Bram Stoker's Dracula: Collector's Edition (Blu-ray) (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Audio Commentary Introduction Featurette-The Blood is the Life Featurette-The Costumes are the Sets Featurette-In Camera - The naive Visual effects of Dracula Featurette-Method and Madness - Visualizing Dracula Deleted Scenes-x12 Easter Egg Teaser Trailer Theatrical Trailer Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	127:22
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Francis Ford Coppola
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Gary Oldman Winona Ryder Anthony Hopkins Keanu Reeves Richard E. Grant Cary Elwes Bill Campbell Sadie Frost Tom Waits Monica Bellucci Michaela Bercu Florina Kendrick Jay Robinson
Case	?
RPI	$42.95	Music	Wojciech Kilar

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Linear PCM 48/16 5.1 (4608Kb/s) English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Czech Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Polish Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) Russian Dolby Digital 5.1 (640Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Bram Stoker's Dracula is an absorbing, detailed, and sensuous adaptation of the famous novel, Dracula, which expertly combines the genres of romance and horror. While there have been over 100 Dracula films, Francis Ford Coppola's artistic adaptation is a wonderfully immersive experience for the senses, rather than the mind. The original Laser Disc and DVD were considered extraordinary at the time, and the 2003 Superbit DVD managed to be of even better quality, so imagine my excitement of now reviewing the next generation - the high definition disc. Interestingly, this disc also happens to be the very first Francis Ford Coppola film released in High Definition, on any format, and Coppola personally oversaw its production.

    A commercially and critically successful Producer, Director, and Screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939. The son of musicians, Coppola grew up in New York City. After graduating with a B.A. in Theater Arts in 1959, Coppola enrolled in UCLA for graduate work in film. While studying, he worked as an assistant to Roger Corman on a variety of low-budget films. Coppola's break came when he scripted an English-language version of a Russian science-fiction movie, that became Battle Beyond the Sun (1963).

    Considered a young writing talent, Coppola was hired to work on a number of scripts before landing the job of scripting Patton. In 1969, Coppola and his UCLA buddy, George Lucas, formed American Zoetrope, an independent film production company (Coppola produced Lucas' THX 1138 and American Graffiti). In 1971 Coppola's film, The Godfather, became one of the highest-grossing films to date, and also brought him an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay with author, Mario Puzo, and a Best Director nomination. The film also received an Oscar for Best Picture. Coppola's next film, The Conversation, was also critically acclaimed, winning the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes Film Festival, and also gaining Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

    In 1974, Coppola wrote the screenplay for The Great Gatsby, and The Godfather, Part II was released. The Godfather, Part II was also a box office success, and went on to win six Oscars. Indeed, Coppola won Oscars as the film's Producer, Director, and Writer. No sequel before, and only one other since, has achieved this feat. Buoyed by his success, Coppola undertook his most ambitious film project, Apocalypse Now. Although it was greeted with mixed reviews when it was released initially in 1979, the film was awarded with the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and two Oscars. The film has since been recognized as a critical and commercial success.

    However, not every film project has been so successful. Coppola's overblown musical One From the Heart (1982) was considered a disaster, and recouped little of its US$25 million budget. In 1983, Coppola was forced to sell his Zoetrope Studio. While many predicted the end of Coppola's career, he immediately began his comeback by purposely choosing to direct popular films, such as The Outsiders (1983), The Cotton Club (1984), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Gardens of Stone (1987), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), The Godfather, Part III (1990), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). Now semi-retired as a filmmaker, Coppola has only directed four films in the fifteen years since Dracula, and in many ways I have come to view Dracula as his swan song.

    "Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation. 'Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!'"

    The above passage is taken from Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker, and it records the moment in the novel when young Mr. Jonathan Harker meets Count Dracula. I first read Dracula as a child and was absolutely hooked. The novel is largely presented in a journal format, and the first-person narrative grabs one from the start. I recall, as a child, being absolutely terrified by the story, and the very vivid and powerful images it presented, but I could not stop reading it. Every afternoon, after school, that book had its claws in me, and it held me as tightly as Count Dracula would one of his victims. Stoker had twelve novels published, but the one for which he will always be remembered is Dracula (1897).

    Vampire myths have been with us for thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world. Their variety is almost endless, but movie vampires are largely based on Eastern European myths. Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula is now over a hundred years old, and more than 100 different versions of it have made it to the big screen. The most influential and well-known of these have been F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), and  Tod Browning's 1931 version, staring Bela Lugosi, which forever shaped the film conventions of the vampire genre. I generally enjoy vampire movies, and personally, two of my all-time favourites are Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Interview With A Vampire (1994).

    As with other movies that place the author's name in the title, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, there is an implicit promise that the movie adaptation will be more authentic than past adaptations. In the case of Dracula, that is very true. Furthermore, despite being a very commercial movie, it is easy to describe this movie as daring and almost art-house cinema.

