Mel Brooks takes on Dracula

Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1994)
Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Peter MacNicol, Steven Weber, Amy Yasbeck, Mel Brooks, Harvey Korman, and Lysette Anthony
Director: Mel Brooks
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Mel Brooks lampoons the classic Universal Studios and Hammer Films Dracula movies, along with Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula". (Yeah, I know that's like spoofing a spoof, but Brooks redicules the most laughable bits of that travesty.)


"Dracula: Dead and Loving It" is a decent satire of Dracula movies manages to capture the look and feel of the Hammer Draculas quite nicely while at the same time evoking Tod Browning's "Dracula" from Universal through some of the sets and a very funny take off on my favorite moment from that films--where Dracula walks through a spider's web without breaking it and expects Renfield to follow him.

The cast are all very funny, with Leslie Nielsen's Bela Lugosi impersonation, with its well-timed, purposeful breaks in his accent, something that wil tickle the funny bone of any Lugosi or Dracula fan. (They even work in the "I never drink... wine" line in a very funny fashion, with Neilsen nailing the delivery spot-on.)

The wisdom of casting Nielsen as Dracula is especially evident in the two scenes where he is called upon to be scary. His roots as a dramatic actor show in these moments, and I think he can hold his head up proud in the company of Lugosi, Christopher Lee, and Jack Palance, three great movie Draculas who came before him.

The rest of the cast are equally good in their parts and the hilariously bad accents that everyone is doing ads greatly to the mirth in the film (I think I even heard Clive Revill doing a bad accent, and he really IS British!)

And I don't think anyone has quite managed to fill those flimsy nightgowns left over from the Hammer Films gothic horror costuming department as effectively as Amy Yasbeck and Lysette Anthony since principle photography wrapped on "Brides of Dracula" and "Dracula Has Risen From the Grave".

All the fantastic art design and sets and all the fun performances of the actors can't make up for the fact that the script simply isn't that funny. What we have here is no "Young Frankenstein." We don't even have "Robin Hood: Men in Tights". What we have here is a competently executed movie spoof, but there isn't a single moment that rises to the level of greatness seen in some of Mel Brooks' other comedies. Some scenes come close, such as the akward lunch shared by Dr. Seward (Korman) and the bug-eating Renfield (MacNicol), are hilarious. All the gags around that idiotic hairdo and cartoon shadow from that awful Copolla "Dracula" are also very funny. But, overall, this film falls short of every other Mel Brooks film I've watched for review purposes.

This is an okay Dracula spoof, but it's not up to the standards Mel Brooks set during the 1970s and 1980s.





Click here to read reviews of other films from Brooks at Cinema Steve.

Worst. Prom. Ever. (Except for the ones in the sequels.)

Prom Night (1980)
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielsen, Casey Stevens, Michael Tough, Anne-Marie Martin, Mary-Beth Rubens, Joy Thompson, George Touliatos, Pita Oliver and Sheldon Rybowski
Director: Paul Lynch
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A masked killer targets four teens (Stevens, Martin, Rubens, and Tompson) who covered up their involvement in the accidental death of a playmate six years prior. It's their senior prom, and, conincidentally, the older sister of the dead girl (Curtis) is the queen of the prom and one of the intended victims is the king. Will she become a victim herself, or will she stop the murderer dead in his tracks? What tragedies will play out on this prom night to remember.

"Prom Night" is a nicely done slasher-flick that is the direct antecedent of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and similar "dark secret" high school slasher flicks where a murderer bent on avenging a hidden crime on prom night, graduation day, homecoming or some other event that's standard on the annual calendar of American high schools. It starts out promising and presents viewers with the standard mix of Kids We Like and Kids We Hate, with even a few we feel okay in rooting for, or hoping they escape the murderer's sharp weapons of death.

The actors all give acceptable performances, but no one stands out in particular. Jamie Lee Curtis plays the "Survivor Girl" character that we've see her play in "Halloween" and "Terror Train", but she doesn't quite rise to the level of the performances she gave in those films. She, like every other cast member gives a satisfactory performance but there's nothing remarkable about it. She, Leslie Neilsen, and everyone else is good enough but not spectacular.

If average acting was the weakest part of "Prom Night", it could have ended up at the high end of average. Unfortunately, the film is done in either by a sloppy script, or by sloppy post-production hackjob editing. Because of poor attention to story development and details, the various red herrings surrounding the killer start stinking like they've been left in the sun for three days by the third act, and the climactic moments of the film don't quite come together because of too many loose ends and inexplicably missing characters. (I can't say who isn't around for the film's climax without spoiling the true identity of the killer, it's an absense that needed to be explained instead of the character just vanishing halfway through the movie. Similarly, the absense of the killer while he was out stalking victims should have been noted by someone at the dance, because he definately would have been missed.)

"Prom Night" is a film that's interesting from a historical perspective as it was the first true example of the "teen slasher" subgenre that ultimately led to a revival of the slasher flicks that hasn't run its course yet.