Bram Stoker's Dracula
Pan, London, 1992
dedication: to Gregg and Charlie
The blurb on the back:
The ultimate retelling of a story that has mesmerised readers for nearly a century.
Following nicely along from Count Dracula and Nosferatu, here's another retelling of the Dracula story in the guise of a novelization. The screenplay to Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula was by James V Hart, and the project was handed over to the experienced Fred Saberhagen (author of his own series of Dracula novels) to put back on the page. Now the movie was actually pretty decent. Gary Oldman was on good form as the Count, successfully resisting the temptation to do ham send-ups of Lugosi and Lee, Tom Waits was an interesting choice as the madman Renfield (though obviously Dwight Frye had long since made the role his own property), and we just had to cover our eyes when Keanu Reeves came on screen. And, of course, being a Coppola creation, it was visually stunning and dripping in atmosphere. The plot modifications were less successful - Dracula is motivated by love lost, which is the kind of thing that can apparently drive a romantic young man to vampirism - but the essence of the original remained. So that's the film. And the book? Well, the book loses out on Oldman and Coppola and settles for being deeply prosaic. To take an example, whilst we're thinking of Renfield:
It's not too hard to see why Hart has a prefatory note urging us to read the original. I'd like to endorse his sentiments. Mind you, we do get eight pages of colour photographs, like this:
ARTISTIC MERIT: 2/5
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