Johnny Showtime: DRACULA (2026)

 by JB

Gee willikers! Sometimes when you go to those Monday Night Secret Screening-type deals, you get to see something early that YOU ACTUALLY WANTED TO SEE.

Last Monday, I sat at my local cineplex wondering just what the monthly mystery screening would be. Crime 101? Nope. Scream 7? Nope. Gore Verbinski’s new one, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die? Nope. To think that I could have guessed it if I had only paid more attention to the posters in the lobby...

The film started with medieval-looking letters on a black background. "What is this," I whispered to myself, “Czechoslovakian anime? I may need to bail.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was Luc Besson’s latest: a new version of Dracula, which is right up my dark, dank, blood-soaked alley.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: It’s basically Bram Stoker’s book, Dracula, although every filmmaker who has ever tackled the novel has taken certain liberties with the narrative. We monster kids are used to it.

This newest iteration of the Dracula legend owes a lot to Francis Ford Coppola’s earlier Bram Stoker's Dracula starring Gary Oldman. Besson’s version of the tale steals the risible concept that the real Vlad the Impaler was somehow the fictional Dracula, and that Vlad lost his beloved betrothed while he was off fighting and impaling the Turks. Seems he only became a vampire when he cursed God for taking his bride to heaven. Palpable nonsense!

Most of this bullshit (none of which appears in the original novel) can be traced to a book, In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires, by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally. First published in 1972, the book connects Bram Stoker's famous vampire to the historical figure Vlad the Impaler, traces the real history of the ruthless 15th-century Romanian prince, and explores the folklore of vampires, blending bad historical research with bullshit made up out of whole cloth.

According to the Wikipedia machine, “Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally “popularized the idea that Turkish consultant Armin Vambery supplied Stoker with information about [...] Vlad the Impaler. Their investigation, however, found nothing about 'Vlad, Dracula, or vampires' within Vambery's published papers, nor in Stoker's notes about their meeting. [Famed Dracula scholar Elizabeth] Miller calls the link to Vlad III 'tenuous,' indicating that Stoker incorporated a large amount of ‘insignificant detail’ from his research, and asking why he would omit Vlad III's infamous cruelty?”

Coppola (or James V. Hart, who wrote the screenplay) fell for this nonsense hook, line, and sinker when making the 1992 film, reanimating a myth that had by then been debunked again and again and again. Thanks, James. Thanks, Francis. It was Coppola’s film that introduced the "sympathetic vampire" who is NOT an UNDEAD DEVIL trying to steal your soul by condemning you to an eternity of night-roaming and bloodsucking, but a BROODING, STARRY-EYED BRO WHO JUST MISSES HIS GAL.

Yes, I DO take these things rather personally!

Besson’s new Dracula also rather shamelessly hijacks the now-iconic "elderly Dracula” makeup that Greg Cannom designed for Coppola's Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Only maybe it’s not shameless hijacking, maybe it’s respectful homage? Later in the film, after Dracula has enjoyed some fitful meals, his rejuvenated self resembles The Babadook, who himself was an homage to Lon Chaney’s “Man in the Beaver Hat” in Tod Browning’s London After Midnight. Perhaps Besson has fashioned his monster protagonist as a kind of metaphoric summation of “All Vampires Who Came Before.”

Besson has said in interviews that he had NO interest in making a horror film, which made me wonder why he decided to YES make a horror film, and make it about one of the most popular horror characters of the twentieth century. Besson leans in on the story’s very religious underpinnings, so he has omitted the character of Van Helsing, Vampire Hunter. Instead, Besson offers the character of Unnamed Catholic Priest, Vampire Hunter. The stone gargoyles of Dracula’s castle come to life through D-grade CGI and act as his loyal servants. It’s like something out of a deranged Disney cartoon. Besson’s biggest change to the original novel though, is a ten-minute detour where we learn that down through the ages of his immortal vampire life, Dracula has spent considerable time FORMULATING AN ENTRANCING PERFUME, with which he enslaves female minions to do his bidding.

This I found confusing. All the other Draculas simply bite their victims on the neck to make them his willing thralls. I guess that was too conventional for Besson. He wanted his Dracula to be a world traveler, a florid and natty dresser, an accomplished ballroom dancer. He wanted a Dracula who also likes... crafts!

During the screening, I needed to keep reminding myself that other filmmakers have taken liberties with this story, and I should not hold these narrative flights of fancy against Besson or his movie. The 1922 Nosferatu changed all the characters’ names in an attempt to avoid paying royalties to Stoker’s widow. The 1931 Dracula was based on the Broadway adaptation, which bowed to the tastes of the day by turning the story into a drawing-room mystery. The celebrated 1958 Hammer Films remake, Horror of Dracula, included a plethora of changes necessary because of the film’s low budget.

That being said, there is a lot to like here. Cristoph Waltz is terrific playing the pseudo-Helsing priest. Zoë Bleu acquits herself nicely as Elisabeta/Mina. Matilda De Angelis is magnificent as the feral Maria, this film’s stand-in for the novel’s Lucy Westenra. This version moves along at a brisk pace and is well edited. There is a lot of fighting and bloodshed. The cinematography, art direction, sets, and costumes are all first rate. This film is beautiful to look at, a feast for the eyes. The score by Danny Elfman is quite good and avoids many of the genre clichés into which his scores sometimes fall.

Though I could quibble all day with various aspects of this new version of this familiar tale, I wound up being greatly entertained by it. Indeed, I would say I enjoyed (as opposed to “appreciated” or “understood”) this version much more than Robert Eggers’ recent Nosferatu or Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. Your mileage may vary. When you live this close to monsters, you might develop some... peculiar tastes.