Dracula: Dead And Loving It

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The question is why Mel Brooks's "Young Frankenstein" (1974) was so successful, so funny, so right on target, while the same director's "Dracula: Dead and Loving It" (1995) was so flat, so bloodless. Could it have been the script? The actors? The atmosphere? Or was Brooks just getting too old for this kind of thing? Maybe a little of each.

Brooks is faithful to Bram Stoker's novel, with the time setting 1893 and the squirrelly Renfield going to Transylvania to arrange for Count Dracula to buy the dilapidated Carfax Abbey in London. Next to the old abbey is Dr. Seward's sanitarium, where he and his daughter Mina live. Needless to say, no sooner does the Count move in next door than Mina's friend Lucy and then Mina begin showing definite signs of wear. Mina's father can make nothing of it, nor can Mina's fiancée, Jonathan Harker. So Seward calls in an old acquaintance, Professor Van Helsing, an expert in the metaphysical, for help. Van Helsing diagnoses the case as the work of a vampire, and it isn't long before the Sewards' neighbor is a prime suspect.

This slavish adherence to and reverence for the original story is a part of the film's problem. Unlike "Young Frankenstein," where Brooks used the first three Frankenstein movies as his road map and then made plenty of comic detours en route, in "Dracula" Brooks spends so much time retelling the old Stoker legend that he hasn't enough time left for the necessary gags.

This is not to suggest there aren't still plenty of good jokes on hand, of course; this is, after all, a Mel Brooks film. Dracula's bosomy brides gliding across the floor are a hoot. "And stop that!" Dracula yells at them. Several gags are repeated from "Young Frankenstein" and continue to work. The unintelligible accents, for instance. "What?" And the song-title puns, like "Yes, we have no bananas" turning into "Yes, we have Nosferatu; we have Nosferatu today." Of course, there are good quips, too, like Dracula saying "I smell a rat," and the looney Renfield looking about for a meal, asking "Where?" When Van Helsing explains to Harker about his fiancée's condition, saying "She's Nosferatu," meaning the undead, Harker responds, "She's Italian?" And there's a cute exchange between Van Helsing and Dracula on the subject of having the last word.

But these witticisms do not come as fast as they used to, nor does Brooks attempt much that is original or outrageous, as he did when he outfitted the Frankenstein monster in top hat and cane and had him sing "Puttin' on the Ritz." About the only truly nutty scene is an exaggerated bit with Harker driving a stake through Lucy's heart and getting drenched in fountains of blood. It's so outlandish, in fact, it seems almost out of place in so tame a Brooks film as this.

Then there's the matter of the acting. Most of Brooks's earlier parodies worked because, like the Zucker brothers, he cast well-known serious actors in comic lead parts. Peter Boyle as the monster in "Young Frankenstein" and Gene Hackman as the blind hermit were inspired. But in "Dracula" Brooks goes the easy route. He uses Leslie Nielsen as his Count. Now, understand, I think Nielsen is a very funny fellow. But that's just the trouble. We expect him to be funny. At least we do today, ever since he turned from being a straightforward leading man to doing comedy in "Airplane!" But Nielsen's done so many comic parodies now, he's become stale from overuse. Think of how much funnier the role of Dracula would have been if done directly but for laughs by Gary Oldman or, better yet, by Christopher Lee.

Likewise with the rest of the cast. Most of them, like Brooks himself playing Van Helsing, simply have too few funny things to do or say. The two best people in the cast are Peter MacNicol playing Renfield with a fiendish glee and Brooks's old buddy, Harvey Korman, playing Dr. Seward and doing a dead-on impersonation of Nigel Bruce in the process (think of Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes). Jonathan is played by Steven Weber, Mina by Amy Yasbeck, and Lucy by Lysette Anthony, and while they are fine, they have little to do but stand around and hope something funny happens.

A good number of cameos come and go to waste as well, bits by people like Chuck McCann, Avery Schreiber, Rudy De Luca, Charlie Callas, Clive Revill, Brooks's wife Anne Bancroft as a gypsy woman, and a fellow with the wonderful name of Johnny Cocktails.

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