Cinemassacre's Monster Madness!
Blood-thirsty Thursday
Mel Brooks made one of the greatest horror spoofs of all time: Young Frankenstein.
It only seems fitting that he eventually did something with Dracula, too.
This is Dracula: Dead and Loving It, starring Leslie Nielsen.
This time I was alive, so I could actually see it in theaters when it came out in 1995.
I was deep in my horror phase
discovering all the classics,
so I was completely overjoyed that a mainstream, current film was playing tribute to the original Dracula,
as well as Nosferatu and the Hammer Dracula films.
I found it odd that while Young Frankenstein was in black and white to emulate the classic look, this one was in color.
I suppose it made sense for the bloody scenes. And after all, the Hammer films were in color.
The opening credits might be the best part, with a montage of creepy images.
It's legitimately disturbing, with the music, and one scary picture after another.
It's completely devoid of comedy.
If you showed me this without telling me anything, and I didn't know the name Mel Brooks,
I would have looked at this and thought this was a serious horror movie.
I'd even say it might be the best opening to any vampire film ever. It's way better than it needs to be.
How does this come before a silly comedy?
Mel Brooks, who's pushed a lot of boundaries and made some of the funniest comedies of all time,
here, the formula has gotten a little weaker.
It's not as consistently funny as some of his earlier efforts, but it has its highlights.
Mainly, the guy who plays Renfield, Peter MacNichol, who you might recognize as Janos from Ghostbusters 2.
He is great! I swear he's the reincarnation of Dwight Fry.
He does such a great imitation, that it feels like I'm watching more scenes of the original Renfield.
And Renfield in the original is a funny character to begin with, so it was appropriate.
It's strange. It's as if the same guy jumped from a horror film into a comedy,
but didn't need to change the way he acts.
There's lots of great moments, like when Renfield first visits Transylvania and says "I'm on 'shedule' to meet Dracula".
One by one, everybody goes:
Dracula? Dracula?
"Shedule"??
Heh...
And when Dr. Sewerd introduces Van Helsing and says "He's a doctor of psychology and theology",
and then Van Helsing adds "and Gynecology!"
Dr. Seward says "Oh, you have your hand in that, too!"
But these are some of the quicker cheap jokes.
As far as scenes go, there's the part where Dr. Seward is eating with Renfield,
and Renfield keeps snatching flies and bugs and eating them and trying to hide it like like,
like "Oh, I'm not doing anything!" And the whole time he has that weird grin on his face.
Dr. Seward gets so agitated by it. The back-and-forth between them is really funny.
I didn't think so the first time, but this scene has grown on me.
Then there's the parts whenever Dracula controls somebody under his hypnotic power.
You never stop and think what kind of problems would arise.
Sometimes he walks them into a wall or they trip on something, and when there's more than one person,
it becomes this complicated game of "You, Go here! No, you go here! You go back to sleep. You sit down!" "No! You stand up."
And the moment that made me laugh to tears when I first saw in the theater was the staking scene.
When they stake the vampire, there's gallons of blood spraying.
I had never seen anything like that at the time.
Now, I've seen Evil Dead and Dead Alive, which came before, so it's not as big a deal now.
But back then, when I saw it, I couldn't believe how much blood they were able to show.
Just the fact that I'm able to rattle off these scenes
means the film definitely has its moments, even though everybody else seems to think it's a total bore.
This film had, and still has, such a negative reception that I don't agree with.
I agree that it's not consistently funny,
But it has lots of great moments, and above all is a tribute to classic horror,
which you don't see often in a mainstream film.
I believe most audiences didn't get all the references,
and how far they went to include so many things from all the classic Dracula films,
like the way he rises from his coffin, like in Nosferatu,
but here, he hits his head on the chandelier.
They even make fun of that stupid hairdo from Coppola's Dracula.
Sadly, this was the last film that Mel Brooks ever directed.
And also, for this type of exaggerated comedy, that entire parody genre seemed to die off around this time.
The Naked Guns, the National Lampoons, the Hot Shots movies - all that.
This was the last dying gasp from that era.
I guess times have changed.
RAAAAAHHH!