Thoughts on Bram Stoker's Dracula & Interview With a Vampire

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Escape Goat

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I watched Bram Stoker's Dracula last night and I was sooooo bored. I can't believe I watched the whole thing through too. Everyone had incredibly horrible British accents. I never once bought that any of them were real people in the story. It was Wynona Ryder and Keanu Reeves playing dress up. The only saving grace was Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing.

The whole hyper sexual vampire angle was just...awful. Nothing the movie tried to do worked. The horror, the drama, set pieces, the characters...it was all flat and tedious.

I'm watching Interview With a Vampire now and its stunning. Tom Cruise's cocky attitude plays well with his character. Brad Pitt actually portrays a pained vampire and Kirstin Dunst delivers a performance with the skill of a woman twice her age (and I believe shes 10 or something in this film). Not once in this film am I left bored to think about when the next thing is going to happen. The movie just keeps moving forward (unlike Coppola's Dracula which stalls regularly).
 
Well, vampires are hypersexual according to the original book, or at least Dracula was.

Dracula gave women orgasms when he bit them.
 
Never seen Interview but I liked Dracula. It's a flawed movie obviously, with Reeves giving one of the worst performances I've ever seen, but something about the film's atmosphere always takes me in. Once they start hunting Dracula it gets awesome imo :lol
 
I love Interview with the Vampire, although Antonio Banderas was kind of a weak choice to play Armand, who is supposed to be a 17 year old Russian boy. Other than that, I think it's fantastic. Now if only they hadn't made Queen of the Damned....
 
Watched "Interview" a couple of months ago on TV, several years after the last time. I had fond memories of it...thought it was quite crap to be honest this time. I love Coppola's Dracula, on the other hand. :P
 
Solstice said:
I love Interview with the Vampire, although Antonio Banderas was kind of a weak choice to play Armand, who is supposed to be a 17 year old Russian boy. Other than that, I think it's fantastic. Now if only they hadn't made Queen of the Damned....

I had almost forgotten about that movie. I never saw it so I went to look at what it was about...

The vampire Lestat becomes a rock star whose music wakes up the queen of all vampires

what :lol
 
keanu reeves bad acting is actually a positive for the movie, it makes for good unintentional comedy on repeat viewings
 
The vampire Lestat becomes a rock star whose music wakes up the queen of all vampires

In the movie, that's how it happens. The book goes into a lot more detail, though. Unfortunately that's around the time when Anne Rice's husband died and she went crazy. After that all the books became about "finding God" or something of the sort.
 
I very much enjoyed interview with a Vampire.

I liked it more than Bram Stoker's, which just seemed silly at times. Most because of Keanu.
 
Love Interview, one of my favorite movies and never get tired of it. Dracula is on par with probably Frankenstein, decent/entertaining films, but need a decent amount of time to watch it again.
 
I'll admit that Keanu and Ryder's "accent" almost ruined the movie. But I love Gary Oldman as Dracula and how the movie was shot.

The way the movie was shot reminds me of how I envision Dracula. The way shadows played tricks on the viewer. The type of special effects they were using was all very creative and added tremendously to the atmosphere.
 
I thought Gary Oldman was awesome in Dracula. I agree with the atmosphere comments. Not a great movie by any means, but I enjoyed it when I watched it.
 
Coppola's Dracula is awesome. Interview.. is, on the other hand, some of the most boring, unenjoyable tosh I've ever seen. Fucking garbage.
 
I thought Dracula was kinda boring but I kinda enjoyed it

But Interview with a Vampire is way more awesome in every way. Does anyone know how the blu-ray is ?
 
Interview with a Vampire is a fantastic movie. I don't know why Cruise doesn't play more villains, he's really good. Winona Ryder's hot, so that automatically make Dracula worth watching at least once. Keanu Reeves and his horrible, terrible, brutal accent can go straight to hell, though.
 
Can't sit through either one nowadays. But I do love Shadow of the Vampire.

shadow-of-the-vampire-1.jpg
 
Both movies are amazing compared to all the shit thats come out in the past 10 years.

And fuck 'Let the right One In', overrated piece of boring shit.
 
Bram Stocker's Dracula is so underrated. I love it. Interview is ever better. Such a masterpiece.
 
Never seen Brammy's Dracula.

Interview was good, but unmemorable. I couldn't name a single piece of dialogue in the movie.

If we're talking vamp movies, I prefer old school. Herzog's Nosferatu is, IMO, the be all end all of vampire movies. So fucking atmospheric, such great acting....so fucking good.

I think the best thing about the Nosferatu movies was the way vampires died.

Stake in the heart? Fuck you. Garlic? Get that weak shit out of here.

