Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American Gothic horror film made together and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The film was written by James V. Hart and is based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The movie features actors Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, and Keanu Reeves. Set in 19th-century England and Romania, the story follows Count Dracula (Oldman), a vampire who becomes interested in Mina Murray (Ryder), the fiancée of his lawyer Jonathan Harker (Reeves). After Dracula causes chaos in London, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Hopkins), an expert on vampires, is called to stop him.

The main filming for the movie began at Sony Pictures Studios and Universal Studios Lot on October 14, 1991, and ended on January 31, 1992. Additional scenes were filmed at Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles. The closing credits song, "Love Song for a Vampire," was written and sung by Annie Lennox.

The film was released in the United States on November 13, 1992. Critics gave it mixed reviews, praising Coppola's direction, the film's quality, and Oldman's acting, but criticizing the story and Reeves' performance. The movie was the top box office hit when it first opened, earning $215.9 million with a production budget of $40 million. At the 65th Academy Awards, the film received four nominations and won three awards: Best Costume Design for Eiko Ishioka, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup.

Plot

In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a battle against the Ottoman Empire to discover his wife, Elisabeta, has died by suicide after his enemies falsely said he was dead. A priest tells him that Elisabeta's soul is sent to Hell because of her suicide. Angry, Vlad damages the chapel and rejects God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta using dark powers. He then stabs his sword into the chapel's stone cross and drinks the blood that flows from it, becoming a vampire.

In 1897, lawyer Jonathan Harker agrees to help the old Transylvanian Count Dracula, who is a client referred by his friend R. M. Renfield. Renfield is now a patient at Dr. Jack Seward's asylum because he has lost his mind. Jonathan travels to Dracula's castle in Transylvania to help arrange the purchase of property in London. There, he meets Dracula, who sees a picture of his future wife, Mina Murray, and believes she is Elisabeta reincarnated. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be attacked by his brides while he travels to England with soil from Transylvania, settling in a house he recently bought called Carfax Abbey.

In London, Dracula, in the form of a werewolf, hypnotically seduces and bites Mina's friend Lucy Westenra, who is staying with Mina while Jonathan is in Transylvania. Lucy's worsening health and strange behavior lead her former suitors, Quincey Morris and Dr. Seward, along with her fiancé, Arthur Holmwood, to call Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, Seward's teacher. Van Helsing recognizes Lucy as a victim of a vampire. Dracula, who appears young and handsome during the day, meets Mina and charms her. Mina develops feelings for Dracula and joins him on outings. When Mina learns from Jonathan—now safe in a convent—that he has escaped the castle, she travels to Romania to marry him. Heartbroken, Dracula turns Lucy into a vampire. Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward, and Morris kill the undead Lucy the next night.

After returning to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead others to Carfax Abbey, where they destroy the boxes of soil Dracula brought from Transylvania. Dracula enters the asylum and kills Renfield for warning Mina about him. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters, and confesses he killed Lucy and has been harming Mina's friends. At first angry, Mina admits she still loves him and recalls Elisabeta's past life. She insists Dracula begin turning her into a vampire. The hunters rush in, and Dracula, in the shape of a bat, claims Mina as his bride before escaping as a group of rats. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and learns from her connection with Dracula that he is returning home in his last box of soil. The hunters go to Varna to stop him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and avoids them. Van Helsing and Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while others try to stop the gypsies transporting Dracula.

At night, Van Helsing and Mina are approached by Dracula's brides. Mina is influenced by their chanting and tries to seduce Van Helsing. Before she can drink his blood, Van Helsing places a communion wafer on her forehead, leaving a mark that slows her transformation. He surrounds them with a ring of fire to protect them from the brides and kills the brides the next morning. Dracula's carriage arrives at the castle, chased by the hunters. A fight breaks out between the hunters and the Romani people. Morris is stabbed in the back, and Dracula emerges from his coffin at sunset. Jonathan cuts Dracula's throat with a kukri knife, and Morris stabs him in the heart with his knife. Van Helsing and Jonathan let Mina stay with Dracula while Morris dies in Seward's arms, comforted by his friends.

In the chapel where he rejected God, Dracula lies dying. He and Mina share a final kiss as the candles in the chapel light up and the cross is repaired. Dracula returns to his younger form and asks Mina to give him peace. Mina drives a knife through his heart. As he dies, the mark on her forehead disappears, freeing her from his curse. She then cuts off his head and looks up at a painting of Vlad and Elisabeta rising to heaven together, finally reunited.

