Dracula: Film vs. Novel

After finishing Dracula, the novel, I decided to watch Dracula: Dead and Loving it, the parody with Leslie Nielson. As I started it up on Netflix, I remembered the trailer and was expecting it to be completely independent of the novel with no similarities other than it is a story about a vampire named Count Dracula. Although the famous horror story was instantly turned into a comedy that had me "loling" from start to finish, it did i pretty good job setting the mood for a horror story. In the background at times a organ type instrument would play those "traditional scary tunes" that people normally think about when hearing about a horror story. In addition there would be a thin layer of smoke on the ground.

The movie also did a good job showing the physical features of vampires such as, pale skin, (described, in the novel, when Harker first met the Count), absence during the day (seen throughout the novel), absence of a reflection (shown, in the novel, when Dracula creeps up on Harker while shaving), and even the ability to climb up and down the sides of buildings.

There were many plot parallels throughout the movie. One parallel was the scene where three gorgeous female vampires come to Harker's room and attempt to seduce him for his blood before Dracula stops them. In the movie for some reason, Harker is not the character that travels to the counts castle, but instead it is Renfield. Other parallels consist of the scene where Van Helsing and the others watch over Lucy's tomb. Again, the only differences are the characters in the scene and their role. More generally speaking, the main difference between the novel and the film is the "usage" of characters and their roles.

One thing that disappointed me was the exclusion of the "strange" scene where Van Helsing and the others come across Mina sipping from a wound on Dracula's chest. I wanted this to be included hoping that if I saw it visually, I would be easier to grasp the situation and understand what was going, in addition to its purpose in the novel.

Unlike the novel, at all, where I stated that the plot seemed stretched out and prolonged, the movie seemed extremely rushed. The movie had the potential to be that much better if it were mad longer and with a slower pace. Some scenes to me felt like they were over before they even started. On that note, much was cut out from the movie such as the scenes in the beginning when Harker was a "prisoner" of Dracula.