Argento's Dracula 3D

Hindi dubbed

source: Argento's Dracula 3D

Dario Argento tries his hand at what many would call the ultimate horror novel. As with most adaptations of Dracula, this is not terribly close to the book and the most faithful riff on the book is still Francis Ford Coppola's version. This movie is nowhere near as good as that one but it is fairly solid. Thomas Kretschmann, who also memorably portrayed a bloodsucker in Blade 2, plays the title character as a cultured, stuffy Count that brings prosperity to a remote village along with his vampiric curse. Enter Jonathan Harker, a naive outsider who has gotten a job as Drac's librarian through his new wife Mina's best friend, a local named Lucy played by Dario's daughter Asia Argento. Dracula rapidly becomes obsessed with Mina while posing an increasing threat to everyone else in town. As the movie proceeds, there's a ton of violence, gore, and nudity including another infamous father-daughter * scene with Dario filming Asia taking a bath! The movie is fast and fun and has great production design and a mostly solid cast that also includes the always reliable Rutger Hauer as the reluctantly heroic Professor Van Helsing, who shows up to save the day about half way through. The movie is also deeply flawed. Dracula should either have more screen time to appear as a more fully developed character or less to seem more shadowy and foreboding. Some of the special effects and sound effects are downright laughable and the movie sometimes seems kind of amateurish. Lighting is another consistent issue. In all, I liked it, and you probably will too if you're into old school European horror circa mid to late 60's. Dario Argento may not be the master filmmaker he once was but this certainly isn't the disaster that Giallo and Mother of Tears were and shows that he can still make a watchable little horror movie.

"Suspiria", this ain't. Why Dario Argento attempted to make the one millionth version of "Dracula" is probably the most puzzling thing about this truly terrible version of Bram Stoker's undying novel. By this time, who cares about the Count, anyway? The poor guy has been invoked and re-imagined so many times it's nothing but sad anymore. Argento evidently wanted his shot at the venerable story, but the result is a hot mess that can't even qualify as a cult movie, despite the fact that late in the movie, Dracula turns himself into a giant deadly mantis to kill another extra who didn't know he needed to call Orkin. The entire movie is shot under incredibly bright light, making even the night scenes looks as if everyone's going to hit the beach as soon as the director yells "cut". This is Transylvania/California. The story is a precariously balanced retread of the superior "Horror of Dracula", Hammer Films breakthrough in Technicolor vampirism that shook the world in 1958. Here, Argento wastes film in a weak copy of the Hammer visual style, reducing the original 1958 color palette of rich autumn hues to something you'd see on the Vegas strip. Hammer's heaving bosoms are now in full view, jiggling all over the place. The subtle eroticism of the 58' version is now stroke magazine fodder. Most damnably, Argento attempts to recreate the seminal scene in which Harker is attacked by Dracula's bride. Instead of the shock of Christopher Lee's red-eyed Count knocking the hell out of the bride, we get T and A and the worst pretend Dracula ever seen, the lousy Thomas Kretschmann in a Z-list sleepwalk performance of one of the world's greatest villains. Oh yeah, he's also blond. Surf's up, Drac! And so on. We get a seriously truncated version of the original story. Dracula never goes to England. Somehow, all the characters come to him. No hunting necessary. Within ten minutes of the movie's start, we get soft-core * involving a buff gymrat and a Hustler Honey banging in a barn. Dracula is not only a weak player, but also a very bad CGI owl, werewolf thingy, and again, a giant praying mantis. Who knew? Rutger Hauer shows up late in the game as Van Helsing, gets knocked around for his trouble and Mina shoots the Count, who turns into an ashy replica of himself before blowing up real good. For Dracula completists only, and even then, on fast-forward. Really, it's that bad.

