Dracula 3D Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.0

Dracula 3D Blu-ray Movie Review

Sucks

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 30, 2014

It's tragic when the old masters lose it. Dario Argento, the creator of Deep Red and Suspiria—two of the greatest Italian horror films, and among the best horror movies ever in general—hasn't made a good film, let alone a fantastic one, in well over twenty years. But like his pal and fellow '70s horror icon, George A. Romero, he skulks on nonetheless, producing increasingly unwatchable trash. (Don't get me started on how bad The Mother of Tears is.) Argento's latest is the abominable Dracula 3D, which scrapes the bottom of two barrels that are both thoroughly exhausted at the moment—vampire movies and gimmicky stereoscopic films. Bloodsuckers have long lost the cinematic-monster-du-jour status they carried in the wake of Twilight, and the world needs another bad 3D movie like Dracula needs a stake through the heart.

Granted, audiences will always welcome a new reinterpretation of Bram Stoker's classic tale, providing it's masterful, terrifying, or somehow innovative, but Dracula 3D is none of these things. I can't say it's the absolute nadir of Argento's latter-day career—again, it's really hard to get worse than The Mother of Tears—but neither does it show any improvement. This is lazy, lifeless filmmaking—awkwardly acted and boringly scripted—and it lacks even the bare minimum of so-bad-it's-good pleasures that might potentially qualify it for a hesitant, watch it for a laugh recommendation.

Rather than provide a true-to-the-source version of Stoker's Dracula or a wildly new and different interpretation, Argento and screenwriter Antonio Tentori have made the odd choice of sticking with the core characters and some of the main narrative turns, but then making numerous incremental and unnecessary changes. The effect is a story that feels familiar but is simultaneously off-putting and unnatural. (You could say the film falls into the uncanny valley of Dracula movies.) Instead of moving from Transylvania to London, Argento keeps the action in one locale, a quiet village somewhere in the Carpathians, where barrister Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde) has recently arrived to do some lawyering for the mysterious Count Dracula (Thomas Kretschmann), whose mannerisms and knowledge make him seem far older than he appears.

Harker soon falls prisoner to his blood-leach of an employer, who more typically prefers feasting on the local lady-folk. I'm not sure at what point the term "harem" can be used, but the count is certainly getting there. He has a busty young protege he turned at the beginning of the film, Tania (Miriam Giovanelli), he has nightly rendezvous with Lucy Kisslinger, the mayor's daughter—played by Asia Argento, Dario's daughter—and when Harker's wife, Mina (Marta Gastini) shows up looking for her husband, Dracula sets about seducing her too. Mina has the moral fortitude to resist the count, though, and soon summons famed vampire slayer Abraham Van Helsing (Blade Runner's Rutger Hauer), who gets to the bottom of a village conspiracy and faces off in a(n anti-)climatic battle against the evil vein-feeder.

The attempt here, from all indications, was to create a 1960s-style vampire movie, influenced by the low-budget set design of Hammer Horror and the softcore, roll-in-the-hay eroticism of euro-cult exploitation artists like Jess Franco and Jean Rollin. I say attempt because Argento only half-asses it. There's no passion here, no envelope-pushing, no charm. Worse, there's no Argento on screen. What happened to the director of lurid, dream-like, blood-soaked giallo masterpieces? Here's certainly not present anywhere in Dracula 3D, which is start-to-finish flat, with over-lit cinematography, a weird lack of camera movement, and no real shocks or surprises. Well, to be fair, there is one surprise—the sudden appearance of an enormous CGI praying mantis—but other than that it's the usual cavalcade of been-done- better-elsewhere horror moments: a decapitation here, a bared breast there, a werewolf transformation that looks like it took some computer graphics intern twenty minutes to whip up between coffee runs. The film's low-budget was probably a hindrance, but better filmmakers have done far more with much less.

