Coppola's vision of Dracula is amazing. The cast includes Gary Oldman as Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina, Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker. It is easy to see why Bram Stoker's Dracula won three Academy Awards in 1992. The costumes are extravagant, decadent even. The makeup is astounding. Gary Oldman is morphed into several different versions of Dracula. He is almost unrecognizable as the same person in the change from the old man in Transylvania to the young Prince in London. Every little detail has been accounted for, even Dracula's lack of reflection in not only mirrors, but also in windows on the street as he walks past. The film also does a wonderful job in pacing, switching back and forth between high tension scenes and much calmer scenes. It gives you a chance to process the meaning of the scenes without just watching straight action all the time.
There are a lot of Special Features on Bram Stoker's Dracula: Collector's Edition. "The Blood is the Life" starts with explaining why they made another Dracula movie, that they wanted to get away from the monster and go back to the book, showing the many facets of his personality and how he became what he is. It also shows how Coppola got the actors into their characters, including having them all read the original book together, even acting out their characters as if they were in a silent film, and many other different things to get the actors to learn to work together as their characters. I liked that Coppola asked the actors for their input. Did they think anything was missing? Did they have any ideas on their characters? He would take the ideas they had and add them to the script, which must have made it really much easier for them to become the part. There's many other facts in there, and it's a really interesting segment to watch.
"Costumes Are the Set" explains that Coppola's vision was to have the costumes be the visual focus of the movie; the sets are to be more background. The costume designer wanted to get away from the traditional look of Dracula, which I find takes the movie back to the feel of the original book rather than just being another rehash of previous Dracula movies. "In-Camera" describes the visual effects of Dracula, and the challenge of making them all real, not using any green screen, using only things that would have been possible to film in the early days of cinema. "Method and Madness" has Coppola explaining what he used to get the images of how he wanted all the characters to appear. The "Heart of Darkness" article included on the DVD originally appeared in Cinefex magazine in 1993.
The new Bram Stoker's Dracula: Collector's Edition has been transferred in High Definition. The bonus features disc has four new documentaries that are about 73 minutes total and over 30 minutes of "newly unearthed deleted scenes." Given all the additional material and the beautiful quality of the high def transfer, it is worth going and picking up, even if you already own the original.
