Dracula [1979] dir John Badham with Frank Langella

Dracula (1979)



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079073/




Dracula is a 1979 horror/romance film starring Frank Langella as Count Dracula. The film was directed by John Badham and the cinematography was by Gilbert Taylor. The original music score is composed by renowned composer John Williams. The film's tagline is: "Throughout history, he has filled the hearts of men with terror, and the hearts of women with desire."



The film also starred Laurence Olivier as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Jack Seward, Kate Nelligan as Lucy Seward, Trevor Eve as Jonathan Harker, Tony Haygarth as Milo Renfield, and Jan Francis as Mina Van Helsing. It won the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film.





Frank Langella ... Count Dracula

Laurence Olivier ... Prof. Abraham Van Helsing

Donald Pleasence ... Dr. Jack Seward

Kate Nelligan ... Lucy Seward

Trevor Eve ... Jonathan Harker

Jan Francis ... Mina Van Helsing

Janine Duvitski ... Annie

Tony Haygarth ... Milo Renfield

Teddy Turner ... Swales

Sylvester McCoy ... Walter (as Sylveste McCoy)

Kristine Howarth ... Mrs. Galloway

Joe Belcher ... Tony Hindley

Ted Carroll ... Scarborough Sailor

Frank Birch ... Harbormaster

Gabor Vernon ... Captain of Demeter





Like Universal's earlier 1931 version starring Bela Lugosi, the screenplay for this adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is based on the stage adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which ran on Broadway and also starred Langella in a Tony Award-nominated performance. Notable for its Edwardian setting, and strikingly designed by Edward Gorey, the play ran for over 900 performances between October 1977 and January 1980.



The film was shot on location in England: at Shepperton Studios and Black Park, Buckinghamshire. Cornwall doubled for the majority of the exterior Whitby scenes; Tintagel (for Seward's Asylum), and St Michael's Mount (for Carfax Abbey).





In 1979, three major Dracula movies were released simultaneously around the world: Werner Herzog's arthouse re-telling Nosferatu the Vampyre, John Badham's Dracula, and the comedy Love At First Bite. The success of the jokey Love At First Bite, starring George Hamilton, may have had something to do with the muted response Badham's film would subsequently experience. The film performed modestly at the box office, grossing $20,158,970 domestically, and was seen as something of a disappointment by the studio.



Some critics reacted positively toward the film, such as Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave gave it 3½ stars out of 4 and wrote: "What an elegantly seen Dracula this is, all shadows and blood and vapors and Frank Langella stalking through with the grace of a cat. The film is a triumph of performance, art direction and mood over materials that can lend themselves so easily to self-satire. There have been so many Draculas (Bela Lugosi played him three times, Christopher Lee five) that the tragic origins of the character have been lost among the gravestones, the fangs and all those black cloaks. This Dracula restores the character to the purity of its first film appearances, in F.W. Murnau's 1923 Nosferatu and Bela Lugosi's 1931 version." Others reacted less positively, such as Janet Maslin of The New York Times, who wrote: "In making this latest trip to the screen in living color, Dracula has lost some blood. The movie version ... is by no means lacking in stylishness; if anything, it's got style to spare. But so many of its sequences are at fever pitch, and the mood varies so drastically from episode to episode, that the pace becomes pointless, even taxing, after a while."



In the home video market of the early 80's, John Badham's Dracula became a very popular title (making it into Variety's All-Time Horror Rentals - published 1993), but it eventually seemed to fall into relative cinematic anonymity for several years (partly due to it having a very limited video release outside of the USA). In more recent years, however, the film has undergone a bit of a revival, thanks to being made widely available on DVD and shown often on cable television, enabling new audiences to discover the film.



The 1979 theatrical version of the movie looks noticeably different from all modern prints of the film. Up until the early 1990s the film was shown in full Technicolor, however when it was re-issued for a special Widescreen Laserdisc release in 1991, the director chose to alter the color timing and desaturated the once vibrant look of the film. The controversial choice left all subsequent prints (including DVDs) virtually colorless, prompting many arguments on internet movie forums. The reason for the change is that John Badham had originally wanted to shoot the film in black and white (to mirror the monochrome 1931 movie and the stark feel of the Gorey stage production), but at the time Universal refused and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor was instead prompted to shoot the movie in very warm 'golden' colors, helping to show off the stunning production design. The original version has been out of print for several years and it remains to be seen if it will be given a re-release by Universal at some point in the future.



Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA

1980 Won Saturn Award Best Horror Film

1980 Nominated Saturn Award Best Actor Frank Langella

1980 Nominated Saturn Award Best Director John Badham

1980 Nominated Saturn Award Best Make-Up Peter Robb-King

1980 Nominated Saturn Award Best Supporting Actor Donald Pleasence