Cast

• Gary Oldman plays Count Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler
• Winona Ryder plays Mina Harker and Elisabeta
• Anthony Hopkins plays Professor Abraham Van Helsing and a Romanian Orthodox priest
• Keanu Reeves plays Jonathan Harker
• Richard E. Grant plays Dr. Jack Seward
• Cary Elwes plays Lord Arthur Holmwood
• Billy Campbell plays Quincey P. Morris
• Sadie Frost plays Lucy Westenra
• Tom Waits plays R. M. Renfield

Monica Bellucci, Michaela Bercu, and Florina Kendrick play Dracula's Brides. Jay Robinson plays Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan Harker's employer.

Themes

In Stoker's original novel, the Count is described using terms that highlight his differences from others. His foreign background and customs are shown as monstrous, creating a contrast between the familiar and the strange for readers. Dracula, as a foreign "Other," is presented as the marked character. The characters Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray represent the British Empire, which is shown as the unmarked, or normal, perspective in the story. According to Deborah S. Wilson, "Dracula, written during the height of Britain's Empire, expresses worries about invasion and colonization through the character of Count Dracula. As a feudal lord in a mysterious Balkan country, Dracula is described using terms that emphasize his racial differences in negative ways." Coppola's film shows a change in how the racial "Other" is viewed by the 1990s. While the story and plot remain similar to the novel, some details are altered to reflect new ideas about race. For example, the emotional connection between Mina Murray and Dracula in the film crosses racial lines, allowing a genuine relationship between them. According to John Allen Stevenson, the threat of the racial "Other" was "the real horror of Dracula, for he is the ultimate social adulterer, whose purpose is nothing if it is not to turn good Englishwomen…like Mina away from their own kind and customs." In the film, the relationship between Dracula (a vampire) and Mina (a human) becomes acceptable, leading to their union as human and Other.

Coppola's film connects Dracula's vampiric origins to occultism and satanism. In the film's opening scene, after learning his wife committed suicide and is denied salvation, Dracula rejects God and makes a deal with dark forces. This is shown symbolically when Dracula plunges his sword into a crucifix, causing it to bleed heavily. Dracula drinks the blood as a sign of a "blood pact" with the Devil.

Upon release, The New York Times' Frank Rich noted that the film reflected the common fear of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, a disease spread through blood contact. Coppola, according to Rich, created a movie that both scares and excites viewers by linking their fear of AIDS to an invasion of the national "bloodstream."

Van Helsing tells his medical students that civilization and "syphilization" advanced together. This is seen as a comment on Coppola's time, during the spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as on Stoker's time (Stoker may have died of syphilis, as suggested in some biographies).

Production

Winona Ryder first introduced Francis Ford Coppola to James V. Hart's screenplay. The director agreed to meet with her to resolve issues that had arisen after her last-minute withdrawal from The Godfather Part III, which had caused production delays and made her believe Coppola disliked her. According to Ryder: "I never really thought he would read it. He was so focused on Godfather III. As I was leaving, I said, 'If you have a chance, read this script.' He looked at it politely, but when he saw the word Dracula, his eyes lit up. It was one of his favorite stories from camp." Ryder also said, "What attracted me to the script is the fact that it's a very emotional love story, which is not really what you think of when you think about Dracula. Mina, like many women in the late 1800s, has a lot of repressed sexuality. Everything about women in that era, the way those corsets forced them to move, was indicative of repression. To express passion was freakish." Coppola was also drawn to the sensual elements of the screenplay and said that he wanted portions of the picture to resemble an "erotic dream." To prepare for Bram Stoker's Dracula, as the movie would be called, Coppola watched Citizen Kane, Ivan the Terrible, and Chimes at Midnight. In the months before its release, Hollywood insiders who had seen the movie felt Coppola's film was too odd, violent, and strange to succeed at the box office, and they called it "Bonfire of the Vampires" after the 1990 box-office failure The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Gary Oldman has said that he never considered Count Dracula to be a "bucket list" role for him. Regarding the main reason he agreed to the role: "It was an opportunity to work with Coppola, who I consider one of the great American directors. That was enough, really. It was my first big American movie, made on a big set with lots of costumes. For a young actor, that was a tremendous experience." Another reason why Oldman wanted to play Dracula was because he wanted to say: "I've crossed oceans of time to find you," and to him, it was worth playing the role just to say that line.

