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In this post–Interview With A Vampire/post–Twilight era, it’s hard to believe that there was a time when it was a con­tro­ver­sial move to make a Dracula movie that pre­sented its anti-hero as a fig­ure of seduc­tion rather than a fig­ure of ter­ror.  However, this was true in the late 1970’s: you were expected to deliver a cus­tom­ary amount of blood, thun­der and gnash­ing vam­pire fangs, unless you were mak­ing a comedy-horror film like Love At First Bite.  Any film that dared not fol­low this man­date ran the risk of alien­at­ing hor­ror fans and con­fus­ing non-horror fans.

And that brings us to the least respected adap­ta­tion of this clas­sic tale, the 1979 ver­sion of Dracula. Genre fans got their col­lec­tive panties in a knot over it because a) it favored a more roman­tic approach — com­plete with a ‘sexy,’ quasi-sympathetic Dracula — instead of the usual grue­some hijinks and b) it was directed by John Badham, who had just come off a zeitgeist-tapping, very non-horror hit called Saturday Night Fever. The film did mid­dling busi­ness at the box office and has been con­signed to home video obliv­ion since then. So it is the mis­guided bomb some per­ceive it to be or a clas­sic wait­ing to be rediscovered?

Truth be told, it exists some­where in the mid­dle space between those two judg­ments. Dracula falls short of being a clas­sic because its exper­i­men­tal approach to the tale isn’t as fully real­ized as it could have been.  It is based on the Broadway play ver­sion of the story rather than draw­ing directly from the Bram Stoker novel, favor­ing the roman­ti­cized take on the story that became a big Broadway hit in the late 1970’s.  As adapted for the screen by W.D. Richter, it racks up sev­eral fur­ther changes — drop­ping some scenes alto­gether, expand­ing oth­ers and adding some new tweaks all its own.

Some of the choices are effec­tive — mak­ing Lucy a model of proto-feminist inde­pen­dence and mov­ing things to an Edwardian set­ting are the most potent.  However, other changes could have used a bit more thought: a sud­den car-vs.-horse car­riage chase near the end seems to have walked in from a dif­fer­ent movie. Also, some of the cast­ing doesn’t work — Trevor Eve pro­vides one of the more bland inter­pre­ta­tions of Jonathan Harker. More impor­tantly, the third act blurs by in a hasty and dis­jointed style, lack­ing the smooth, dra­matic build nec­es­sary for this kind of gothic effort.

However, that doesn’t mean this Dracula isn’t worth watch­ing. The film is styl­ish and com­mit­ted enter­prise, man­ag­ing to enter­tain even when some of its choices fail to con­nect with the viewer. First and fore­most, Frank Langella is a top-flight Dracula, mak­ing him as lusty as he is impos­ing to cre­ate one of the more seduc­tive takes on this famil­iar char­ac­ter. A young Kate Nelligan adds some fire as the re-imagined Lucy char­ac­ter and Laurence Oliver is hammy in the best pos­si­ble way as Van Helsing — his scenes with Langella crackle with intensity.

Best of all, the under­rated John Badham directs with con­fi­dence and great cin­e­matic flair. Utilizing sump­tu­ous scope pho­tog­ra­phy from Gil Taylor and one of John Williams’ best (and most atyp­i­cal) scores, he gives the film a grand, old-fashioned atmos­phere of dark romance. He also cre­ates one of the most unusual and mem­o­rable vam­piric seduc­tion scenes — this moment goes heavy on the opti­cal effects and is too over-the-top for some but its elec­tri­fy­ing to Your Humble Reviewer’s eyes. Finally, you gotta love those gor­geous matte paint­ings by Alfred Whitlock (they still look bet­ter than CGI).

In short, this isn’t the best Dracula out there — mainly because it for­sakes its hor­ror roots to be a gothic romance. That said, mod­ern view­ers accus­tomed to roman­ti­cized vampire-lite fare might find this trail­blazer to be worth­while gothic eye-candy.