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| Bram Stoker's Dracula | 
 enlarge | Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Actors: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy Used: $1.15
You Save: $13.79 (92%)
New (21) Used (106) Collectible (1) from $1.15
Avg. Customer Rating:  543 reviews
Sales Rank: 13990
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), Georgian (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 127
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 2
Picture Format: Array
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.5
MPN: COLD51419D
ISBN: 0800177177
UPC: 043396514195
EAN: 9780800177171
ASIN: 0800177177
Theatrical Release Date: November 13, 1992
Release Date: October 7, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 This collection's edition DVD features incldue August 29, 2007
23 out of 29 found this review helpful
Number of Discs: 2
Special Features:
Video introduction by Francis Ford Coppola
Audio commentary by Francis Ford Coppola
Documentary
Deleted scenes
Trailer
 Total disappointment November 4, 2007
20 out of 27 found this review helpful
This Blu-ray disc is, to put it simply, awful. Reading serious professional reviews, I didn't have high expectations, but I love the movie and gave it a chance. I wish I didn't, becouse I have seen upscaled standard definition discs that look much better then this. Colors are drab, picture is both grainy and fuzzy, awful, awful. To be fair, there is a lot of supplements, but I didn't look at them, frustrated by the scandalous picture quality of the movie, which should be the thing that really counts here. I really tried to find what was so nice about the disc that other reviewers praise, but couldn't find that. I just hope they do a remaster, like they did for "Fifth Element" which now looks and sounds great. "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is not that old a movie and can look much better. Look at "2001" Blu-ray (although, it may not be fair to compare, since it's source was 70mm film). Just look at any other Blu-ray or HD DVD disc, becouse this one is simply THE worst HD disc (both Blu-ray and HD DVD) I have ever seen. Beware!!!
FINALLY- I've been waiting for this for years! September 2, 2007
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Certain scenes from promo materials & in the script never made it to final editing- Harker swinging a shovel at Old Dracula springing from his crypt, Harker's escape from the Brides, Van Helsing holding the Brides' heads- plus I've heard there's LOTS of Tom Waits' Renfield scenes that have yet to be seen. Between this & the DVD of BBC's COUNT DRACULA with Louis Jourdan, this Halloween is gonna rock!
"Love Never Dies"--A Lush Production of the Romantic Dracula November 5, 2000
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
Dracula, the greatest character in the long history of B Movies, finally gets A Movie treatment in this lush production from Francis Ford Coppola. The art direction, costuming and special effects are first rate; they are used as prime examples in a recent film textbook. With Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins as the main protagonists, you can forgive a couple of younger well known name actors being a bit out of place. Despite the title, this film actually goes beyond Stoker, trying to work in a bit more of the original Vlad the Impaler backstory. The biggest difference is that this Dracula film is an epic love story, with Mina now the reincarnation of Vlad's long dead love. Stoker's novel has long been open to interepretation and variation, so this is hardly the time to consider it holy writ. If nothing else, this is the most beautiful vampire movie you will ever see (yes, even more than "Interview with the Vampire."
After Years of Anticipation ... October 2, 2007
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
Like many who love this movie, knowing that Coppola reportedly had to submit something like 38 different cuts of the film to the MPAA before they'd give it the passable blessing of an "R" rating, I've assumed that the version released to the public was drastically compromised and that, someday, a "director's cut" would be released that would be at once more wickedly graphic and cinematically substantial than the theatrical cut. At the very least, for years I've been hoping that Criterion, who had distributed the film on laserdisc, would put out a new, comprehensive DVD set of "Bram Stoker's Dracula" with the missing (practically censored, I'd imagined) footage along with extras that would shed light on all the gory details fans have been waiting to sink their fangs into.
Well, as it turns out, that ultra-transgressive "director's cut" doesn't quite exist as I (and many others) had envisioned. What we have here is a brand-new transfer of the same movie as it was released in 1992, together with an outstanding commentary and extensive video introduction by Coppola, some great featurettes and documentaries, and that deleted material, which does not contain the reels of censored were-beast ravishment and full-frontal-Monica-Bellucci vampire-bride orgies that I had somehow built up in my mind.
The transfer is noticeably sharper and cleaner, but it does seem overly dark in places, and I expect more fan-boy "controversy" about how correct the colors are in this print. (I still have my Superbit copy, and though I haven't compared the two, there's a difference.) What's more, in a few shots I noticed barely visible transparent horizontal bars scanning across the screen. It didn't seem to be a problem with my monitor, but some sort of video glitch in the transfer-scan, part of the actual digital print. At any rate, the new print impressed me in places, disappointed or outright irritated me in others -- far from a reference-quality transfer, with the flaws evidently all the more visible on the Blu-ray disc, I have read.
The documentary extras are all beautifully produced. There is the definite sense that F. F. Coppola and his production company were responsible for all of the supplemental material, not a DVD producer working out of a cubicle at Sony Pictures, and that alone makes this set worth buying. Even the simple, slim packaging is nicely done.
That's basically my two cents on this edition of the DVD, but I'd like to make a couple of modest points about the film itself.
First: No, the movie doesn't follow the book to the letter, nor was that Coppola's intention. All of Coppola's comments on the film illustrate how incredibly knowledgeable he was, and is, about Stoker's novel and the factual history behind the Dracula myth. The book is a classic, but it is not great literature; it's a gothic potboiler full of clumsy narrative techniques, egregious historical and medical inaccuracies, silly characters and dialogue, a mish-mash of ideas taken from now-forgotten but once-popular vampire stories, etc. Anyone familiar with Coppola's work knows that, as one of the few filmmakers with a genuine familiarity with and appreciation of literature, it is his custom to include the name of the author in the title of a film he has adapted from a written work (hence, "Mario Puzo's The Godfather," the original, complete title of that movie).
Second: All the above taken into consideration, I believe Coppola's version is the truest in spirit to Stoker's novel (seconded, perhaps, by Guy Maddin's "Dracula"), even though the storyline is divergent from the book. Like the book, this movie is a gonzo gothic potboiler, kinky and compelling, and each outlandish exclamation point at the end of virtually every line of dialogue delivered by Anthony Hopkins is an echo of its source material.
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