Bram Stoker's Dracula

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General		Extras
Category	Vampire	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 2 - Dolby Digital City, DVD Teaser
Year Released	1992	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	122:13 minutes	Other Extras	Cast & Crew Filmographies Photo Gallery - Costume Designs Featurette - Blood Lines. Dracula. The Man, The Myth, The Movies (28 1/2 mins)
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (71:02)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Francis Ford Coppola
Studio Distributor	Columbia Tristar	Starring	Gary Oldman Winona Ryder Anthony Hopkins Keanu Reeves
Case	Transparent Amaray
RRP	$34.95	Music	Woiciech Kilar

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) English (Dolby Digital 5.1) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) German (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Portuguese Arabic Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes

    Anthony Hopkins plays Professor Abraham Van Helsing, a somewhat unhinged doctor who hunts Dracula down, along with Mina's fiancé Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves).

    Stunning audio and visual effects and a glorious, sumptuous passionate love story are what set this movie apart from all other vampire movies and make it something very special.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was generally very sharp and very clear throughout, though a few scenes, including the opening scene, exhibited some murkiness and granularity. Shadow detail was generally very good, with a few minimally deficient scenes. There was no low level noise apparent.

    The colours were beautifully rendered, with lots of deep, sumptuous colouration. Powerful reds appear periodically, with no colour bleeding in sight.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts were not seen. Film artefacts were very rare.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change very well placed at 71:02, between Chapters 14 and 15. The layer change is minimally disruptive to the flow of the action.

Audio

    I felt that the overall level of the 5.1 soundtrack was a little low, and increased it by 5dB, which made for a much better overall effect.

    Dialogue was always clear and easy to understand, save for some of the highly accented dialogue which needed to be concentrated on to be completely understood.

    There were no audio sync problems with this disc.

    The score by Woiciech Kilar is remarkable. It is lyrical, lush and passionate. This is one of the best movie soundtracks that I have ever heard, with powerful emotions evoked by the music which complement the drama being depicted on-screen.

    The surround channels were used reasonably aggressively for music and for ambience, though there were no split surround effects. It is a highly enveloping soundtrack, which draws you into the on-screen action superbly, with some amazing sound effects thoughout the soundfield - eerie sounds and voices abound.

    The .1 channel received some signal, mainly from the music, but was not worked overly hard.

What's Missing / What's Extra

• Pan & Scan version

• Theatrical Trailer
• Filmographies
• Photo Gallery
• Featurette

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Photo Gallery - Costume Designs

Filmographies - Cast & Crew

Featurette - Blood Lines. Dracula. The Man, The Myth, The Movies

    The video quality is very good.

    The audio quality is very good.

    The extras are excellent, and only lacking in a commentary track, however the Region 1 version of this disc is featureless, making ours the version of choice.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
2nd July 1999