Dracula 3D aka Argento’s Dracula (2012) – Hooptober Challenge #6
Requirements:
- The worst Dracula film (by Letterboxd rating) that you haven’t seen and can access (1/1)
- One film based on a work of or invoking the name Bram Stoker (1/1)
I remember reading somewhere that intelligent people are supposed to enjoy bad movies more than the average person. Maybe there’s some sort of weird metric that backs that up, and maybe the person who wrote that is full of it. It doesn’t matter much to me. But I am interested in bad movies and what we can glean from them. I tried digging into that a little in my interview with Hooptober founder Cinemonster. Honestly? He had the right answer to a question like that. I think most people who want to watch bad movies, or are forced to watch bad movies (or participate in a movie challenge that requires bad movies) watch it with some sort of superiority complex.
I know that I’ve been guilty of that. I want to see just how awful something is. I’ve watched bad movies with the primary intention of making fun of it (alone or with friends). It’s why screenings of The Room still sell out regularly. It’s why The Disaster Artist got made. It’s, quite frankly, a very mean-spirited endeavor much of the time. We want to take people down a peg. We want to see how spectacularly someone can fail when investing so much time, effort, and money into a production that requires the cooperation of a full cast and crew. I get it. I don’t really blame people for it. At the same time, I think what Cinemonster said holds some value: “Frequently, popular opinion doesn’t have much value or doesn’t hold up. There is a lot of gold in them thar hills.”
It really started with Miami Connection for me. I gave it a go with a couple of friends; hyped to see what’d been lauded as one of the best bad movies ever. The movie didn’t disappoint. It has everything: drug deals, martial arts, rock and roll, abysmal acting, crazy asides and lines, and a complete lack of self-awareness. But rather than feel great about it afterward, I found myself downtrodden. Something about the genuine enthusiasm, gusto, and put-it-all-on-the-line attitude of the movie made me want to root for it and Grandmaster Y.K. Kim. It was clear that he felt so good about putting this flick together that it won me over. I felt the same way about this that Tim Burton seems to have felt about Ed Wood and his movies (to the point of making an excellent film about the Z-movie auteur whose unbridled passion for filmmaking blinded him to his own shortcomings in that realm). I’ve always been something of a rooter for the underdog (despite my fondness for MST3K and Riff Trax). I might be the world’s biggest Howard The Duck apologist; I made all my friends watch it for my birthday sleepover when I was seven and, to this day, think it is underappreciated and that its reputation belies a competent and entertaining movie with duck boobs and good music and Leah Thompson.
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It’s really easy to shit on someone with a vision but defective execution. It’s really easy to punch down and be dismissive of the fact that someone’s dream was to bring us entertainment or a message. And I don’t want to be the guy who’s upset for people enjoying unintentional comedy; by all means, embrace that part, too! But remember that someone or someones really believed in themselves and the integrity of their movie.
I challenge you, when coming up with stinging one-liners about a drooping boom mic or a bit of dialogue that sounds foreign even when it’s in English or an atrocious bit of special effects, to simultaneously see the movie through the eyes of its biggest believer. Dig deeper and find the core of what people wanted to bring to life on the screen. They tell you in a writer’s workshop to employ the ‘compliment sandwich’ methodology to criticism. Find the positive in it. You’ll feel better if you do; you might come away with something you wouldn’t have otherwise, and it will really do wonders for the discourse on the film. Also, duck boobs.
I don’t know if there’s a ‘classic’ director who vacillates more wildly between genius and ineptitude than Dario Argento. When he hits, he really hits. And when he misses? You get Mother of Tears. And then there’s Argento’s Dracula. The truth of the matter is that this movie is worthy of the ridicule it receives. There’s no two ways about it– this is a capital ‘B’ Bad movie. That I haven’t seen it circulating as a trainwreck midnight movie screening in theaters for rabid schlock-gulpers, along with The Room and Verotika and others, feels like a gargantuan missed opportunity.
The whole movie feels like a stage play. The acting has community theater written all over it (with a couple of notable exceptions). The cinematography, save a few interesting high-angle shots, is flat and staid to the point you wonder if the cameraman set up a tripod and went out for an espresso until the day was over. Even the nudity bears the hallmark of theatrical production. That one is a bit hard to explain because there’s an ineffability to it (one of those ‘you know it when you see it’ sort of things). I suppose I’ll try to describe it as the actor skipping a beat before doffing in order to build up dramatic tension (or maybe that’s just them steeling their nerve).
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Reproducing this movie on stage, note for note, would make a killing. It would have to be done very matter-of-factly, and it would be better if all the animals were played by a person in a cheap costume. If anyone wants to take that idea and run with it, please do (but give me credit for it). And if anyone wants to finance me tackling Argento’s Dracula: The Play, then please hit me up.
Word of warning: From here on out, I’m including spoilers. My guess is that it won’t diminish whatever enjoyment you get from the movie… or that you simply won’t believe what I say happens in the film and will have to see it for yourself anyhow.