Christian Slater was offered the role of Jonathan Harker, but he turned it down; a decision he later regretted. As for casting Keanu Reeves in the role, Coppola said of his casting choice: "We tried to get some kind of matinée idol for the part of Jonathan, because it isn't such a great part. If we all were to go to the airport […] Keanu is the one that the girls would just besiege." Coppola has stated that Reeves worked harder on his accent than most people realized: "He tried so hard. That was the problem, actually—he wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it perfectly it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn't as critical of him, but that's because I like him personally so much. To this day he's a prince in my eyes."

Coppola chose to invest a significant amount of the budget in costumes in order to showcase the actors, whom he considered the "jewels" of the feature. The film itself was built on the stylistic premise that the costumes were of greater importance to the film's execution than the sets. Due to this, designer Eiko Ishioka was given immense freedom to design not only Dracula's clothes but also his personae. Ishioka decided that Dracula would be "male and female, old and young, ugly and handsome, animal and human."

Coppola had a team of artists—veteran production artist Mentor Huebner, future DreamWorks Animation veteran Peter Ramsey, and future Hellboy creator Mike Mignola—storyboard the entire film in advance to carefully illustrate each planned shot. This process created around a thousand images. He turned the drawings into a choppy animated film—an animatic—with added music, and spliced in scenes from the French version of Beauty and the Beast that Jean Cocteau directed in 1946 along with paintings by Gustav Klimt and other symbolist artists. He showed the animated film to his designers to give them an idea of the mood and theme he was aiming for. Coppola also asked the set costume designers to simply bring him designs which were "weird." "Weird" became a code word for "Let's not do formula," he later recalled. "Give me something that either comes from the research or that comes from your own nightmares." He gave them paintings, and he gave them drawings, and he talked to them about how he thought the imagery could work.

The film's hair and makeup designer, Michèle Burke, recalls: "Francis didn't want the typical Dracula that had already been done in Hollywood. He wanted something different; a new Dracula without the widow's peak, cape, or pale-white skin." Burke says she used her Catholic upbringing and angelic imagery for design inspiration, as well as the 19th-century attire created by costume designer Eiko Ishioka.

Because Dracula's scenes did not start filming until very late into the production, Oldman had plenty of downtime to come up with additional ideas for his character. According to Coppola, "He'd [Oldman] get together with the makeup designer Greg Cannom and, before I knew it, we were going to have not just one monster but five monsters in the film." For Oldman, the makeup required for the role was taxing: for the elderly Dracula, he spent nearly seven hours in the makeup chair, then after ten hours on the set, spent another hour-and-a-half having it removed.

Due to delays and cost overruns on some of Coppola's previous projects such as Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart, Coppola was determined to complete Bram Stoker's Dracula on time and on budget. To accomplish this, he filmed on sound stages to avoid potential troubles caused by inclement weather.

While preparing to play Dracula, Oldman took lessons with a singing teacher in order to drive his voice one octave lower. Coppola brought his principal actors to his seventeen-hundred-acre Napa Valley winery and estate for improvisations and exercises. The actors read the novel aloud, went through the script, and sat down for communal dinners. The idea was to break down barriers and establish relationships that would translate to the film. The summer-camp atmosphere extended to all the principal actors except Oldman. The director instructed Elwes, Campbell, and Grant to go horseback-riding and hot-air ballooning together, getting to know each other and their characters better, and sent Ryder and Frost off to do things together, while Oldman was kept isolated from the cast; this extended to living arrangements throughout filming, with all the vampire hunters living on one property and Oldman living on another. The rest of the cast met Oldman for the first time on set during rehearsals, after which they would not see him again until filming.

Coppola brought in acting coach Greta Seacat to coach Frost and Ryder for their erotic scenes, as he felt uncomfortable discussing sexuality with the young actresses. However, he did ask Oldman to speak seductively off camera to Frost while they were filming a scene in which she writhed alone in her bed in ecstasy. She later classified the things Oldman said to her as "very unrepeatable." Winona Ryder found the intensity of Oldman's acting style too much at times; the two fell out early in the filming process and had difficulty working together from then on. Coppola stated, "they got along and then one day they didn't—absolutely didn't get along. None of us were privy to what had happened." Ryder has referred to the "trauma" of the experience and said that she "felt there was a danger" while working with Oldman. However, she has also referred to her friction with Oldman as "teen drama," stating, "He [Gary] was going through a divorce, and I think I can say this because he's pretty open about it, but he's been sober for a long time now, and he's raised three kids, and he's a dream. He's a good friend of mine."

