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United Kingdom · 1979
Rated R · 1h 49m
Director John Badham
Starring Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence, Kate Nelligan
Genre Horror, Romance
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In 1913, Count Dracula of Transylvania washes ashore after a shipwreck and is found by Mina. He immediately proceeds to integrate himself into the lives of Mina and her friend Lucy. However, when Mina dies and her father attributes her death to a vampire, evidence indicates that Count Dracula is the monster, and Lucy is his next victim.
The sight of Dracula climbing down a wall headfirst is the highlight of the entire movie; the rest of the film is just another plodding remake. The familiar story is given no new twists, save for an updated Edwardian setting and a few automobiles.
The Associated Press by Bob Thomas
A splendidly mounted and impressively acted version of the Bram Stoker classic. [09 Jul 1979]
Violence belongs in Dracula - the problem is simply that Badham is not good at it. Virtually every big action scene is confusingly staged and clumsily edited. It is particularly sad to report that Olivier is terribly misused. [23 Jul 1979, p.70]
Washington Post by Gary Arnold
The new Dracula is a dazzler, a classic retelling of a classic text. From opening wolf howls through ominous, ambiguous concluding images, it sustains an exciting, witty, erotically compelling illusion of supernatural mystery and terror. [13 Jul 1979, p.E1]
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
By no means lacking in stylishness; if anything, it's got style to spare. But so many of its sequences are at fever pitch, and the mood varies so drastically from episode to episode, that the pace becomes pointless, even taxing, after a while.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Jay Scott
Dracula may not be as big a success as it should be - we don't like our myths dissected, after all, and there is an uneasy (but workable) truce in the film between subtle stylization and the demands of the contemporary horror audience for gore. [14 Jul 1979]
Some interesting creative choices make this more a curio than a great film.
There is no point in retelling this tale if you are going to be stuffy about it.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
What an elegantly seen Dracula this is, all shadows and blood and vapors and Frank Langella stalking through with the grace of a cat. The film is a triumph of performance, art direction and mood over materials that can lend themselves so easily to self-satire
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