Dracula (1979) [Blu-ray]

*please excuse weird text formatting, it wasn't written this way*DO not trust the other bluray reviewers who say the movie is in 5.1. It is not, they are plants, fake reviewers. The movie is only in 2.0 stereo and that is part of the problem. Don't believe me? Click on the image of the backcover and zoom in to the bottom. "Audio: English DTS HD Master Audio 2.0"This is one of those films that lures you in with it potential, but never delivers much. Case in point, I bought this bluray with only reading the one other review posted here by another bluray.com member, because I was so anxious to re-evaluate this in HD. I should have waited, but I probably would have ultimately been suckered in by the awful film phenomenon I call Movie-Promise-Potential. Movie-Promise-Potential is when a film has all the ingredients of a great film and then turns out to be just - meh. Not bad, not good, just eternally meh. So it leaves you undecided and unfulfilled and worst of all, it makes you return occasionally to revisit, to see if you were somehow in the wrong frame of mind. Tragically, the film will never satisfy nor repulse you enough so you can never really learn your lesson...until now.Like a bored obsessive, I decide to revisit 1979's Dracula every couple years and I always come up underwhelmed. It should be fantastic. A great cast, great locations, great production design. It is very close to the Carpenter's The Thing in concept, time period and parentage; an "R" rated Universal studios remake, trying to modernize and intensify an old story for modern audiences. Carpenter's The Thing was about three years later and couldn't be more different, but if you look and listen closely, they both have that Universal Studios old-school-new school transition vibe. Albert Whitlock probably being the most obvious unifying element, but Panavision C-series Anamorphic, backlot-shooting and the Universal sound library might be another couple links. Anyways, The Thing is perfect horror, 1979's Dracula is not.There is something that is missing throughout this re-telling, something fairly intangible. It could be the acting, it's dull in some places (Nelligan and Eve), overacted in others (Olivier) and strangely cynical in one (Pleasance), leaving only Langela to stand out by default. He's good, he's charismatic and sometimes riveting, but he, like everyone else, feels caged in by the director or the production. The overwhelming problem might that Badham seems lost here. I like Badham as a director, I think he's very underrated. I love Wargames and I worship Blue Thunder. I think they are 80's classics. Here, it's as if he wants to make a tribute to the great Universal Monster movies, but obviously two huge influences of the time are pulling him in different directions. Clearly the Exorcist made an impression on Badham, in his defense, how could it not. You can tell in the severe sound design dynamics, the "exorcism" of Mina and the amped up violence. The second influence is the stage play that Langela starred in that brought this re-telling to life. A lot of this is stagey, the way Langela uses the space, his body language, he's playing to the back of the theater. He's still good, but he's very broad in body and subtle in voice. The scenes in Carfax abbey are so stagey, they feel like curtains should be visible on the edges of the frame. There is a third element of the time that only occasionally wants to take over, but wisely it's kept at bay and that's the disco 70's. Badham is probably to blame, having his previous cultural smash Saturday Night Fever influencing some of his choices. In his defense, if your last movie was a huge hit and everyone is wondering why, then you will try and keep it going, somehow (there is a dancing choreography credit). The red-light- through-smoke-machine-vampire-love is the most obvious, but I have a feeling Langela did a bit of Tony Manero primping in front of the same mirror. Eve's hair is pretty 70's feathery and distracting too. Dracula's cape is downright Jive Talkin'.Positioning itself squarely on the zig-zaggy, 70's downfall and ham-tastic rebirth map of Olivier, here he is doing what he always does, professional work, nothing more, nothing less. Laying on his thickest (Dutch?) accent, he tries to wring something out of a weakly-written take on an iconic foil. He is given a few good moments, his first meeting with Dracula being the best. However, he makes a weak Van Helsing. Yes, he was sick during filming, but Olivier was alsosick during Marathon Man, and in Schell he made one of screen's greatest villains. In the long line of Van Helsings, his fails to stand out at all, even though he's one of the best actors to take on the role. Donald Pleasance, who I am a big fan of and is capable of stealing a movie if given the chance (Wake in Fright), has nothing to do here, so he pulls a Brad Pitt (obviously this was first) and eats in every scene. I just read though, he did it as a way of insuring his scenes, since continuity would be an issue if you try and cut around him, but he still seems too Puckish, almost like he didn't get along with the director. The rest of the cast is stock players and utterly forgettable. The gore and EFX are sometimes laughable. Whitlock's paintings are great, but the bat and wolf EFX are terrible. The makeup is not very good, even though Peter Robb King is capable of better. The locations are great, but ruined by color timing (see below) The music is probably the best part (but again see below). The production design varies from awesome; the asylum is a web of walkways not utilized to the fullest, to just cliche'; Carthax Abbey is all cobwebs and fanged gargoyles. The photography has some