More craptastic than outright crap

Corpus_Vile

Well after finally seeing this and reading all the way negative reviews, I must confess that Dario's latest somewhat surprised me as I was expecting it to be much much worse. Not that it's very good mind. While in some ways a faithful enough adaptation of Stoker's classic, it also has some bizarre and decidedly left field touches to it including one rather jaw dropping in concept transformation scene involving a giant... insect, which had me in stitches.

The gore is decent in concept but executed badly, with really substandard CGI, which comes across like the Scy/Fi channel doing a really bad rendition of things. Hauer is wasted in it and doesn't actually do much, while Kretchsmann is horribly miscast as the titular count and basically sleepwalks through his role. Asia while still damn alluring looking is still her usual self (when in her dad's films), although obligingly (and considering Dario's her dad, decidedly creepily) gets naked yet again. There's also some fine nudity from Miriam Giovanelli.

I did like its set design though which comes across as a nice homage to the old style Universal/Hammer horrors to an almost stereotypically Gothic degree, all dark castles and heaving bosoms in corsets.

I'm giving this a very generous 6/10 as despite its very real flaws and being rather uneventful in parts, it's also overall a helluva lot more entertaining than I was expecting, although sadly nowhere near as entertaining or gratuitous as his bonkers Mother of Tears.

Lifelong Argento fans will in all probability hate this, but after watching it all I can say is... I liked it better than Giallo... which admittedly isn't saying much.

On a purely critical level I'd probably rate this a generous 4 as it really is a weak and poor effort on Dario's part, but I'm tacking on another bonus two points for unintentional hilarity and for keeping me entertained.

That having said, I'm a bit of an Argento fanboy and can't in all honesty recommend it to his fans, or... well, anyone else probably except fellow fanboys, but Dracula is very probably his weakest film, even if I preferred it to Giallo.

score 6/10

Corpus_Vile 16 March 2013

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2768219/