Dracula's Curse (Aka Dracula)

Dracula's Curse, or originally released as just Dracula in 2002, is an Italian and German Two part miniseries. The film stars a pan-European cast, and has English as its primary language, though some of the characters obviously struggle a bit with it. This is a retelling/re-imagining of Bram Stoker's classic novel, and takes much of its inspiration from the famous Francis Ford Coppola version. The setting though was changed for this film though, the film was also for some reason modernized and brought into the modern era.

One of the biggest critiques of Francis Ford Coppola's version is how bad of an actor Keanau Reeves was in the film as Johnathan Harker, compared the Jonathan Harker in this film, played by Hardy Kruger Jr, I feel like Reeves deserved an Oscar for his acting in the role. The cast is definitely lack luster at best. Real emotion was never actually obtained during this film, the cast just seemed like a bunch of rich assholes, with no real human emotions. The lines are all delivered flat and bland, even the settings are filmed so poorly that they fail to impress. The special effects...oh bloody hell...I like bad movies, I really do, but these were painful special effects to watch, they would fail to impress even back in 2002. I get that it is made for television, but either accept your limitations and work within them to make it look good, or at least make the bad effects look good in someway. There is nothing good looking about this film.

The reviews of this film(?) were unanimously negative, and though I don't always agree with the critics, I will admit they are dead on, by saying things like: "What really sinks this film in the end, though, is not the weakness of the special effects, but the performances and the delivery of the pan-European cast that struggles through their semi-dubbed English language lines." -Noel Megahey of DVD Times.

Not only does the film look terrible, and the acting terrible, but the pacing is also boring. This film can best be summed up with, "well that was boring, but at least they did their best." But really did they, did they even try to make a watchable film. The best thing that could have happened to this film is that no one ever decided to pick it up and re-release it on DVD, especially in the USA where it would hold up very poorly compared to even what Sy-Fy Channel is cranking out of their cesspool of made for television films. I want to say that it was complete shit, how ever there was a saving grace...but there isn't. The only silver lining in this film is that it is over, and I can go on to something better...I hope.

Would I recommend this film? Nope, I am a die-hard Dracula fan and collect as many versions as I can get my hands on, and this one...well, yeah. I am glad it is in my collection, and shall keep it's place on the shelf, probably untouched for a very long time, there is nothing about it that makes me thing, oh hey, I should watch that again. Glad I did, but I prefer that I suffer this one alone, so please let me spare you the misery that is Dracula's Curse. Honestly that name Dracula's Curse is really fitting for this film, for it is the curse of the Dracula legacy, this film is the bottom of the barrel dog shit, that was bound to happen if people kept retelling the same story, over and over and over and over again, and my dumb ass will keep watching retelling after retelling of that story, most are good, some even great, but then there is this cursed abomination. Of course it was released by Artisan Films, a film company that seems like it will put out anything, if they think they can make a dollar or two off of it, sometimes Artisan releases something worth watching, but more often than not, that is not the case. So if you find a copy of this film, take it off the shelf, and hide it somewhere where no one will mistakenly purchase it, and for the love of all that is unholy, do not watch it, don't even let the thought of thinking about watching it even begin to speculate the merest possibility of crossing your mind (and that is coming from me, who loves really bad movies).