Search Details

Word: dracula (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first (reverse)


Usage:

...FIRST FIVE MINUTES of the new Dracula, Frank Langella literally rips out a man's throat, and you know nobody's gonna pull no punches this time. Let the tide of bloody dead babies commence: let there be impalings, gougings, slashings, stakings, necks broken with an appetizing CRRRUNNCHH in Dolby stereo, John Williams conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, repeating the same goddamned nine-note musical motif like a lobotomized organ grinder, bats tearing faces and crucifixes burning the flesh of latex-scarred vampirellas. "It's a love story," explained Frank Langella...

Author: By David B. Edelstein, | Title: Staking the Wild Vampire | 7/31/1979 | See Source »

...there is Dracula, the latest in a long line of remakes, a frisky summer shocker that will give you a decent evening out but not a whole lot more. But what am I to tell Director Badham when he says to me, "I played by your rules for good horror movies. I got a smooth script and a great cast: Laurence Oliver is Van Helsing. I kept it playful and tongue-in-cheek: huge, somewhat stylized sets, plenty of action, a leading lady with nice tits...

Author: By David B. Edelstein, | Title: Staking the Wild Vampire | 7/31/1979 | See Source »

...RIGHT, of course. This Dracula has the ingredients to be the definitive version. It just doesn't happen to be a very good movie. It's cluttered and insecure; it always gives you a little too much instead of just enough to get you aroused. Dracula delivers, but always before you want it to, so you're never really hungry, never in suspense...

Author: By David B. Edelstein, | Title: Staking the Wild Vampire | 7/31/1979 | See Source »

...This Dracula had its roots in the 1977 Broadway production of a 1927 play by John Balderston and Hamilton Deane, a corny, embarrassing old drawing-room comedy-melodrama with one or two amusing confrontations, sort of a "Vampire Who Came To Dinner." Director Dennis Rosa couldn't decide whether he wanted a campy parody of 30's horror movies or a straight chiller (which would have been impossible with that script). So he tried to do it both ways and it came out neither--a mess, complicated by the celebrated Edward Gorey's black-and-white cartoon sets, which reduced...

Author: By David B. Edelstein, | Title: Staking the Wild Vampire | 7/31/1979 | See Source »

...RICHTER, the screenwriter, sensibly trashed nearly all the Deane-Balderston play, retaining only certain key encounters between Dracula and his nemesis, Van Helsing. The latter is no longer a pompous vampire hunter but an ordinary professor whose daughter. Mina, becomes Dracula's first victim in England. No corny lines remain; at his most indulgent, Richter keeps an episode in which Dracula hurls a candelabra into a magnificent drawing room mirror that does not reflect his image. "Pardon me," he tells Van Helsing, matter-of-factly, "I dislike mirrors...

Author: By David B. Edelstein, | Title: Staking the Wild Vampire | 7/31/1979 | See Source »

Previous | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | Next