What better way to get in the Halloween mood than by reading Dracula by Bram Stoker? [I read it for free at www.Literature.org!] I wondered if I would be really scared because since the age of 14 after reading Salem’s Lot by Stephen King and going to sleep for a month with a cross under my pillow, vampires tend to scare me. But, I needn’t have worried - I really liked it, particularly the way the story was told by using different journal entries by different characters and compiling them to tell a story that was, at times, a little creepy. It never got full-on scary, though. I did fall just a little bit in love with the Dr. Van Helsing character in the book [I tend to gravitate towards the eccentric genius type].
The story moves along pretty briskly and the descriptions, dialogue and multiple points of view are expertly delivered. I greatly enjoyed Mina’s journal entries, and felt that her side of the story was the soul of the book, while Dr. Jack Sewerd’s was the backbone. [What else? I mean, she’s a woman in love and he’s a psychiatrist]. Mina is clearly a smart, independent woman and it shows in her journal entries and her willingness to help the men hunt down the Count and kill him. I was surprised at the depth of the two main female characters, Mina and Lucy, and their “modern-ness.” I also found it ironic that the more the men played to the stereotype of men-as-protectors, the more harm came to the women. Even more surprising [and endearing] was Dr. Van Helsing’s continuous praise of Mina as a strong, smart woman, who should be held as a standard of excellence among society. The end of the book was rather abrupt, but satisfying. Even though I didn’t think the book itself was scary, the more I thought about the characters and the story, the more frightened I felt. I suppose the true test for a horror story is whether the reader’s imagination takes hold of the idea and takes it to the next level. Count Dracula is a cultural icon and while vampires are all the rage now, there’s a certain simplicity to this book and Stoker’s Dracula character that makes it far more appealing and frightening than anything more recent.
All through the book, I kept picturing Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing because he was the only character I really remembered from the 1992 movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. So, I felt a good bit of anticipation before settling back to watch the movie. Now, some people [my son, my husband, my friends, my mother….okay – a lot of people] think I am too hard on movies adapted from books. I admit I am a purist when it comes to adaptations, but I thought I had mellowed quite a bit [thanks Harry Potter], and was prepared to take some deviation as par for the course. Well, if it had only been some deviation, I could have gotten over it, I think, but this was a travesty! I say that, but then I recall the early nineties as being a wasteland when it came to most fashion, music and anything else requiring creative thought. This movie is no exception. I’m sure they thought they were being super artsy when Dracula’s shadow does strange things, but in the book, Count Dracula doesn’t even HAVE a shadow. That’s just one example.
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| One of the few scenes with Mina and Lucy fully clothed |
Really, you could probably classify this movie as soft porn, what with the women kissing, bared breasts and moaning for no apparent reason, etc. Ridiculous! Needless to say, it didn’t follow the book closely at all. It should have been called “A Vampire’s Kiss: Mina And Lucy’s Erotic Adventure With An Ancient Vampire Turned Young”. What’s worse is that I absolutely loathed Anthony Hopkins’s portrayal of Van Helsing! He was pretentious, overbearing, snobbish and a complete ass – nothing like the book!
My advice is skip the movie unless you’re a huge fan of seeing Winona Ryder in revealing dresses and watching her breasts heave, or you want to see a young Keanu Reeves playing something besides a time-traveling buffoon [well, he’s still a buffoon, but he doesn’t get to meet Abe Lincoln in this flick]. If you want a good read that isn’t gory or in-your-face scary, then Dracula is for you. If you like Dracula, here’s another fantastic read on vampires and Count Dracula - The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.
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| Great Book - little scary, though |
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