Dracula: Dead and Loving It

Brooks has always grounded his humour on high production values, a practice admirers claim achieves satirical effect and fond hommage. Certainly, this is as lavish as ever, and the narrative likewise takes care to keep up with both Stoker's original and the Coppola facsimile. There are some slight shortcuts. Renfield (MacNicol), not Jonathan Harker, travels to Transylvania, where Dracula (Nielsen) entrances and enslaves him, thus securing food (the crew of the Demeter) and shelter (Carfax Abbey). The Count provides the clothing himself - a Gary Oldman-esque bouffant wig, for instance, which he takes off indoors (one of the surviving jokes). Coppola had trouble stuffing the book into two hours, and this hasty hour-and-a-half feels perfunctory in the extreme. Brooks, as Van Helsing, is one of the more successful aspects, but he hasn't imbued in his stock company a similar ability to rise above their underwritten roles.