Well after finally seeing this and reading all the way negative reviews, I must confess that Dario's latest somewhat surprised me as I was expecting it to be much much worse. Not that it's very good mind. While in some ways a faithful enough adaptation of Stoker's classic, it also has some bizarre and decidedly left field touches to it including one rather jaw dropping in concept transformation scene involving a giant... insect, which had me in stitches. The gore is decent in concept but executed badly, with really substandard CGI, which comes across like the Scy/Fi channel doing a really bad rendition of things. Hauer is wasted in it and doesn't actually do much, while Kretchsmann is horribly miscast as the titular count and basically sleepwalks through his role. Asia while still damn alluring looking is still her usual self (when in her dad's films), although obligingly (and considering Dario's her dad, decidedly creepily) gets naked yet again. There's also some fine nudity from Miriam Giovanelli. I did like its set design though which comes across as a nice homage to the old style Universal/Hammer horrors to an almost stereotypically Gothic degree, all dark castles and heaving bosoms in corsets. I'm giving this a very generous 6/10 as despite its very real flaws and being rather uneventful in parts, it's also overall a helluva lot more entertaining than I was expecting, although sadly nowhere near as entertaining or gratuitous as his bonkers Mother of Tears. Lifelong Argento fans will in all probability hate this, but after watching it all I can say is... I liked it better than Giallo... which admittedly isn't saying much. On a purely critical level I'd probably rate this a generous 4 as it really is a weak and poor effort on Dario's part, but I'm tacking on another bonus two points for unintentional hilarity and for keeping me entertained. That having said, I'm a bit of an Argento fanboy and can't in all honesty recommend it to his fans, or... well, anyone else probably except fellow fanboys, but Dracula is very probably his weakest film, even if I preferred it to Giallo.

There hasn't been a proper adaptation of Dracula and this is no exception. This is an extremely loose adaptation of the story and is done in a Hammer-sequence fashion but with none of the menace or style of those classic films. If there's one element of redemption, it's Rutger Hauer, who puts his all into a spirited Van Helsing. Unfortunately he arrives far too late in the production to rescue it. For goodness sake - can someone - anyone - do a proper version of Dracula that avoids 'reimagining' the story. It's one of the most enduring horror stories of all time and deserves a proper adaptation. This film is one of the feebler attempts to bring this story to life and should be watched only by the curious with nothing better to do for a couple of hours.

I had heard people say how bad this was but kept faith that there would be something about it that I liked. Unfortunately, within the first 15 minutes, I knew I wasn't going to find that something. It is probably up there with some of the worst films I have seen in my life and I am really sad to have to say this. The characters are poor and the acting is excruciatingly bad. Especially the guy who plays the priest, Unax Ugalde and Asia Argento. Kretschman is the only thing that saved me from giving this film one star, and even he isn't that great which surprised me, as he is a fine actor. The dubbing is hideous; soulless voices and ridiculously long and unnecessary pauses between dialogue. It's almost like they did it as an intentional joke. It's not funny. Then there's the CGI; the owl, the train station, Dracula shape-shifting from a wolf back into a vampire are all terrible and look like bad video game graphics. Some of the other less ambitious CGI is OK, however. The preying mantis is just plain stupid. You'll be laughing and embarrassed at the same time. I can't remember seeing a worse or more clumsily amateurish take on Bram Stoker's book and anyone who tries to pull similarities between this and any of Hammer's fine works are clearly wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. This film bares no resemblance to any of Hammer's films. To say as such is a massive slur on Hammer's name. Awful.