    The film's script by Coppola and James V. Hart focuses on the love story between Dracula (Gary Oldman) and the bookish, school mistress, Mina Murray (Winona Ryder), who he believes is the reincarnation of his long-lost love, Elizabeta. The story opens with historical figure, Vlad the Impaler, leading his troops in a bloody defence of Transylvania, in the name of Christendom. Against all odds he has slaughtered and impaled thousands of invading Turks. On his return to his castle he is devastated to find that his beloved Elisabeta, has committed suicide in her despair, having been given a false report that Vlad had died in battle. What's more, because she took her own life, her soul is forever damned. "I renounce God!" screams Vlad as blood spouts forth from a giant cross. Eager to join his loved one in hell, Vlad catches some of the gushing blood in a chalice, and gulps it down, thus beginning his reign as Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Vlad has cursed God for his 'reward' (and in doing so, himself) by promising to bedevil God for all eternity. Vlad has sentenced himself to a timeless existence beyond the grave, and beyond redemption.

    After this very melodramatic prologue, Coppola then turns to the events of Stoker's book: Four centuries later, the aged and lonely Dracula glides through his crumbling castle in the Carpathian wilds, his face pale and creased with almost absurd wrinkles. His long, withered and spidery fingers reach out like claws, when the young and ambitious law clerk, Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) arrives at the Castle. Dracula provides him with a cheery yet ominous greeting: "Enter freely and of your own free will. And leave some of the happiness you bring."

    Harker, acting on orders from his law firm, has travelled to Castle Dracula to finalize a property deal with the Count. Harker is engaged to marry the prudish, Mina, but after seeing her likeness, Dracula becomes convinced that Mina is his long-lost love, and with Harker trapped in the castle, the Count travels to London to find her. After a series of mysterious happenings centred around Mina's best friend, Lucy (Sadie Frost), Dutch metaphysician, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) is called in to investigate. Van Helsing will lead his crew of bumbling vampire-slayers (all suitors of Lucy, played by Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes and Bill Campbell), in ridding themselves of their undead blight.

    Count Dracula has been cursed to an existence without life, without love, and without end. The operatic themes of this myth are the cornerstones of Coppola's Dracula. These emotions cry out for a lavish excess of blood and spectacle, of set design, costuming, and makeup, of visual and sound effects, of innovation and imagination; And that is exactly what Coppola and his production team have delivered. Special praise should go to Eiko Ishioka, the Japanese artist who designed the magnificent costumes, Thomas Sanders, who designed the sets, and Michael Ballhaus, who beautifully executed the dream-vision cinematography.

    In reference to German Expressionism, Coppola has adopted a Gothic style, presenting a distorted perception of reality, one in which there is not necessarily a realistic ratio between the size of human beings and that of the objects around them. A team of editors worked on the film, and I remain impressed with the beautiful transitions between scenes and the clever splicing and inter-cutting within scenes. The film boasts flawless dissolves and a number of seamless montage and superimpositions.

    Coppola's son, Roman, was in charge of the VFX in the film, which have a very different look compared with the recent CGI-based vampire films, such as Underworld and Van Helsing. The majority of the effects in Dracula were done in camera. In an interview, Roman Coppola said their intention was to re-create the same visual effects used by filmmakers at the time the 1897 novel was written. Thus prepare yourself for some early cinema techniques with the use of smoke and mirrors, double exposures, and film speeds. There's even a nod to this, with a scene of the film set inside an early cinema theatre which is showing off the latest in movie SFX -19th century film techniques!   

    Dracula is Coppola at his most artistic, most lavish and, certainly, his most flamboyant. There is a very bold artistic style here, from the shadow puppet style battle scene opening, and the obvious use of surreal miniatures, to the extraordinary visual mix in the collection of letters, logs and diary entries by which the story is told, as if the book were actually coming to life before our eyes. As a film, Dracula is sensual, in the true meaning of the word. All these years later, it still remains a wonderfully immersive experience for our senses.

Video

    I imagine what most readers would like to know is how this high definition disc compares to the previous two standard definition DVD releases, and if it's worth purchasing? The high definition transfer is slightly sharper and certainly more detailed than the standard definition transfer, but nowhere near as jaw-dropping as some recent films that I have enjoyed in high definition. In short, the high definition disc is the very best presentation of this film to date, and currently, it is the ultimate way to enjoy Dracula at home.

    I recall that the original DVD had an average (and at the time impressive) bit rate of about 8 Mbps, while the Superbit version averaged slightly higher at 9 Mbps. The 50GB Blu-ray disc has an average bit rate that ranges between 25-30 Mbps.

    The real test, however, is how it looks. The film has an intentional, slightly-grainy, textured look, which suits the story well. The transfer is presented in high definition, having been authored in 1920 x 1080p. It has been encoded using AVC MPEG-4 compression, and presented in a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1, in a native 16x9 frame. This is the film's original theatrical ratio.