really nice moments, like Dracula approaching on a horse shot slow-mo on a really long lens (but see below) and more its share of boring shots (the entire shipwreck opening).Okay, now that you've heard what I thought of the film and probably disagree, on to the bluray.Bad news first (there is little good news) - Yes, this is the desaturated, crushed version. I know what Badham was thinking, he was thinking that the original colors were too bold, too 70's and it won't hold up. Gilbert Taylor, in the two years before this, had helped bring Star Wars and the Omen to life with gorgeous Panavision anamorphic lensing. Star Wars had bold colors and great widescreen compositions and the Omen had dark, moody intensity. It seems Badham said give me both, but then 11 years later decided he could change it to look more gritty. Basically the whole movie looks like the inside of Mines of Moria from Fellowship of the Ring mixed with Burton's Sleepy Hollow. And it's oppressive, dull and senseless to have the whole movie look like this. If any revisionism should happen, there was a clear chance to make things either healthy and colorful when Dracula is absent, or vice versa. There are only two scenes with an actual bright color in them, of course it's red, but it isn't blood and when they come on screen your eyes sing like you've been in a desert for a month and someone gives you an ice-cold coke.No, you cannot just jack up the saturation and fix everything. The movie was color-timed this way, much to the detriment of the original photography. Because of this, there is a shocking lack of depth. Two perfect examples, after a funeral there is a shot of Eve and Neligan talking by Harker's car. In the background is what should be a breathtaking panorama of seaside Cornwall England. It should be amazing, it's not because of color-timing flatness. The second scene example is the dinner scene between Lucy and Dracula. They are amongst dozens of candles and like alot of the shots, you can tell it should be gorgeous, but it's not, it's dull and it's because the entire image has been flattened to death by Badham to reflect, what he says is the original Gorey Stage Design. I'm calling BS on his claims. While you can make a film look good in black and white that wasn't originally shot that way, but whatever he was trying to hide here fails. It's made a nicely shot film, that perhaps seemed too dated (for other reasons) and made it ugly. It's ironic that Lucas did the same thing with Star Wars and that was also a Gilbert Taylor shot film. Gilbert liked his diffusion filters, and those are associated negatively with the 70's. Directors don't like being dated, so they go back and revisit,sometimes it can work, mostly it doesn't. In any case, this film is now ugly and there is no way that Gilbert Taylor during this period, with that equipment, made a ugly, flat looking Dracula. Just not possible. I have my projector calibrated. Great blurays look great, good blurays look good, and bad blurays always look bad. If I have to seriously adjust the settings on my projector, it's the sign that something is missing in the transfer. There is a lot missing here and I had to constantly check the focus and gamma. There is serious black crush, the entire image is too dark and almost always soft.However, and here is the only good news, there is no noise reduction or edge enhancement that I can see. It is very filmic. It's just dull. Filmic and dull. Grain is suspiciously absent, but maybe it was just shot well. Faces aren't waxy, but then again they are so color-timed to death, there might be nothing left to wax.The sound - Worst news and this disc's death knell. I would blame this on the original elements, but I'm not going to. It sounds like they took this directly from the stereo magnetic track of a print. They certainly did not use the original stems. No effort has gone into a remix or remaster. And it is a shrill, weak mess. It's not sound design. Want to hear what is possible with a 70's movie original sound design? Watch Outlaw Josey Wales, made three years earlier than this film. It sounds fanstastic! This is muddy, boxy and trapped. Every effect is harsh and tinny. All of the dialogue sounds looped (Asylum scenes in particular) and the unforgiveable part is John Williams wonderful score (I own the CD) is completely buried. It is one of Williams' best scores and you'll never know it watching this bluray. Only occasionally, does it get room to be heard, mostly it is shrilled into the background by stock sounding waves or carriage EFX. Again, not mixing, it's too much compression and too little dynamic range.Bottom line- A lazy catalogue transfer, which ironically benefited the image by lack of further tinkering with EE and NR, but in all other ways seriously hurt this disc.I wish I didn't waste the money, because the way the movie is now with the ugly color timing and bad sound, I can finally put to rest that this is not a very good re-telling of Dracula. It could have been and that's all it has for me. One of those potential movies that lures you in with what was possible, but really doesn't deliver. This bluray does the movie no favors.I didn't bother with the extras, they are ported over in SD and after a whole disc of disappointment, I wasn't feeling up to watching how much good will went into the making.spoiler alert:For the love of everything old-school, who the hell thought the kite at the end was a good idea. Ugh, almost ruins any good that came before. Although if one were to whistle "You Should be Dancing" whilst this too long shot plays out, you might get more pleasure than this whole bluray affords. A second pass whistling "Never Ending Story" could also elicit some laughs.

