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A review by throatsprockets
Ken Russell's Dracula by Ken Russell
4.0
It's a shame that Ken Russell never got to film his ambitious adaptation of Dracula. Apart from anything else, the world has been robbed of the chance to compare the Renfields of Oliver Reed (who Russell wanted for the role), Tom Waits (from Coppola's version) and Klaus Kinski (from the Jess Franco version). But there are pleasures to be had from his screenplay, though we will never know what baroque trimmings he would have added.
The idea of Dracula as the ultimate patron of the arts is a good one, and could have allowed the movie to slot in nicely with Russell's composer biographies. After all, he'd already depicted Wagner as a vampire in Lisztomania.
I didn't really care for the ending, and the suggested postscript (from "an established writer") didn't convince me either. But presumably Russell would have rewritten the script if the movie had been financed, so who knows how it would have finished up?
The idea of Dracula as the ultimate patron of the arts is a good one, and could have allowed the movie to slot in nicely with Russell's composer biographies. After all, he'd already depicted Wagner as a vampire in Lisztomania.
I didn't really care for the ending, and the suggested postscript (from "an established writer") didn't convince me either. But presumably Russell would have rewritten the script if the movie had been financed, so who knows how it would have finished up?