A.k.a. Dracula di Dario Argento, Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D

D: Dario Argento. S: Dario Argento, Enrique Cerezo, Stefano Piani, Antonio Tentori. Novel: Bram Stoker. P: Enrique Cerezo, Roberto Di Girolamo, Sergio Gobbi, Franco Paolucci, Giovanni Paolucci. Cast: Asia Argento, Thomas Kretschmann, Rutger Hauer, Unax Ugalde, Miriam Giovanelli, Marta Gastini. Italian dist (Blu-ray/DVD): Sony.

By some distance the worst-ever screen adaptation of Stoker: worse than Jess Franco’s, worse than Coppola’s, worse even than Browning’s (and that’s saying something). It’s also, sad to say, the very worst film Argento has made to date: worse than Do You Like Hitchcock?, worse than Mother of Tears, a hundred times worse than Phantom of the Opera (something I never thought possible). It’s not just that it’s silly, badly-acted, badly-directed, badly-photographed and dramatically null – it is, uniquely for an Argento film, completely incompetent on every technical level. It’s worth pointing out at this stage that this is Italy’s first-ever 3D production; having witnessed only the flat variant, this reviewer is unable to vouch for the quality of the dimensional effects, though it’s hard to imagine anything distracting attention from the haphazard plot and deathly performances.

Talk of plot is possibly misleading, since Dracula 3D has none. If Argento ever read the book, which is doubtful, he made sure to expunge all memory of what makes it such a cracking yarn. He simply makes the entire thing up as he goes along, stringing together a predictable Greatest Hits package of vampire clichés (buxom maidens menaced in haylofts, Drac scaling his castle walls like a bat, “Cheeldren of de night”, and on and on) while tossing in the occasional jaw-dropping non-sequitur to remind us whose film this is. (Exhibit A: Dracula’s transformation into a giant praying mantis. Or a grasshopper. I’m not sure it matters.) Imagine every Dracula remake you’ve ever seen, scramble them all up in your head until nothing makes any narrative sense, subtract all character motivation, period detail, poetry and romance, and this is what you end up with: a rambling home movie, irksomely tarted up with lots of CG pyrotechnics in and around the most blatantly-fake Carpathian village ever committed to film.

It seems Argento has learned all the wrong lessons from Stephen Sommers’s Van Helsing (2004), packing his film with digital fakery to the point where everything seems to have been shot in front of a green-screen. This approach results, unsurprisingly, in the ugliest-looking film in the Argento canon. Dracula 3D reunites Argento with fave DP Luciano Tovoli, a pairing which promises much but delivers very little. Anyone expecting a Gothic Suspiria had best look elsewhere. The razor-sharp image is slathered in a harsh and ugly digital sheen, lending the production a decidedly electronic, rather than photochemical, appearance. In only a single scene, set in a church, does Tovoli bother to approximate his most famous work, using golden light shining through a stained-glass window to create a polychromatic sunburst effect. This might have been quite attractive, were it not for the blatant digital manipulation of the colour values. (There are some decidedly odd colour grading choices on display throughout the film: the colour green, for instance, has been so grotesquely amplified that foliage practically screams in your face.)

The cinematography’s bad enough, but it can’t hold a candle to the CG effects. They are laughably, eye-scorchingly abysmal. Next to Dracula 3D, Sharktopus seems like Jurassic Park. The primitive, childish, half-finished quality of the work on display here is shocking: the frequent transformations and disintegrations, the CGI owls, wolves and (sigh) mantises, are all rendered with uniform incompetence. Especially painful are the scenes showcasing Drac’s supernatural “lightning reflexes”. If Argento’s intention was to make his audience burst out laughing whenever Drac crosses a room, then mission accomplished. The Count begins, with a disinterested air, to put one foot in front of the other – at which point the CG team adds a wretched motion blur and shunts him to the other side of the room with a daft “whooshing” sound effect, whereupon he resumes his nonchalant stroll. It’s hilarious. (This technique is also deployed in the Drac-attack scenes, which are even funnier.)

Even had there been an attempt at storytelling, adequate cinematography or special effects, those brave virtues would have been killed outright by the combined efforts of cast and composer. Non-actors flatly declaim dialogue to one another in phonetic English, without intonation or cadence. Thomas Kretschmann (not-bad as The Stendhal Syndrome’s psycho) is surely the least charismatic actor to play the Count, coming across like Viggo Mortensen in a hypnagogic trance. Unax Ugalde’s Jonathan Harker is a simpering drip, quite the wettest protagonist ever to battle the undead. (There’s a running water gag to be made here, but life’s too short.) Asia Argento is terrible, unsurprisingly, as Lucy, while Marta Gastini makes a blandly virginal Mina. Only Rutger Hauer has any screen presence whatever, as vampire hunter Van H. – though he turns up so late in the proceedings, it’s more of a guest appearance. Claudio Simonetti’s score is especially lacklustre, a generic selection of theremin cues and other hackneyed devices best described as “corny”. Suffice to say, his best work is long behind him. (As for the end title song, “Kiss Me Dracula”, the less said the better.)

Still, even the worst film has something going for it – yes, Dracula 3D included. Honourable mention, therefore, goes to Miriam Giovanelli, surely the best naked vampiress in movie history (and reason enough to seek out the 3D version). Conversely, a dishonourable mention for Asia Argento’s howlingly inappropriate nude scene, seemingly an homage to Ingrid Pitt’s bathtime frolics in The Vampire Lovers (1970). Stay classy, Dario.

What else is there to say? It’s stupid, it’s gory, sometimes stupidly gory – Dracula’s massacre of a roomful of villagers, ripping out throats, punching off heads and generally acting the hooligan, is bloodily entertaining, for instance. And the film is never actually boring, so long as you keep your mind active by hurling abuse at the screen. But there’s really no escaping the depressing conclusion that Dracula 3D is terrible, terrible filmmaking – and further evidence of the shocking decline of a once-thrilling talent. For the good of all mankind, Dracula 3D should be buried upside-down at the nearest crossroads, and the ground sown with salt. It’s the least Stoker deserves.