No CGI NO super Gore just great locations scenery makeup and acting A+++++

I think this version of Dracula kind of gets lost sometimes, due to the sheer multitude of Dracula versions out there. He's got to be one of the most filmed characters ever. I myself forgot about this one until a couple days ago. With it being Halloween, I've been watching a lot of old horror movies, from the '30s and '40s monster movies to some of the more recent versions. I was watching Christopher Lee's version of Dracula when I remembered about this one and how I hadn't seen it in ages, so I bought the Blu-Ray.I call this a version of Dracula because it's hardly an adaptation, at least not of Stoker's original novel. It's based on the Broadway play, in which Frank Langella played the Count and that the producer saw and decided to make a version of. I have no idea how close this movie gets to that play because I've never seen it, but I've read the book a couple times and this is pretty far removed from the book. But, that's OK because a character like Dracula is certainly one that you can do different things with.Joining Langella in this movie are the late great Sir Lawrence Olivier and the late great scene stealer Donald Pleasance, along with what was at the time a lot of fresh young talent. It's really a good cast. Langella's Dracula is more of an aristocratic, charismatic and romantic character than what Stoker wrote in his novel, where Dracula was basically pure evil. Instead, Langella's portrayal shows him as more of a sympathetic character. His performance is almost understated, rather than over the top and grandiose as a lot of others have been, and that's not a criticism. It's a different take on Dracula. The rest of the cast is fantastic in their respective roles.Adding to the wonderful cast are some fantastic locations and sets. Carfax Abby is a particularly fantastic set, probably the best version of it I've ever seen. Since the movie takes place entirely in England, with no look at Transylvania and the interior of Dracula's castle, Carfax Abby kind of fills in as his castle. The insane asylum is also a good set. The whole movie has a nice atmospheric feel to it. The sets are accented by some fantastic costumes and and a wonderful score by John Williams.One stylistic choice that it's funny to see people complain about is the colors. They wanted to make a black and white film in homage to the earlier Dracula films, but the studio said they weren't allowed to. Instead, years after the film came out, they intentionally went back to it and muted most of the colors to make it almost black and white. This was a stylistic choice, not a mistake, as some people seem to think it was. If you liked the movie better with its original colors, you have to find a print from before 1991 to watch.So, all said and done, this is a good version of Dracula. It's not my favorite, but it's certainly good. The Blu-Ray is a good transfer, excellent picture and sound. Fans of Dracula should definitely give this one a watch, just be prepared for a version that's different from any other version out there.

Good Dracula movie

John Badham's 70s version of Dracula hasn't been especially well-loved: an adaptation of the popular Broadway revival of the stage version, it lacks one of the key things that made the stage version so memorable (Edward Gorey's monochrome production design), makes considerable diversions from the novel (being as it is based on the stage version, which does the same), and has a fangless Dracula - Langella refused to don the teeth.BUT: it has Frank Langella, and he is majestic. Crueller sorts have compared him to a Lothario tennis-coach Dracula, but his charisma in this flows off the screen in abundance. His is a softer Dracula, sensual, enticing; a bit like Louis Jourdan in the earlier BBC version. Still brutal and animalistic but a lover more than a fighter.Universal's bluray of this is profoundly disappointing: the most problematic issue is that it still features the director's revisionist version of the film. Unfortunately, since the laserdisc days, Badham has preferred to make his film available only in a desaturated version mimicking a near black-and-white palette. This would not be a problem if a) the film was shot like that, which it wasn't; Gilbert Taylor's cinematography was wonderfully lush and b) if he chose to make the original version available alongside it, which he neglected to.Depending on your player and display, you can goose some colour back into the proceedings without it looking too artificial, but it's a poor solution.This really is a crying shame as this 70s Dracula is a terrific romp, has a wonderfully magnetic performance from Langella, a rousing John Williams score (one of his best) and a great supporting cast (dour Trevor Eve aside). Just ignore the Maurice Binder-designed laser-tunnel disco love scene. Or turn up the volume to 11 and enjoy it for what it is, I certainly do!Four stars for the film, three for the bluray incarnation. Shamefully, the UK bluray has also lost the special features (commentary, making of) present on the DVD and US bluray. Thanks, Universal!

Who is Mina Van Helsing???? The characters in this film have changed completely; she wasn't supposed to be the daughter of the vampire killer but Mina Harker, married to Jonathan. Instead they have her friend Lucy marrying Jonathan and therefor kill Mina off. All very confusing. The film is ok if you haven't read the original book. Also this film opens with the ship wreck so Mr Harker doesn't even initially visit the Count in Transylvania beforehand. Mr Jourdan plays his part as a romantic that the women are enchanted by instead of the monster in the book. Also he is seen in daylight, it wasn't dark when he was on his horse..... Enjoyable if not a bit inaccurate.

Firstly I have to say I really enjoyed this take on dracula,original stylish and gothic, however it is let down by a washed out and drained looking picture! Come on universal give this film what it deserves, and find the original cinema quality print and a proper blu ray release! Very disappointed hence three stars!

This version of the lusty count isnt bad. Frank Langella makes for a sympathetic count and its perhaps this element that stops it from being really frightening. As dashing as Frank is he exudes little in the way of menace. However the British locations are sumptuous and the supporting cast of Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasance,Trevor Eve and Tony Haygarth as an excellent Renfield are all good. One complaint is that the late Lord Olivier is perhaps a bit to old to play Van Helsing, as the role usually involves a tussle with the Count. I enjoyed this film more than say Ford Copollas 1993 Gary Oldman version. Despite these grumbles I would still put it in the worth watching category.

The DVD jacket is in Swedish. When the DVD starts it has Swedish subtitles. Fear Not !The disc menu is in English, so you can turn the subtitles off easily and the audio is in English.They don't make films like this anymore ! A tremendous cast including Donald Pleasance and Trevor Eve, I loved it.