The writer and podcaster David Moscrop, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, returns to the pod from Ottawa to discuss a Spooky Season classic, Francis Ford Coppola’s lavish adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a film that turned 30 years old this year but like a vampire has barely aged a day.

Coppola followed up The Godfather Part III with an ambitious gothic horror with an all-star cast, filmed entirely indoors on sets and soundstages. His visual effects supervisor was his son Roman Coppola, and they decided use techniques from the early days of cinema to adapt a novel from the same period.

We discuss the film’s “naive visual effects”, the over-the-top aesthetic from sets to costumes to performances, the film’s horniness which greatly influenced future vampire stories, and we try to mount a defense for the enduring knock against this film, the mannered turn by Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker.

Plus: we discuss Ontario Premier Doug Ford trying to weasel out of having to testify at the Emergencies Act inquiry in Ottawa.

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From Den of Geek, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Seduction of Old School Movie Magic”, an in-depth discussion with Roman Coppola of the film’s visual effects, by David Crow, October 16, 2020

Trailer for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)