this version. Firstly, it looks stunning. The thesping is superb and Langella, who has bigger hair than the Count should really have, is both menacing and sexy in equal measure. The scene where he crawls head first down a wall freaks me out. Some purists have spit their dummies out over the fact that the setting has been 'updated' to the 1920's. As far as I can see, the only reason for the update was to give Jonathan Harker a car to drive, which does up the ante for the chase near the end. All in all, SUPERB.