A review by flying_monkey
Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Johnny Alucard (work it out, it's not hard...) starts in Eastern Europe, but takes place mostly in the USA in the 1970s (New York) and 80s (LA). It is centred on a new 'Dracula', the eponymous cypher, Johnny Alucard, who goes from being a gopher on Francis Ford Coppola's epic and troubled version of the Dracula story (Apocalypse Now with vampires!) to being a protegé of Andy Warhol (there's a brilliant and quite moving twist in this part) to finally emerging as a producer and studio executive in Hollywood. It's a vicious and encyclopedic satire of American film and media culture over this most self-obsessed period (the vampire version of Top Gun is hilarious), but it's too big and too unwieldy, too clever and just too much. But then maybe that's the USA.