Dracula 1992 Free

[Lashawna Vorhees]

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American vampire horror film produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and written by James V. Hart, based on the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.[4][5][6] The film stars Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, and Tom Waits. Set in 19th-century England and Romania, it follows the titular vampire (Oldman), who falls in love with Mina Murray (Ryder), the fiance of his solicitor Jonathan Harker (Reeves). When Dracula begins terrorizing Mina's friends, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Hopkins), an expert in vampirism, is summoned to bring an end to his reign of terror. Its closing credits theme "Love Song for a Vampire", is written and performed by Annie Lennox.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was theatrically released in the United States on November 13, 1992, to positive reviews from critics,[7][8] though Reeves' performance and English accent were universally panned.[9][10][11] The film opened at the top of the box office, grossing $215.9 million against its $40 million budget, and was nominated in four categories at the 65th Academy Awards, winning Best Costume Design for Eiko Ishioka, Best Sound Editing, and Best Makeup, while also being nominated for Best Art Direction.

In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his beloved wife Elisabeta has committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death. A priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church tells him that his wife's soul is damned to Hell for committing suicide. Enraged, Vlad desecrates the chapel and renounces the Christian God, declaring he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of darkness. He then drives his sword into the chapel's stone cross and drinks the blood that pours from it, becoming a vampire.

In 1897, solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R. M. Renfield, who has gone insane and is now an inmate in Dr. Jack Seward's asylum. Jonathan travels to Dracula's castle in Transylvania to arrange Dracula's real estate acquisitions in London. Jonathan meets Dracula, who finds a picture of his fiance Mina Murray and believes she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. Dracula leaves Jonathan to be fed upon by his brides, while he sails to England with Transylvanian soil, taking up residence at Carfax Abbey.

After he and Mina return to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead the others to Carfax Abbey, where they destroy the Count's boxes of soil. Dracula enters the asylum and kills Renfield for warning Mina of his presence. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters, and confesses that he murdered Lucy and has been terrorizing Mina's friends. Though furious at first, Mina admits that she still loves him and remembers Elisabeta's previous life; at her insistence, Dracula begins transforming her into a vampire. The hunters burst into the bedroom, and Dracula claims Mina as his bride before escaping. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and learns via her connection with Dracula that he is sailing home in his last remaining box. The hunters depart for Varna to intercept him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and evades them. The hunters split up; Van Helsing and Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while the others try to stop the Romani transporting Dracula.

At night, Van Helsing and Mina are approached by Dracula's brides. Mina succumbs to their chanting and attempts to seduce Van Helsing. Before Mina can feed on his blood, Van Helsing places a communion wafer on her forehead, leaving a mark that slows her transformation. He surrounds them with a ring of fire to protect them from the brides, then kills the brides the following morning. Dracula's carriage arrives at the castle, pursued by the hunters. A fight between the hunters and Romani ensues. Morris is fatally stabbed in the back and Dracula bursts from his coffin at sunset. Jonathan slits his throat with a kukri knife while Morris stabs him in the heart. Van Helsing and Jonathan allow Mina to retreat with the Count while Morris dies in the arms of Holmwood, comforted by his friends.

In the chapel where he renounced God, Dracula lies dying. He and Mina share a kiss as the candles adorning the chapel light up and the cross repairs itself. Dracula reverts to his younger self and asks Mina to give him peace. Mina thrusts the knife through his heart and as he dies, the mark on her forehead disappears freeing her from his curse. She then decapitates him and gazes up at a fresco of Vlad and Elisabeta ascending to heaven together, finally reunited.

Coppola's film makes a direct connection between Dracula's vampiric origin and occultism/satanism. In the opening scene of the film, after learning that his wife committed suicide and is denied salvation, Dracula denies God and makes a deal with the dark forces.This is symbolically verified with Dracula plunging his sword into the crucifix, which immediately starts to bleed excessive amounts of blood that Dracula drinks as a sign of "bloodpact" with the Devil.[19]

Upon release, The New York Times' Frank Rich suggested that the film drew upon the prevalent fear of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, a disease transmissible via contact/transfer of blood. Coppola, according to Rich, gives to the viewers a movie that both frightens and arouses them by playing off their unchecked fear of the spread of AIDS as an invasion of the national bloodstream.[20]