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 69% based on 124 reviews, with an average score of 6.4 out of 10. The site's critics agree that the film is "overblown in the best way, rescuing Dracula from old, silly portrayals and featuring strong performances." Metacritic, which calculates scores based on weighted averages, gave the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audience ratings from CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "B−" on a scale from A+ to F.

Vincent Canby said the film was made with the "enthusiasm of a talented student who has mastered filmmaking." Richard Corliss wrote that Coppola brought the classic Dracula story to life, showing the character as a "restless spirit" who deserved better than old, boring movies. Alan Jones called the film "eerie, romantic, and operatic," praising Gary Oldman's performance as Dracula.

Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, saying he enjoyed its visual style and the work of the production team and cinematographer. However, he noted some confusing parts of the story. Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film had a "complicated story" but was still interesting because of its visuals. Kenneth Turan called the film "not scary or sexy" and criticized its tone and casting choices. Tom Hibbert of Empire gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, saying it "promised much but delivered little," calling it a "long, bloated adaptation" instead of a "gothic masterpiece." Geoffrey O'Brien said the film's romantic tone felt like a marketing strategy to use the actors' popularity.

Tom Hibbert criticized Keanu Reeves' role as Dracula, saying he was not the best choice. In a review by Entertainment Weekly, Reeves was described as "out of his depth" and "overpowered" by Gary Oldman. Total Film called Reeves' performance "weak" and included him in a list of "worst movie miscastings." Another writer said Reeves' acting made the film worse, noting his poor accent and lack of experience. A journalist called Reeves' English accent "ridiculous" and said it was one of the worst in film history. Some critics also criticized Winona Ryder's accent, but others said she was better suited for her role.

Bram Stoker's Dracula opened at number one in the U.S. box office with $30,521,679, beating Back to the Future Part II. This record was later broken by Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. The film earned $82,522,790 in the U.S. and Canada, making it the 15th-highest-grossing film of the year. In the U.K., it set a record for the biggest opening weekend for an 18 certificate film until 1997. Internationally, it earned $133,339,902, for a total worldwide gross of $215,862,692, making it the ninth-highest-grossing film globally that year.

As of 2023, when adjusted for inflation, Bram Stoker's Dracula earned $473.5 million at the box office, making it one of the highest-grossing vampire films in history.

Soundtrack

In 2018, a special 3-CD set of the soundtrack was released. Disc One and Two included the original music written by Kilar for the film, known as the "composed score." Disc Two also included a collection of alternate bonus tracks from the same material. Disc Three contains the original 1992 album, remastered with extra bonus tracks.

Home media

In 1993, the film was released on standard VHS and a limited edition VHS. The limited edition was a box set shaped like a coffin. It included the film on VHS, a behind-the-scenes documentary, and the original Dracula novel by Bram Stoker in paperback. Grey, gothic statue heads (like those on the original film poster) were placed on the front cover of the book, which had a gray stone background. That same year, the Criterion Collection released a special edition LaserDisc of the film.

Dracula was first released on DVD in 1999 and again as a Superbit DVD in 2001. The DVD included extra features such as filmographies, the original theatrical trailer, a documentary titled Dracula: The Man, The Myth, The Legend, costume designs, and DVD trailers. The Superbit version had no extra features.

A two-disc Collector's Edition DVD and Blu-ray was released in 2007. Special features included an introduction and audio commentary by director Francis Ford Coppola, deleted and extended scenes, teaser and full-length trailers, and documentaries titled The Blood Is the Life: The Making of Dracula, The Costumes Are the Sets: The Design of Eiko Ishioka, In Camera: The Naïve Visual Effects of Dracula, and Method and Madness: Visualizing Dracula.

A 4K release was made in 2017, using a new scan of the original film negatives.

Merchandise

A book version of the film was published, written by Fred Saberhagen. A four-part comic book series and 100 collectible cards based on the movie were released by Topps Comics. The comic book art was created by Mike Mignola, and the complete script was written by Roy Thomas, using dialogue mostly taken from the film's script. In 2018, IDW Publishing gathered all four comic issues and published them in a trade paperback. Action figures, model sets, and other toys were also made. Official copies of Dracula's sword and Quincey's Bowie knife were sold by Factory X. Other merchandise included a board game, a pinball machine that was later adapted as a digital pinball game and released as downloadable content for The Pinball Arcade until June 30, 2018, and video games for multiple platforms.

