Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) - film review

In the 1890s, estate agent Thomas Renfield undertakes the long and hazardous journey from London to Transylvania to conclude the sale of Carfax Abbey to a certain Count Dracula.  Little does he know that Dracula is a vampire whose move to England is motivated more by an appetite for fresh blood than cultural advancement.  With Renfield his willing slave, Dracula crosses land and sea and is soon happily settled in London.  Whilst Dr Seward, the owner of an asylum, is preoccupied with the insane insect-eating Renfield, his ward Lucy falls under the spell of Dracula.  Perplexed by Lucy’s mysterious loss of blood, Seward calls in Dr Van Helsing, an authority on rare diseases.  Van Helsing declares that Lucy is the victim of a vampire and insists that her bedroom be strewn with garlic to keep the fiend away.  Dracula proves to be a more formidable enemy than Van Helsing realises.  Having transformed Lucy into one of his own kind, Dracula turns his attention to Seward’s daughter Mina.  Who says the living have all the fun...?

Fangs are definitely not what they used to be.  Mel Brooks’ second horror spoof is another irreverent foray into classic Gothic territory, an exuberant oddball farce that does to the classic Bram Stoker tale what the director had previously done to Mary Shelley’s novel in his rip-roaring Young Frankenstein (1974).  A few years prior to this, Francis Ford Coppola had offered his own take on the vampiric legend, the shamelessly mis-titled Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), so it is hardly a surprise that Brooks pokes fun at this film, whilst also paying a semi-disrespectful homage to previous Dracula movies from the Universal and Hammer stable.  On its first release, the film was almost universally panned, although today it is much easier to sit through than Coppola’s unbearably pretentious Dracula monstrosity.  Dracula: Dead and Loving It is far from being Mel Brooks’ greatest film but it is a slick production that delivers a fair quota of laughs, albeit nothing on the seismic scale of Young Frankenstein.

Whilst the lavish baroque sets and lush cinematography owe more to Hammer’s Gothic horror productions of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the plot is obviously a reworking of Universal’s classic Dracula (1931), and it helps to have recently seen that film beforehand (otherwise you’ll miss all the best gags).  Leslie Nielsen is a dead-ringer for Bela Lugosi, mimicking Lugosi’s facial expressions and thick Hungarian accent so perfectly you’d think they were related (blood brothers maybe?).  Peter MacNicol’s crazed Renfield instantly calls to mind Dwight Frye’s hysterical portrayal in Universal’s film whilst Mel Brooks offers up a magnificent parody of Edward Van Sloan’s Van Helsing.  The references to Coppola’s Dracula film are far less respectful, including Renfield and Harker being groped by lustful she-vampires and a grotesque colour saturated dream sequence that will have you reaching for your dark glasses.  The comic high point is the scene in which Harker drives a stake through Lucy’s heart and is drenched in a shower of blood - Brooks omitted to tell Steven Weber how much theatrical blood would be blown up into his face, hence his reaction is one of genuine surprise (and one of the funniest things you will ever see).  The jokes may not come as easily as in previous Mel Brooks films, and some are downright puerile, but overall Dracula: Dead and Loving It is an enjoyable family friendly romp - a welcome antidote to Coppola’s vampire monstrosity and a wickedly tongue-in-cheek homage to the many great Dracula films that preceded it.

© Alex Sullivan 2011

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