Ryder initially brought the script (written by James V. Hart) to the attention of Coppola.[22] The director had agreed to meet with her so the two could clear the air after her late withdrawal from The Godfather Part III caused production delays on that film and led her to believe Coppola disliked her.[23] According to Ryder: "I never really thought he would read it. He was so consumed with Godfather III. As I was leaving, I said, 'If you have a chance, read this script.' He glanced down at it politely, but when he saw the word Dracula, his eyes lit up. It was one of his favorite stories from camp."[24] Ryder also explained that "what attracted me to the script is the fact that it's a very emotional love story, which is not really what you think of when you think about Dracula. Mina, like many women in the late 1800s, has a lot of repressed sexuality. Everything about women in that era, the way those corsets forced them to move, was indicative of repression. To express passion was freakish".[24] Coppola was also attracted to the sensual elements of the screenplay and said that he wanted portions of the picture to resemble an "erotic dream".[25] To prepare for Bram Stoker's Dracula, as the movie would be called, Coppola screened Citizen Kane, Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight.[26] In the months leading up to its release, Hollywood insiders who had seen the movie felt Coppola's film was too odd, violent and strange to succeed at the box office, and dubbed it "Bonfire of the Vampires" after the notorious 1990 box-office bomb The Bonfire of the Vanities.[25][27]

Gary Oldman has stated that he never considered Count Dracula to be a "bucket list" role for him. He said about the main reason why his younger self agreed to the role: "It was an opportunity to work with Coppola, who I consider one of the great American directors. That was enough, really. It was my first big American movie, made on a big set with lots of costumes. For a young actor, that was a tremendous experience."[28] Another reason why Oldman wanted to play Dracula was because he wanted to say: "I've crossed oceans of time to find you" and to him it was worth playing the role just to say that line.[29]

Coppola chose to invest a significant amount of the budget in costumes in order to showcase the actors, whom he considered the "jewels" of the feature.[23][25] He had a team of artists - veteran production artist Mentor Huebner,[32] future Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse co-director Peter Ramsey,[33] and future Hellboy creator Mike Mignola[34] - storyboard the entire film in advance to carefully illustrate each planned shot. This process which created around a thousand images.[23] He turned the drawings into a choppy animated film - an animatic - with added music, and spliced in scenes from the French version of Beauty and the Beast that Jean Cocteau directed in 1946 along with paintings by Gustav Klimt and other symbolist artists.[23] He showed the animated film to his designers to give them an idea of the mood and theme he was aiming for. Coppola also asked the set costume designers to simply bring him designs which were "weird". "'Weird' became a code word for 'Let's not do formula'", he later recalled. "'Give me something that either comes from the research or that comes from your own nightmares.' I gave them paintings, and I gave them drawings, and I talked to them about how I thought the imagery could work."[23]

The film's hair and makeup designer, Michle Burke, recalls: "Francis didn't want the typical Dracula that had already been done in Hollywood. He wanted something different; a new Dracula without the widow's peak, cape, or pale-white skin." Burke says she used her Catholic upbringing and angelic imagery for design inspiration, as well as the 19th-century attire created by costume designer Eiko Ishioka.[35]

Due to delays and cost overruns on some of Coppola's previous projects such as Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart, Coppola was determined to complete Bram Stoker's Dracula on time and on budget. To accomplish this he filmed on sound stages to avoid potential troubles caused by inclement weather.[23][25]

Coppola was insistent that he did not want to use any kind of contemporary special effects techniques such as computer-generated imagery when making the movie, instead wishing to use antiquated effects techniques from the early history of cinema, which he felt would be more appropriate given that the film's period setting coincides with the origin of film. He initially hired a standard visual effects team, but when they told him that the things he wanted to achieve were impossible without using modern digital technology, Coppola disagreed and fired them, replacing them with his son Roman Coppola. As a result, all of the visual effects seen in the film were achieved without the use of optical or computer-generated effects, but were created using on-set and in-camera methods. For example, any sequences that would have typically required the use of compositing were instead achieved by either rear projection with actors placed in front of a screen with an image projected behind them, or through multiple exposure by shooting a background slate then rewinding the film through the camera and shooting the foreground slate on the same piece of film, all the while using matting techniques to ensure that only the desired areas of film were exposed. Forced perspectives were often employed to combine miniature effects or matte paintings with full-sized elements, or create distorted views of reality, such as holding the camera upside down or at odd angles to create the effect of objects defying the laws of physics.[44] When filming Dracula's POV, Roman took individual images with his camera in an erratic way, sometimes only a few random frames per second, and then sudden bursts of several frames per second. For Lucy's movements, she did her performance backwards, and the film then processed in reverse.[45]

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