Amazon.com video review:
Chalk this one up as something that seemed like a good idea at
the time. Frank Langella had just taken Broadway by storm in a revival
of the play based on Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel. He was tall,
elegant, and almost painfully romantic--all qualities that failed to
translate to this garish, tarted-up film version. The story remains the
same, if told in greater length than in Bela Lugosi's version. The film
even offered Laurence Olivier as vampire-hunter Van Helsing (in one of
several roles he played during the period that required a
middle-European accent) and a young Kate Nelligan as the woman whose
love (and blood) Dracula most wants. But director John Badham, working
from W.D. Richter's clunky script, makes a hash of most of it, relying
on special effects to do the heavy lifting. --Marshall Fine
