Dracula di Dario Argento (2012)

Directed by: Dario Argento

Writers: Dario Argento, Antonio Tentori, Stefano Piani, Enrique Cerezo

 

 

The newest addition to the ever growing collection of adaptations of Dracula (which happens to be one of my favorite stories) comes from none other than Dario Argento, the great Italian master of horror (if you don’t believe me, check that he appears in the series Masters of Horror), whose last few movies haven’t exactly been met by great enthusiasm by the critics. In fact, most of them claim they were utter crap.

So, Argento decided to play it safe and to use the story that gives you at least a solid movie almost by default, unless you’re a total retard. He scooped up some five million dollars by selling his daughter’s nude photos on eBay and assembled an all-star cast including said daughter Asia as Lucy, Thomas Kretchmann as Dracula, Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing and bunch of other people I’ve never heard about. From the look of the movie, I’m guessing most of that money went to booze for Rutger Hauer. He sure looks drunk all the time, anyway.

The obvious budget constraints dictated some painful but necessary changes to the story – it all takes place in some forsaken craphole of a village called Pasburg or something. I don’t know where the hell is that supposed to be, it’s never explained. The characters’ names don’t help much, some of them (Miloš, Tanja, Zoran) sound like they came straight from Serbia, while the mayor's last name is Kislinger, which is probably German or Austrian. I guess Argento didn't care much about this, so I don't se why should we.

Anyway, as I said, it all takes place in that village, which is really boring and bad looking. There's no trace of Dracula's intention of going to London, because then they would have to reduce Rutger Hauer's vodka supplies and create something that at least resembles a big city, which was obviously out of the question. So the whole team – Harker, Mina and Van Helsing – move to this Pasburg, where they meet Dracula, Renfield and Lucy who already live there. Well, not exactly the whole team – budget constraints dictated that characters like Arthur Holmwood, Dr. Seward and Quincy Morris had to be written off.

The existing characters also suffered some changes. Lucy is now the mayor’s daughter, Renfield is a caretaker or something and likes to drive shovels through people’s heads and Harker is a simpleton who’s completely irrelevant to the story. At times he reminded me of Mozart’s wife from Amadeus for some reason. Basically it all boils down to the fact that Dracula has some kind of a deal with the rulers of the place that he can kill, but should not kill everyone, if at all possible. So one day he gets pissed off and kills everyone and then the local priest summons Van Helsing, who arrives straight from who knows where (it’s also never explained, I guess it wasn’t that important) and brings with him his vampire slaying equipment consisting of wooden stakes, crosses, bullets with garlic (bet you didn’t see that one coming!) and a truckload of finest Jack Daniel’s whisky.

His first task is to kill Lucy, who was in the meantime vampired by Dracula (at least they retained something from the book). After that, he goes for Dracula himself, after gathering from the priest the invaluable information concerning the fact that Dracula is eeeeeeeeeeviiiiiil did you hear me Van Helsing EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I won’t tell you how that ended, except for the fact that Mina manages to kill Dracula using Van Helsing’s pistol (while Dracula is busy repeatedly hitting Van Helsing’s liquor-hardened head) and thus releases herself from the control of that freak who wanted her to be the substitute for his late wife. That bastard, she was dead for like only two hundred years or something and he’s already trying to jump in bed with some bimbo from London (presumably, it’s also never explained where do Mina and Harker come from). Suits him fine!

Obviously, I wasn’t able to enjoy the 3D presentation of the film, so I can’t comment how that came out. For a Dracula movie, the photography is surprisingly bright (maybe exactly because of the 3D filming) and in combination with the set design (or lack thereof) at times reminds of a film by The Asylum. All the great scary scenes from the book are removed, but Argento has a few aces up his sleeve – there’s a sex scene in a haystack, Lucy is shown naked while being washed by Mina (unfortunately, she doesn’t return the favour, which is my biggest complaint to the movie), Dracula totally abuses his transformation powers so he turns into various things including a giant praying mantis (bet you didn’t see that one coming!), there’s plenty of gore (mostly courtesy of Dracula and his murderous rampage) which is done quite nicely and of course – there’s the fact that, probably for the first time in movie history, Van Helsing is played by a Dutch actor (!). For those who may be unaware, despite his suspiciously Jewish first name, Van Helsing is Dutch and Rutger Hauer does an amazing job of bringing this authenticity to the screen, with his blonde hair and stuff.

Overall, while this is movie is far from being a masterpiece like Nosferatu (by Murnau), Nosferatu (by Herzog) or Philip Saville’s TV version, it’s still a decent work that will keep you entertained for almost two hours. Too bad we didn’t get the scene of Mina and Lucy sharing a bath, that would at least five stars to the overall IMDb score.