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Rating: *
Genre: Horror/Crappy rip-off MPAA: PG Review #: 22 Cast: Directed by... Werner Herzog Writing credits...Werner Herzog Klaus Kinski...Count Dracula Isabelle Adjani...Lucy Harker Bruno Ganz...Jonathan Harker Roland Topor...Renfield Walter Ladengast...Doctor Van Helsing Dan van Husen...Warden Jan Groth...Harbormaster Carsten Bodinus...Schrader Martje Grohmann...Mina Rijk de Gooyer...Town Official Clemens Scheitz...Gerichtsschreiber Lo van Hensbergen John Leddy...Coachman Margiet van Hartingsveld Tim Beekman |
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Review:
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. One-One Thousand, Two-One Thousand.... What a bad movie! When this came into the video store, I was thrilled! I mistook this movie for its better, namely the 1922 original. I got over my initial shock, and decided to review this movie on its own. Too bad it bites (pun intended). The storyline is sort of like the original, which was a german knock-off of Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula. Consequently, Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Nosferatu have superficially similar plots. Here it is: Jonathan Harker is sent by his boss, Renfield to Transylvania to finalize a real-estate deal with Count Dracula. While there, Jonathan is bitten by the vampire, and the vampire is smitten by a picture of Jonathan's wife, Lucy. Dracula makes his way to Johnathan's home town in a ship loaded with coffins full of dirt and disease-carrying rats. When Dracula arrives, so does the plague. |
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| First, the bad points. This plot goes really weird on us. There are just too many artsy-fartsy additions. For instance, when Jonathan escapes from the his locked room in the castle, he falls from a height, and lands, knocking him unconscious, a la the original. Then, Herzog throws in a kid, standing over Jonathan, playing the violin in the middle of the totally deserted castle. The dialog was mystifying too. Lucy routinely spouts such atheist creeds as "Salvation comes from ourselves alone", and "Faith is the amazing faculty of man that allows him to believe that which he knows to be untrue" at the most inappropriate and random of times. Here's a snatch of dialog that I actually had to write down, because I knew that I'd never be able to reproduce that level of idiocy. Dracula comes to visit Lucy in the night, while Jonathan approaching Thermal Death Point in the other room. |
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Dracula: "He will not die" Lucy: "Yes he will. Death is overwhelming. Eventually we all die. Stars fade and reel in confusion, Time passes in blindness, rivers flow without knowing their course, Only death is cruelly sure." Keep in mind that Lucy's addressing a Vampire that just snuck into her room. Lucy spends so much of the movie acting totally over-the-top, and annoying as hell. I just kept wishing that the plague would claim her too. I think that Lucy's constant stream of verbal diarrhea was the only thing keeping this movie from being as boring as a snail race. Of course, I try to find the good in every movie, and in a movie like this, anything good sticks out like blood in the snow. |
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| The only thing which saves this movie is Klaus Kinski. His portrayal of Dracula really shines through. He plays the vampire as a sort of piteous animal. He's less than human, and full of regrets. This isn't Bela Lugosi! He uses make-up that's based on the original Nosferatu, and it works. In fact, the only thing that he does wrong is wait so long to put Lucy out of our misery. He looks so frail and breakable, yet powerful and regal. He is a rotting corpse, and you know it at first sight. This performance way too little to save this stinking ship. You'll be bored before Jonathan even reaches Dracula's castle! It takes him a full half hour to make the journey from the village to the castle. I know that this long walk must be boring as hell for Jonathan, but do we have to share his boredom? Hasn't Herzog ever heard of elapsed time? |
| Herzog also reworks the ending until it makes no sense. I mean, in the middle of a plague, they arrest Van Helsing for the murder of Dracula? And I thought that the sunlight would kill him, not just stun him long enough for a right good staking. I think that probably the greatest image in the movie is one in which several characters are talking in the background, and the foreground is taken up almost entirely by a horse's ass. |
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