Wednesday, October 23, 2013

THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 23

(One more thing...)



It seems I've been remiss with last night's post about the Brides of Dracula...


I seem to have left off one of my favorite brides...

Sadie Frost won me over with her performance as Lucy Westenra.



She seemed to embody the girly girl from the letters more fully than any actress before or since.  That poor doomed young lady who proves to the rest that the threat of Dracula must be fully dealt with is completely brought to life, perhaps more than in the novel because of her portrayal and Coppola's depiction.



Her euphoric performance really drove home how this woman thought she had her whole life in front of her, how she was planning her wedding and getting ready to build that life and enter true adulthood.


But then there was that...


And this...


And even...


And all of this...




Besides the "Love Never Dies" theme, which really does a disservice to Stoker's novel, I do feel that Coppola's adaptation of DRACULA is one of the best representatives of the book on film.  But it is the addition of this reincarnated love theme that totally undermines the relationship between Reeves' and Rider's characters--a key to the book.  It also happens to add more sympathy to Oldman's Count than we ever see in the novel and so he is not this completely dark, satanic force that will seemingly hunt down these good, god-fearing folks as relentlessly as a dragon.



Nonetheless, the acting is top notch and the story well told, but don't dismiss that poor little rich girl--her performance is key.  Her simple wants and needs are the basics of life and, like any tragedy, life sometimes gets in the way of ones wants and needs.  And it is that this terrible thing--that the dangers of the greater world can creep into ones life and totally mess shit up that lets everyone else know that one must always stand guard against the darkness...


because the darkness is always there and it is eternally thirsty for more.

Tonight we end things with an Annie Lennox tune from the soundtrack of this very film...

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