{"id":34370,"date":"2023-11-06T06:02:30","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T11:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=34370"},"modified":"2023-11-06T06:02:30","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T11:02:30","slug":"dracula-1979-starring-frank-langella-laurence-olivier-donald-pleasence-kate-nelligan-z-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=34370","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Dracula&#8221; (1979) starring Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence &#038; Kate Nelligan \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2023\/z110623zview_dracula79.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"748\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Dracula <\/strong><\/em>(1979)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Director: <strong>John Badham<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Screenplay by: <strong>W. D. Richter<\/strong> based on DRACULA by <strong>Bram Stoker<\/strong> and <em>Dracula<\/em> (1924 play) by <strong>Hamilton Deane<\/strong><br \/>\nand <strong>John L. Balderston<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Starring: <strong>Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence<\/strong><strong>, Kate Nelligan<\/strong> and <strong>Trevor Eve.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Tagline: <em>Throughout history, he has filled the hearts of men with terror, and the hearts of women with desire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Story:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The ship, the Demeter, is found floating just off shore.\u00a0 All of the crew have been murdered.\u00a0 Count Dracula (Langella) is the only passenger to survive.\u00a0 He&#8217;s unable to explain what happened.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Dr. Jack Seward (Pleasence) hosts a dinner party to welcome the charming new arrival to their community.\u00a0 Dracula tells them that he has come to England to partake of all that life offers.\u00a0 Lucy Seward (Nelligan) finds herself attracted to Dracula, despite being engaged to Jonathan Harker (Eve) who is there with her.\u00a0 What nobody knows is that Dracula is a vampire with plans to make Lucy his bride.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong style=\"font-size: inherit; color: var(--text-color); font-family: var(--text-font);\">Thoughts (beware of spoilers)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I saw <em>Dracula<\/em> when it was first released in 1979.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve rewatched it a few times since.\u00a0 I liked it best on the initial viewing.\u00a0 Since then I&#8217;ve found this version&#8217;s focus on making Dracula more of a lover weakens the character.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I also find the supporting characters in this version less interesting.\u00a0 Reinfeld should be pathetic and sometimes scary.\u00a0 This version&#8217;s Renfield is just gross.\u00a0 The relationship between Harker and Lucy doesn&#8217;t have chemistry.\u00a0 When she shows an interest in Dracula, Harker doesn&#8217;t look more than a little peeved.\u00a0 The audience doesn&#8217;t have a lot of, pardon the expression, &#8220;stake&#8221; in what happens between them.\u00a0 Finally, Dracula should be menacing.\u00a0 He should be frightening. When he enters a room, men should get a feeling that a apex predator is among them. Here he looks like he would be more at home in a disco than a castle.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the play <em>Dracula<\/em>, the two main females&#8217; names are inverted. Mina becomes Lucy and Lucy, Mina.\u00a0 Director John Badham also inverted the names.\u00a0 His rationale?\u00a0 He &#8220;felt like Mina was a dopey name and that Lucy was kind of a nice name.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Frank Langella is quoted as saying that Sir Laurence Olivier only took the part because he needed the money.\u00a0 It is also reported that Olivier would only appear in the film if his character was killed.\u00a0 That way he wouldn&#8217;t be brought back for a sequel. Donald Pleasence said in an interview: &#8220;We had a really good time but it was an awful film&#8230;Larry (Olivier) and I did it for a laugh.&#8221;\u00a0 Sometimes it is hard to love a film that the actors hold in such low regard.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/logo\/zview_c.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"100\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2023\/z110623zview_dracula79a.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"299\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dracula (1979) Director: John Badham Screenplay by: W. D. Richter based on DRACULA by Bram Stoker and Dracula (1924 play)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,53,54,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-horror","category-movies","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34370"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34384,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34370\/revisions\/34384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}