The wooden script and equally wooden performances don't help at all. Thomas Kretschmann is the driest, most un-seductive Dracula in recent memory, and Unax Ugalde, who looks bizarrely like a cross between Jason Schwartzman and John Malkovich, is somehow—imagine this!—a worse Harker than Keanu Reeves, even. (Asia Argento's contribution, meanwhile, is to once again get naked in one of her father's films.) Marta Gastina is moderately better as the semi-heroic Mina—she has a sort of willowy, Mia Wasikowska vibe—and while he's a solid Van Helsing, Rutger Hauer's last-act appearance can't come even close to resuscitating the film. Put a stake through this one.

Dracula 3D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dario Argento once closely trailed the forefront of moviemaking technology—see his early use of Steadicam in Phenomena, or the then-primitive CGI in The Stendhal Syndrome—but his 3D debut is less than auspicious. For the film's home video release, MPI has given us the option to view the film in 2D or 3D on the same disc, and it honestly doesn't matter which you choose. The 3D adds nothing substantial to the experience. Yes, there's the expected increase in depth, along with a few moments of jump-out-at-ya projection—the point of a sword jutting through a door, a swarm of flies in the foreground, etc.—but Argento does little with the medium to justify its use. (To be fair, few filmmakers truly have.) If anything, this is a movie that could afford to be a bit more generous with the goofy, effects-shooting-out-of-the-screen showboating. If you're gonna be bad, be really bad.

In terms of general picture quality, Dracula 3D and its 2D incarnation are both well- adapted to Blu-ray, even if they struggle to overcome certain aspects of their low-budget origins. The cinematography is flatly lit and uninteresting, for instance, and the CGI looks like something out of the Playstation 2 era, with poor textures and a noticeably low polygon count. That said, the footage—shot digitally from two side-mounted Arri Alexas—is plenty sharp, with lots of fine detail in faces, clothing, and cobblestone streets. Color is vibrant and contrast consistent, even if the grading can't rescue the boring lighting. Excessive noise and compression issues are avoided, however, and there are no major distractions that aren't a direct result of how shoddily the film was made to begin with.

Dracula 3D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The sound design on the disc's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is just as hokey, although that's maybe just the lingering impression I have of the score, composed by Goblin keyboardist and Argento go-to guy Claudio Simonetti. Rather than the brooding, arpeggiated synth lines of most Goblin scores, this one has a chintzy 1950s sci-fi vibe, almost, filled with minor-key theremin melodies. (Ooooooooo-weeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeewwwwww! ) The music sounds full at clear at a normal listening level, though, and I do have to admit that the film makes decent use of the surround speakers, occupying them with cross-channel and directional effects in many scenes. Wind and leaves blow past us, a dog barks off in the distance, owls screech in our ears and flies buzz all around. It's all decently engaging. Many of the Italian actors are clearly dubbed in English—and badly—but the lame dialogue is at least clear and easy to understand. The disc includes optional English subtitles, which appear in white lettering.

Dracula 3D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (HD, 1:03:53): Does such an awful film warrant an exhaustive, hour-long making-of documentary? Probably not, but here it is anyway. Features interviews with screenwriter Antonio Tentori, along with costumers, special effects artists, and more.
• Kiss Me Dracula Music Video (HD, 3D/2D, 5:10): I don't know who sing this song, and I don't want to know. I listened to about thirty seconds and had to turn it off. Really, really bad.
• Trailer (HD, 1:28)
• Red Band Trailer (HD, 1:47)

Dracula 3D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Dracula 3D is another in a long string of recent career lows for director Dario Argento, who simply no longer has the creative fire that he once used to engulf the giallo scene back in his glory days. Even by so-bad-it's-good standards, the film fails to entertain; save for the WTF-inducing appearance of an enormous praying mantis in one scene, the movie is devoid of out-there shocks and turns. This is one of the most desiccated, lifeless vampire movies in recent memory—that's really saying something—and long-time Argento fans will want to treat it like The Mother of Tears and conveniently forget that it exists. Better to bask again in the lurid, blood-splattered majesty of Suspiria, when the director was in his prime. Avoid this one unless you're some insane collector of bad Dracula movies.