You needed to have a woman pure of heart sacrifice herself to distract Nossy enough to keep him until the sun rises.

It's such a tragic, bittersweet way to end it...it works every time.

Here, to convince you to search out Nosferatu '79(keep in mind it ain't in english):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1KO55JBuFE
(Hottest chick ever in a vampire movie. Period.)


(MASSIVE SPOILERS-This is the ending. This is how to make a vampire sexual without making it cheesy or making him look like a Calvin Klein model.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY28p1YX5J4
 
NullPointer said:
Can't sit through either one nowadays. But I do love Shadow of the Vampire.

shadow-of-the-vampire-1.jpg

Shadow.. is great. So is Nosferatu (both the original and the remake).

BattleMonkey said:
And fuck 'Let the right One In', overrated piece of boring shit.

God, yes. I loved the book, but the movie adaption bored me out of my mind. So sad :(
 
I love Interview. Watched it earlier today on the SF Channel. Still holds up really well, and one of the few performances where I think Tom Cruise really nailed his role.

I heard Anne Rice stopped doing gothic horror and started doing more religious themed works because she thinks god is mad at her for her past work and is killing everyone she ever loved or some such (one of her children years ago and her husband more recently)

Sad stuff.
 
Sorry for the late bump, but I just finished watching Interview with the Vampire and it's a very good film.

Tom Cruise is so good in this film, and what happens to his character is so sad.
 
One of the worst vampire movies and one of the best.

I hadn't read the book but found Interview mesmerizing, the other movie is an abortion.
 
Bram Stoker's Dracula is probably the closest I've seen to the book, but that isn't saying much. I hate the hyper-sexulaized aspect being so unsubtle. It was always there but I appreciated it being more subdued and implied in the book.

The movie was also too empathetic to Drac. It's Harker's story, damn it.

This was an awkward-assed movie for young me to go see with my mom in the theater with all the
tits and werewolf fucking.

Not as bad as Total Recall, mind you.
 
Both movies are excellent, but both books are better. Especially Dracula. Bram Stoker's Dracula was the first horror movie I had ever had an actual interest in watching when I was younger.
 
I LOVE Bram Stoker's Dracula, if only for I think its Eiko Ishioka's art direction (same lady who did art for Mishima). Great vision of Dracula (played well Oldman), and lots of neat phantasmagoria throughout the film. Really beautiful to look at.
 
Bram Stoker is pretty bad, but man does it have a unique visual style. I have to admire it for that.
Interview has less swagger, but is a more solid and engaging movie overall. I wish they had a hybrid love-child.

(holy shit @ the bump)
 
I read all the Vampire Chronicles books when I was young, I loved the hell out of them. My favorite was Queen of the Damned, and of course, Memnoch. After seeing Interview with a Vampire, I was sooo excited when the announced Queen of the Damned becoming a film.

Too bad they fucked that all up :(
 
Dracula is fucking fantastic, Keanu Reeves miscasting aside. The costume, make-up and production design is second to none, and Coppola uses a lot of very cool visual touches.
 
I love Dracula (the movie). Awesome actors (Rider, Reeves, Hopkins and of course the man Gary Oldman himself) and it almost feels like a stageplay. I agree that the middle part in London is a bit slow and drags the experience down a bit, but all in all a great movie and I'm glad I have it on blu-ray now.

Also, the foursome with Monica Belluci... c'mon man!
 
Escape Goat said:
I watched Bram Stoker's Dracula last night and I was sooooo bored. I can't believe I watched the whole thing through too. Everyone had incredibly horrible British accents. I never once bought that any of them were real people in the story. It was Wynona Ryder and Keanu Reeves playing dress up. The only saving grace was Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing.

The book is crap. A strong beginning soon followed by descent into boredom ( and the correspondence writing style doesn't help). Not sure what they could've done in the movie without breaking away from the source material.
 
I read all the Vampire Chronicles books when I was young, I loved the hell out of them. My favorite was Queen of the Damned, and of course, Memnoch. After seeing Interview with a Vampire, I was sooo excited when the announced Queen of the Damned becoming a film.

Too bad they fucked that all up :(

Loved Memnoch, but it became hard to follow near the end of the book. lol Best thing about QofD, was the song.

I liked the art direction of Dracula, but yeah it really was a boring movie. Interview is something you could sit down and watch again.
 
I liked Bram Stoker's, but it DOES drag on at times. I will usually nod off while watching it. Weird that I like a movie that I consistently fall asleep to, but there it is. And yes, Reeves was terrible.
 
I watched Interview with a Vampire last night. Its pretty good. Love the atmosphere. The lighting is fucking great in the film too.

I love anything to do with the undead, including this thread.
 
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