In 2021, Funko Pop vinyl figures based on the film were announced. These included Van Helsing and three versions of Dracula: his older form, his younger form wearing a gray suit and top hat, and his appearance as Vlad Tepes in red armor. This made the film the third live-action adaptation of Dracula to have Funko Pop figures. Previous adaptations with Funko Pop figures were Nosferatu, based on the 1922 film, and Dracula, based on the 1931 film.

Legacy

The film had a big effect on popular culture and how vampires are shown in movies and other media. The costume design by Eiko Ishioka created a new look for the Count. This was the first time the character was not shown wearing a black cape or evening clothes, which had been common since Bela Lugosi's portrayal in 1931. The film was also an important milestone in vampire horror, as it was the first vampire movie and the only Dracula adaptation to win Oscars.

Many critics consider the film a major change in vampire movies. It set a new tone and style that changed how vampires are shown in films. It introduced new ideas, such as retractable fangs, vampires turning into bat-like creatures, and a steampunk style. Bram Stoker's Dracula is important in the same way that The Exorcist and The Shining were important, because it showed that a horror story can have high-quality actors and production values. It also proved that a creative filmmaker can take a well-known story, like Dracula, and give it a fresh new look.

Coppola's film started a trend of making monster movies with famous actors, well-known directors, and high-quality production. Examples include Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Robert De Niro; Wolf (1994), directed by Mike Nichols and starring Jack Nicholson; and Mary Reilly (1996), directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Malkovich and Julia Roberts. Coppola's film also influenced Interview with the Vampire (1994), directed by Neil Jordan, which featured Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst. Jordan said that Coppola's film showed that vampire movies could be grand and artistic, not just low-budget.

The film was listed in several top lists, including Entertainment Weekly's "5 best vampire movies," Esquire's "20 Best Vampire Movies," IndieWire's "The 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time," and The Guardian's "10 best screen vampires." Gary Oldman's portrayal of Dracula was also ranked as the best version of the character by Screen Rant. In 2017, Syfy included Oldman's performance in its list of "The 25 Greatest Movie Performances from the Last 25 Years."

• The Castlevania video game series, which began in 1986, shares some similarities with the film. In Lament of Innocence (2003), a character named Mathias Cronqvist becomes Dracula after his wife dies and starts a war with the Belmont family. In Symphony of the Night (1997), a character named Lisa, Dracula's second wife, is killed in 1475, leading to events in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (1989). Lisa is described as looking like Elisabetha Cronqvist, the wife of Mathias, and her name is a short form of Elisabetha.
• In Living Color's 1992 skit "Bram Stoker's Wanda" parodied the film, with Jim Carrey playing Dracula.
• The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror IV" (1993) included a segment titled "Bart Simpson's Dracula," which is a parody of the film with Mr. Burns as a vampire.
• The Japanese manga and anime Hellsing includes a character named Alucard, who is based on Count Dracula. His story includes searching for a love reborn and a connection to Vlad the Impaler.
• In Anno Dracula, a novel series by Kim Newman, Count Dracula is shown as a powerful figure who spreads vampirism. The name "Elisabeta of Transylvania" for Dracula's first wife comes from the film.
• A nonfiction book titled Vampires: The World of the Undead (1993), written by Jean Marigny, was inspired by Coppola's film and released around the same time as the movie in France.
• The score for The Wolfman (2010) was influenced by Wojciech Kilar's music from Coppola's film. Danny Elfman said he wanted to capture the same romantic and dramatic style.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2014) and (2019) references the film, with Jemaine Clement and Doug Jones drawing inspiration from Gary Oldman's portrayal of Dracula.
• Guillermo del Toro displayed props from the film, including the red Dracula helmet, in his At Home With Monsters exhibition.
• Jessica Chastain said she used the film as inspiration for her role in Crimson Peak (2015), including wardrobe choices.
• Stranger Things season two included a scene where Winona Ryder's character dresses as Dracula for Halloween, and Jamie Campbell Bower used Oldman's portrayal as inspiration for his role in the series.
• The Green Knight (2021) and Poor Things (2023) were influenced by the film, with the director of The Green Knight calling it one of his favorites.
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) included character dynamics similar to those in Coppola's film.