So there is one sex scene in the movie. It comes very early on, and it is easily on the Mount Rushmore of worst movie sex scenes. Vampire-bride-to-be (she doesn’t know it yet) Tanja goes out against the advice of her mother on Walpurgis Night for a tryst with a farm boy. The two of them contort into a wildly theatrical and unrealistic pose meant to hide certain parts of the anatomy and highlight others. Tanja gets jumpy on hearing sounds coming from outside her barn’o’love, and the farmer boy is oblivious to her fear, confusion, and lack of arousal. After a fight, Tanja storms off without her protective cross. She is then chased down by a bird in the forest in the dead of night. The bird turns out to be a horrendous CGI owl that Animorphs its way into a fanged man. We don’t see much of Tanja’s bloodsucking predator, but we do get an eyeful and a half of the first instance of some of the worst CGI you’ll ever see.
At first, I thought that this movie was just going to be a case of Argento half-assing things for a paycheck. But as the insanity ramps up in the film, it becomes clear that Argento believes fervently in this project and its potential. The budget is non-existent. There is a pick-up scene shot with a totally different (and lesser) camera. The acting is uneven at best. And yet, the sincerity behind the effort fosters an unlikely likeability of the whole affair.
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The story makes some dramatic turns from the Bram Stoker source material in ways that I won’t expound upon. But they do involve certain characters becoming devoid of rational fear and concern for their well-being in the midst of overwhelming evidence that things are not right.
So, what does this movie have going for it? Well, there’s the unintentional comedy factor, which is remarkably high. The way they depicted Renfield as a very dangerous devotee of the dark is super creepy (especially when they outfit him with his lunatic safety shackles and bridle).
And then there are the acting performances. While many of the performers feel reminiscent of a Ray Dennis Steckler stinker, there are several actors that are solid-to-fantastic. Marta Gastini proves competent as Mina Harker. Asia Argento is, nepotism aside, a terrific actor (if you can overlook the fact that she is heavily sexualized by her own father). Thomas Kretschmann makes for one hell of a Dracula– his performance gives the character a truly inhuman air (reminding us that Dracula is a monster and not a man) in a way that is genuinely unnerving. But the most interesting performance belongs to Rutger Hauer as Professor Van Helsing.
Hauer plays the role in a very nonchalant way that comes across as very natural, but it is punctuated by moments that make you wonder if he was drunk the entire time and not completely aware of his importance to the movie. Towards the end, he is consoling Mina after her final confrontation with Dracula, and he starts to put the moves on Mrs. Harker in a way that makes clear that it was not scripted that way. He leans in close and nuzzles her with his nose as they read the lines. Mina is not having it, but it doesn’t stop Van Helsing from giving it his all. Speaking of Van Helsing, he appeared so long into the movie that I’d forgotten Rutger Hauer was in it, even though he was listed last in the credits.
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Argento’s Dracula is also billed as Dracula 3D, but it is hard to know that it was intended to be a 3D sensation save for maybe just two moments in the whole movie. I’d have killed to have watched it in 3D, nonetheless. The sound effects are laughable– and Argento’s version of the classic Lugosi “Children of the Night” soliloquy is accompanied by the worst wolf howls I’ve ever heard in my entire movie/TV-watching life. There is so little gore in the movie due to cutaways and other camera tricks that I wondered to myself why Dario didn’t try a different story that would have cost him less to film. The moments of on-screen gore, because of its scarcity, are shocking. The first time we see actual gore, a townsperson getting an ax to the head, was incredible because it was unexpected, happened so quickly, and was so poorly done (think Romero’s infamous watermelon head from Dawn of the Dead).
It is unbelievable to me that Argento went for certain moments of the story, given the restraints of the budget, time and again. I admire this movie for its vision’s brass balls. Outside of one suicide, which I loved to the point of rewinding to it three times, the effects (both CGI and practical) are C or D grade. But that doesn’t stop Dario from turning Dracula into a plague of flies or the aforementioned Animorph owl or a wolf. And it certainly didn’t stop Argento from having Dracula turn into a giant mantis that impales the mayor in what I’m now considering one of the most batshit moments in horror history.
The whole affair is capped off with a CGI wolf made of smoke that tries to ‘3D’ the viewers and cuts to a giant title screen set against the thrashing gusto of some Italian Breaking Benjamin-type of band in the ultimate send-off to the ultimate recorded evidence of a director not being in touch with the quality of his own work. There are certain things to really appreciate about Dracula 3D, but there are also certain things to be greatly critical of.
All in all, it is one of the best ‘bad good’ movies you’ll see by a big director. I expect a larger cult following to develop behind this one as the years go on. Hooptober making me watch the worst Dracula I had easy access to scared me after having to watch The Howling VII: New Moon Rising (which needs to be seen to be believed) and Hobgoblins in previous years to fulfill requirements… but it turns out that Dracula 3D had enough heart and enough unintentional hilarity to make the most daunting of the requirements a treat.
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