Well, for a "Dracula" movie, then this particular movie was rather stale and uninspiring, if not actually and literally the worst "Dracula" movie or interpretation that I have had the misfortune to come across. And that sort of surprises me coming from director Dario Argento, as he is usually well-known for his otherwise good horror and suspense movies. But with this 2012 "Dracula" movie, he really swung wide and missed even wider. For a 3D movie, then "Dracula" was frightfully devoid of any proper 3D effects that worked out on a greater scale. And the movie had probably been better off without this half-hearted attempt of making it in 3D. The story in the movie is fairly similar to the story that we all know, though Argento does take the liberty of adding stuff here and there, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The movie suffered from horrible dialogue that was for most parts of the movie delivered by people who didn't speak proper English, or sounded like they were synchronized in a very bad way. And whether or not it was Argento's goal and purpose to make this movie appear like it was filmed in the 1970's, then that is how the movie looked. So whether or not you enjoy this is a personal preference. I, however, was sort of baffled how a 2012 movie could suffer and fail on so many levels. Not only did the movie suffer from the questionable dialogue, but the people in the movie weren't really putting on any memorable performances and most of them seemed like they were in a hurry to get it over with and move on to something else. The acting performances in this movie was awkward and bad. Sadly that is so, but it should be said. Not even Rutger Hauer (playing Abraham Van Helsing) or Asia Argento (playing Lucy) did anything to lift up the movie in any way. And Thomas Kretschmann (playing Dracula) was just so wrongly cast for this role; the way he portrayed his lines was even more strained and oddly-paused-at-the-wrong-times than Jeremy Iron's performances in "Dungeons & Dragons". The movie made use of CGI as well, which for most parts worked out well enough. However, there was one particular scene that just had me cringing in disbelief that something could be so bad. The scene where Dracula transformed from wolf to man. It was just painful to behold. Another thing that just had me shaking my head is utter disbelief and laughing was the scene where a giant mantis, taller than a human, came walking up the stairs. Now, why is there a giant mantis in the movie you might ask? Well, apparently Argento wanted Dracula to be able to assume the form of animal and insect alike, I suppose. It was just ridiculous. There was also a handful of nudity in the movie, which was rather pointless and unnecessary. It didn't really serve the movie in any direction, and would have been better off if it hadn't made it to the final cut, or better yet, hadn't been on the storyboard to begin with. It is not all bad though. The thing that the movie really had working for it in its favor was the costumes, props and scenery. There was a lot of nice scenes and settings throughout the movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And the costumes looked great and seemed proper for the time in which the story was supposed to take place. If you enjoy vampire movies and have a taste for the "Dracula" myth, then stay well clear of this movie, because it is a shameful attempt at telling the tale. Dario Argento have a lot better movies credited to his name, and you might have to be a fantastic fan of his to actually find some enjoyment in this movie.

It's awful. Terrible, God-awful. Dreadful. Rotten... And lots and lots of fun. It's so bad it's good. I was laughing the entire time. It's the Plan 9 from Outer Space of Dracula movies. It's brilliant! And then when Abraham Van Helsing shows up it's priceless. He randomly breaks into Lucy's house instead of knocking. Then he breaks into a blacksmith's shop and kills a guy for coming into the shop. Now for all Van Helsing knew it could have been the blacksmith, we the audience knew it was one of Dracula's minion, but he didn't. And he impale's the guy's head on something sharp hanging on the wall. In fact he kills at least two humans. And we already know the town's economy is dependent on Dracula. And it has such great likes as "Thank god I had enough garlic for that bullet." You mean the fact that it was silver meant nothing?! And there's the head scratching moment of when Mina says to Dracula "You killed Lucy!" and he says "I gave her eternal life." So she switches gears "You killed Jonathan!" and he says "He was in the way." Dafuq?! You made him a vampire too! Why did you just lie!?? Oh, yes, and there's a scene where Dracula turns into a seven foot tall mantis which is why my friends and I have nicknamed this movie Mantis-Drac. I love this movie.

Dario Argento is one of my favorite contemporary directors in the horror genre. However "Dracula 3D" is certainly his worst movie, retelling Bram Stoker's Gothic novel with poor performances in cheesy scenario, CGI and art direction. Miriam Giovanelli seems to be a * star the way she takes her clothes so easily. Drácula's transformation into owl, flies, wolf and even mantis (?) is sort of ridiculous. But as a friend of mine uses to say about this "Dracula 3D", the worst movie by Dario Argento is still better than most of the teen horror movies. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "Drácula 3D"