    Considering the age of the source material, the image is reasonable, but often looks flat and dated. It certainly lacks the sharpness and startling detail of more recent films. Throughout, the picture suffers from some softness, which might be due to the source material, for example Dracula's face at 16:53, or the spider crawling across he book at 23:21. However, to be fair, in many scenes, both the foreground, and especially the background, exhibited far greater detail than the standard definition DVDs.

    Compared with other more recent high definition titles, the shadow detail is very limited. For example, consider the ship at 37:48, and the carriage at 54:42 which have virtually no detail whatsoever. This is a very dark film, and the black level is deep and generally consistent.

    Colour is important in this film, and some might not like the film's controversial new grading, which at times results in an almost 'colourised' appearance. But to my eye, a rich palette of well saturated colours are on display. The film purposely often looks very dark and jumbled - perhaps providing us with a vampire's point of view. The skin tones are fairly accurate.

    As expected with a Blu-ray disc, there are generally no problems with MPEG or film-to-video artefacts, but some slight telecine wobble is present. This is most noticeable during the opening credits and when some place names appear on screen. As with the previous DVD releases, Film artefacts appear throughout, but they are usually small.

    No less than 32 sets of subtitles are present on the BD, and the English subtitles are accurate.

    This is a BD-50 (50 GB dual-layer disc). The feature is divided into 16 chapters.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The original DVD contained six audio tracks: English Dolby Digital 2.0, surround-encoded, English Dolby Digital 5.1, and French, German, Italian and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded soundtracks. The Superbit DVD offered English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 KBPS), and dts (768 KBPS).

    The BD improves matters again, by offering English Linear PCM audio encoded at 4.6 Mbps. There is also the option of English, French, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Russian Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, all encoded at 640 Kbps. As I've found with other BDs, both the English surround audio options are clear and do the job, but I preferred the Linear PCM audio, which sounded slightly fuller and deeper. But don't expect the quality of more recent surround mixes. There is also an audio commentary presented in stereo, encoded at 192 Kbps.

    The dialogue quality and audio sync are generally excellent on both audio tracks.

    The moody musical score is credited to Woiciech Kilar, and it is a suitably dramatic and passionate sweeping orchestral score.

    The surround presence and activity is very good, but it now sounds a little dated. The rear speakers are used throughout to help carry the score, and to provide effects, such as the guttural roar at 38:19, or the thunder storm at 10:36. There are also a fair degree of ambience, and a few split rear directional effects, which are a nice touch.

    The subwoofer is also utilized very effectively to support both the score and the effects, and there are ominous deep rumbles throughout.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Unlike many other older films released in high definition, Dracula has been given some brand new extras. Unless stated otherwise, all extras are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, with Dolby Digital stereo audio.

Floating Pop-Up Menu

    As with other BDs, the menu can be accessed while the film is playing.

Audio Commentary

    Francis Ford Coppola originally took part in a group commentary on the Laser Disc, but here he has provided a brand new commentary for the BD. Coppola discusses both the historical aspects of the characters and story, as well as the history of the film. Coppola's love of this film and the source material is obvious, and Coppola provides an interesting and information-packed commentary.

Video Introduction (3:55)

    Coppola provides an introduction to the film, in which he briefly outlines his long-time love of the book and other vampire films.

The Blood is the Life (27:48)

    Packed with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, this extra looks at the overall making of the film.

The Costumes are the Sets (14:02)

    Featuring Coppola and Eiko Ishioka, this extra looks at how Coppola unusually wanted the costumes to lead the set-design, instead of the other way.

In Camera - The naive Visual effects of Dracula (18:46)

    Featuring Roman Coppola, this extra looks at how Coppola wanted the film's VFX to rely on the tricks and techniques of early cinema.

Method and Madness - Visualizing Dracula (12:06)

    This extra looks at the various story-board drafts to deliver Coppola's goal of a "dark, erotic nightmare".

Deleted Scenes (28:14)

    There are 12 extended scenes from the film. The quality of the presentation is sadly very poor, and they resemble an old VHS tape.

Easter Egg

    An outtake from the film.

Theatrical Trailer (2:38)

    The original trailer for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Teaser Trailer (1:28)

    The original teaser trailer for Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Trailers

• Coming to Blu-ray
• Ghost Rider

    As mentioned above, Bram Stoker's Dracula was previously released locally in standard definition on Laser Disc, DVD, and Superbit DVD.

    As with Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola has chosen to make his High Definition debut on the Blu-ray format. In terms of content, this BD is the same as the one released in the USA. Bram Stoker's Dracula will not be released on HD DVD.

    Bram Stoker's Dracula was a great Laser Disc and DVD, but the next-generation has arrived in our home theatres, and this Blu-ray disc is now the best presentation of this film, and the ultimate way to enjoy it at home.

    The video quality is good, but limited by the dated source material.

    The audio quality is also good, but also limited by the source material.

    The extras are genuine and plentiful.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall