The Bechdel Cast - Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) with Crystal

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

On this episode, Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Crystal sink their teeth into Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)! Follow Crystal on social media at @crystalwillseeyounow and check out Camp Classics podcast!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast Betrayal. Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone. Most of all, his wife, Caroline. He texted, I've ruined our lives. You're going to want to divorce me. How far would he go to cover up what he'd done? The fact that you lied is absolutely horrific. And quite frankly,

I question how many other women are out there that may bring forward allegations in the future. Listen to Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, Maren Morris is here. You came out of a marriage, you came out of quote unquote country music, and you had a huge growth spurt from what I can tell.

I was expanding and growing at a really fast pace. And yes, you could throw motherhood and the postpartum thing, learning about myself. There were a lot of identity crises going on, but I realized I can't look back and slow down for people. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait, head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked, if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin vast, start changing it with the Bechdel cast.

Hello Jamie, it is me, nine tit Dracula. Bello Caitlin. It's me. Bello, Bello Logosy. The minions worked for Dracula. Bello, Caitlin. Bello. It's me. Bello logo scene. The minions worked for Dracula. Don't you remember from the opening of Minions? I do remember.

The minions worked for real people and fake people. Yes. Wow, incredible. Anyway, today. I guess I didn't, I didn't, I politely refused to do the voice. I wish there was a way to, I love like the laugh lines that Anthony Hopkins gets where he's like, I know you're hurting right now, but we have to cut your wife's head off right

now. It's an emergency. You're like, Jesus. Welcome to the Baxel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante, also known as, if listeners listen to The Daily Zeitgeist, you might know me as my anagram alias, Nine Tit Dracula.

It's truly the best, there's a lot of good ones, but that is the best one. It's a really good, well I prefer Lauren D. Titanic. Oh yeah, that is pretty good. That sounds like a Carmen Sandiego style alias. Yeah. But for the sake of today, 9Tent Dracula will do. Yes, indeed, because we are covering

Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992. This is the Bechtel cast, our podcast where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechtel test as a jumping off point. Which, what's that? Should we say? Well, sure. Why not? Because the creator of the Bechtel test is now our dear friend. So for her, she needs our help. The Bechtel test was created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechtel

with her friend, Liz Wallace. It's so weird to do this in person. Often called the Bechtel Wallace test. There's a lot of versions of the test. The version we use is thus, there are two characters with names of a marginalized gender who speak to each other about something other than a man for two lines of dialogue. And I feel like it is kind of weirdly relevant in today's episode because it was originally created specifically in response to a lack of queer relationships between women on screen. And I feel like there is, for me,

a very erotic relationship between women in this very film. They kiss. They literally kiss. That's erotic relationship between women in this very film. They kiss. They literally kiss. That's erotic, famously. Not always, but in this case, very. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And like you mentioned, Jamie, we are sitting in person. Very rare for us to do an in-person record,

but it's a special occasion because our guest is visiting from another country. And you know them already. They are a drag artist known for RuPaul's Drag Race UK Season One. They're the host of the podcast Camp Classics. And you remember them from our episodes on Showgirls and Jawbreaker.

It's Crystal. Hi. Hello. Welcome back. I've crossed oceans of time to be here. You really did. I literally did. Hi. Hello.

Thanks for having me. It's so great to actually see you. Yeah, likewise. This is, it is kind of intense, this in-person thing. It is, yeah. Eye contact. I'm freaking out about the eye contact. I know.

You're both so beautiful. Oh my gosh. This is great. I like that we only record in person when someone is specifically visiting from England because we did that with Kate a couple months ago as well. Well, I mean even just the three movies we've covered with you, all very campy movies. So before we get into your history with the movie, tell us about the podcast. Oh, thank you. movie, tell us about the podcast. Oh, thank you. Yeah, so I started a podcast called Camp Classics,

which I guess is kind of like your podcast, but a queer lens. Amazing. We're looking at, we call it a thoughtful podcast about stupid movies. So we're covering kind of queer coded and explicitly queer movies, and kind of looking at them through a queer lens. This movie really qualifies as a camp classic.

We've got, we typically look at things from four categories to determine whether or not something's a camp classic. You look at it and you say, is it any queer joy? Does it have an ongoing legacy? Stupid fun and underdog flop vibes. does it have an ongoing legacy, stupid fun, and underdog flop vibes. Those are our typical categories. So this movie ticks some boxes for sure.

And also I just think whenever vampires are involved, you're probably in camp territory. Almost always. Almost always. We've been covered, I mean, we did interview with a vampire last year. We've been covered. I mean, we did interview with a vampire last year. We just recovered Twilight. And now, I mean, vampires are on the brain.

Sinners just came out. We've all seen Sinners. Not a particularly camp movie, I'd say, actually. No. No, it was the flop vibes are not there. There's no flop vibes. But it is horny. And that's also a prerequisite, I think, for a vampire movie. Oh, yeah, it's yeah, it's sexy

It's sexy That movie was so good. It was so good. I really want to see I need to see it a second time Everything I consume right now just seems to involve vampires, which I'm not mad about they're back I feel like whatever cultural cycle like that we fell out of in the late 2000s were back Mm-hmm, and I think that the media is kind of better now, too, which is kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah, I was going through Because Nosferatu also came out recently. I was going through the ranked Dracula slash Nosferatu because Nosferatu is basically just a Dracula knockoff And there have been yeah, the 2000s was not a great time for Dracula.

I didn't realize that Gerard Butler had played Dracula. I am desperate to see Dracula 2000. Okay, have you seen, I have it up, his audition tape? He's wearing like a Chris Angel wig. It's really... Wow. It's really, I love Gerard Butler. He's not afraid to be really bad in a movie.

I love it. Gary Oldman isn't dead, but he is rolling in his grave. Yes. Yes. Gary Oldman could never wear this wig and neither could Gerard Butler. No one should wear this wig. I love it. I love it.

But yeah, it seems like the 2020s have been good to vampires so far Yeah, apparently Dracula's the most Adapted piece of media ever. Yes making like I read something like 700 appearances and different adaptations plays movies TV shows There's so many different I mean obviously Count Orlok is a Dracula ripoff, and I say obviously, I had to check. Because you never know who's ripping off who. Sure.

But Count Orlok is a Dracula ripoff, but there's also, there's like the monster, the universal monster version, which is kind of like stripped of context Dracula, and he's just a weird guy. There's this Dracula, the like book canon Dracula. There's Hotel Transyl this Dracula, the book canon Dracula. There's Hotel Transylvania Dracula, that's my niece's favorite.

Of course. There's Sesame Street's The Count. So, oh my God, see everyone's got their Dracula. Count Dracula. Why do the children have so many vampires to choose from? That's alarming. And then you've got things like blackula and just all different manner of adaptations.

There were, this is from a vulture list because I mean, vulture can be counted upon to have a list of this nature. And I celebrate that because I really needed it this morning. I learned about adaptations I hadn't heard of. One that I was like, one I haven't seen but I knew about was Willem Dafoe and shadow of the vampire. Oh my gosh. Love it. Love that movie

Yeah, about the making of Nosferatu. Yes, and then he was in Nosferatu And then you know who else is in Nosferatu Nicholas Holt who plays Renfield in a different movie starring Nicolas Cage, and Nicolas Cage is in a different movie called Vampire's Kiss. Pshh. Once the vampire. Wait, did I tell my Nicolas Holt story on the show before? I think I already did.

I don't. It might have been on the Patreon. Remember, tell us. Okay, not to narc out Nicolas Holt, but my friend Cory, friend of the show Cory, lives in Long Beach. Apparently, Nicolas Holt lives in Long Beach. Nicolas Holt had two movies in theaters this Christmas. They were juror

number two and Nusratu. Nicholas Holt goes to first of all, Nicholas Holt AMC Stubbs member kind of wild. Love it. He and I are in community together. I and please don't use this information for evil Nicholas Holt confirmed stubs member Cory's got an in the Long Beach AMC She knows all the information Nicholas Holt goes to the Long Beach AMC on Christmas and everyone's like is he going to see his own? Movie alone on Christmas. No, he's going to see Sonic 3 alone on Christmas And I was like, he's great. I love him. I will be a lifelong fan. Yeah, I already thought that man was really sexy,

but now. Same. He is like also painfully like beautiful. I was like, I would do that. I would see Sonic 3 alone in Long Beach. That's so powerful. Especially if you knew you were gonna get clocked doing it. He walked past two theaters that he was the star

of the movie. It was like, no, it's gonna be Sonic 3 for me. No one needs to see Juro number two. I think he's, wow, he's so real. He's a Stubbs member just like us. He probably could afford a movie theater. Okay, sorry, I'm talking too much. The one Dracula adaptation I learned about

that I wanna see now is Dracula Pages from a Virgin's Diary, which is from 2002. It is a silent black and white film, but it is the only major adaptation, at least on this list, that stars an Asian Dracula, and it really hones in on the idea of Dracula as the other. And also, I just like the title pages from a virgin's diary. And anyways, he's ranked number,

he's the seventh best Dracula. That's pretty high. Wow. That's pretty high, yeah. Okay. Well, shall we get into it with Crystal? What is your relationship with this movie? With Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Yes, Dracula in general. And of course Francis Ford Coppola of Megalopolis fame. We can't. I mean, he's not afraid to do a silly one. We know this about him. Yeah, what's that tweet? He came on this movie, broke, career in shambles, mad as hell.

I feel like that's the story for this movie. I have to embarrassingly admit I have not seen a single other Francis Ford Coppola movie. Oh that's fine. I just saw the Godfather for this show. Right, right. I'll get to it. I understand it's supposed to be quite good. So you know. I was surprised I really, I really came in not wanting to like it, but it is actually quite good. I'm the first person to say that. Turns out. Yeah. But this movie, I think I must've seen it as a child and it terrified the piss out of me.

I can still like before I watched this movie again recently, and then again this week, I still had that image of Gary Oldman crawling that wall. And just I found it so terrifying for some reason. I watched it again earlier this year and was just obsessed with the campness of it. I had not expected it to be so silly. It really takes a lot of big swings this movie. And then I watched it again this week to prep for this.

I've really enjoyed all of my time with this movie. Same, same. Yeah. I've really enjoyed all of my time with this movie. Same, same, yeah. I didn't see it the whole way through until, I think within the past year, prior to that, and this is something we've mentioned on the podcast before, but our friend Alex's horror-thon that he does, it's like a 24-hour horror movie marathon that he does every year.

And I saw it for that one year, probably like seven-ish years ago or something like that, except that I wasn't in the room for most of it because I had to like go teach a class. That's how far Horathon goes. I like painted my whole bathroom during Horathon one year. Right, so I only saw bits and pieces of it, but I was like, what is this movie?

Of course I had heard of it before and I was familiar with different things like Keanu's bad accent and all that kind of stuff, but I had never fully seen it until pretty recently and I was like, oh my gosh, this is the best, I love it, I'm obsessed. Watched it three times to prep for this. You've been raving about this movie for the last year.

Yeah so uh I'm new to it but I love it. The end. Jamie what about you? I thought I, this is so embarrassing, I thought I had seen this movie. I was aware of the Keanu accent thing. I was thinking of Gary Oldman's makeup and I confused it with Ron Perlman Beast. It's a very similar makeup, the Linda Hamilton Ron Perlman series about Beauty and the Beast where Linda Hamilton plays, I think not Belle, but Belle who's like a lawyer who goes out and hangs in the sewer with Ron Perlman Beast. Anyways, I thought it was that, it wasn't.

I have seen a lot of that show, but I had not seen this. And I mean, it's like, it's great. It's great. I had read the book in high school, and then I was hoping to finish it, because I found an audio book that stars Alan Cumming as Dr. Seward and Tim Curry as Van Helsing. And so I bought that audio book

and I'm like about halfway through it. It's interesting the like adaptation elements that Francis Ford Coppola adds, because he like expands Mina's story by a lot, but in a way that I was like, that's what you did? I mean, that's what most of my notes are about. Yeah, because I mean, I appreciated that, because I mean, she's not a straightforward character,

but she is very virtuous and observant, active, but ultimately, she has brown hair, so she's virtuous. Lucy doesn't have brown hair, so she's cooked. And that's how white woman characters work a lot of the time. But yeah, no, I mean, it's interesting, like how many different reads there are of this. It's really hard to prepare for a Dracula episode because there's-

There's so much other stuff floating around in the culture the culture and like which part do you focus on I'm really excited to talk about it the production of this movie is also like interesting I was showing Caitlin before you got here Crystal there's a clip of the whole cast playing zip-zap-zop which was quite triggering. Oh my God. And they're like seeing Sir Anthony Hopkins playing zip zap zop. I'm like, that's a bridge too far. Was Gary Oldman there?

I think that- Because he famously was kind of absent during production, right? He was just in his trailer getting absolutely shit-faced. God, I'm, yeah, we gotta talk. Cause Winona like called him out for that years later, thankfully, but I can't tell because they're all wearing, with all due respect, they're all the men are wearing

the same shapeless 90s outfit. So I really can't tell if he's there or not. Even in this movie, it's sometimes it's hard to tell who's who with these men. They're all kinda samey. Yeah. That's what happens when you have an all white cast. I'm like, who's that guy? Yeah. And who is, with all due respect, Billy Campbell? I don't know. Indeed. Yeah. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fat phobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Heart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast Betrayal. Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone. Most of all, his wife, Caroline. He texted, I've ruined our lives. You're going to want to divorce me. Caroline's husband was living another life behind the scenes. He betrayed his oath to his family and to his community. She said you left bruises, pulled her hair,

that type of thing. No. How far would Joel go to cover up what he'd done? You're unable to keep track of all your lies, and quite frankly, I question how many other women may bring forward allegations in the future. This season of Betrayal investigates one officer's decades of deception, lies that left those closest to him questioning everything they thought they knew. Listen to Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us

think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that are being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me But the price is too high and how we love ourselves Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it Listen to voiceover on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

This week on dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, Maren Morris is here. You came out of a marriage, you came out of quote unquote country music, and you had a huge growth spurt from what I can tell. I realized I was expanding and growing at a really fast pace. And yes, you could throw motherhood

and the postpartum thing, learning about myself. There were a lot of like identity crises going on, but I realized like I can't look back and slow down for people. I want to set my own pace and I will sacrifice my comfort to move at the pace that I have worked really hard to move at. Literally everything that could change in your life happened in like five years

for me and you know it was a slow burn. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Billy Campbell is an American film and television actor. Wow. Oh, yeah. Fancy that. So there you go. That's who that is. Okay, here is the recap. We open on backstory about Dracula played by disgraced actor Gary Oldman. And it's kind of incredible, incredible in the not great way. How much this movie's production like bears that out and how in the 90s you could just say like,

yeah, it was a piece of shit on this movie and that's why I'm so good at acting and like. Yeah, truly. So it's 1462 in Transylvania and Dracula is a human man at first and he has a beloved, his wife, Elisabetta, played by Winona Ryder, who he must leave to go to war because men be going to war and impaling people and then elizabeth gets word that dracula died in battle so she takes her own life but he didn't die that was just like false fake news this happened to romeo and julia had to wait to see the body ladies Wait to see the body.

Ladies, wait to see the body. True. Or just don't kill yourself because your man is dead. There's so much to live for. Don't die because of a man. With all due respect to your deceased loved ones. Anyway, so Dracula comes back to his dead wife, absolutely devastated and infuriated

at the church and the clergy who had sent him to war. So he denounces God, saying that he's going to rise from his own death. He stabs a cross, the cross starts, explodes into a cloud of blood, which is awesome. What a cool way to become a vampire. God, I know, he really, like the melodrama in this is just, ooh, it's so good.

It's amazing, and so he drinks the blood from the cross and that's how he becomes a little vampire. He's such a drama queen. Okay, then we cut to London, 1897. We meet a man named Renfield, played by Tom Waits of Shrek 2 fame. Oh he plays Captain Hook. Say more. Well he played I guess he plays Captain Hook slash he sings one of his songs in the bar that Shrek goes to. That's important. Yeah in some way which kind of

makes him the most famous actor in the movie. Indeed, yeah. OK, so Renfield has been institutionalized. So another man is tasked with taking over his work. This is Jonathan Harker, played by Keanu Reeves, doing a very good and very authentic English accent. No notes.

Oh. I know, poor guy. I read that he, like the reason he sounds so stilted and that he's like doing a bad job is because he was trying so hard to make it perfect and Coppola was just like, just relax a bit, bud. Zip zap zap, buddy. And he's like, I can't. Snap, zap, buddy. And he's like, I can't. I can't. Yeah, so. Coppola does still say very, wait, I have a fun quote about him.

He said, this was like 10 years ago. He said like, Keanu is still a prince in my eyes. Yeah, I saw that. It's so nice. He said, he tried so hard. That was the problem. He wanted to do it perfectly. And in trying to do it perfectly it came

Off his stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously So maybe I wasn't as critical of him, but that's because I like him so much to this day He's a prince in my eyes Character is not a prince. He's just saying that But Keanu is a prince yeah, he belongs in I'd say modern movies or maybe in the future movies. He does have a face for the future. And he does silent and broody well, but he doesn't necessarily. A period piece is not for him.

It's not for Keanu. And he also said that he, Coppola said he cast Keanu in that part because he was looking for like a hot guy of the moment because the part of Jonathan famously sucks. Which Nicholas Holt that we could. But I think Jonathan's a really funny character because he's just white-knuckling it through the most uncomfortable.

I really liked it in the new Nose for Autu too, where- He's just getting cucked. He's just getting cucked. He's getting like, or just like that first dinner where it's like, this like, absurd looking guy being like, okay, so you live with me now. And he's like, yeah. Yes. Okay. Sure. Thank you for having me. I like Jonathan. He acts like I would in that situation. Okay. Okay. Okay. I've been kidnapped. Anyway, so Jonathan Harker is about to go to Transylvania to close some real estate deals of Count Dracula, who has been buying property up all over London. Although of course no one knows that this Dracula

is a vampire, they just think he's like an eccentric rich dude. Jonathan- Which he technically is. Yeah. Yeah. In addition to being a vampire. So Jonathan says goodbye to his fiance, Mina, played by also Winona Ryder who is also doing a very good English accent.

Just because she's done an English accent a fair amount because hadn't um what's the movie Colonial England and oh Crucible I think that had already come out at this point. I don't know the timeline but yeah yeah, she's doing her best. She is. I think her performance is great. The accent is meh, but I love all Winona performances equally. I know. So Jonathan sets off to Dracula's castle

in Transylvania, and his journey is as spooky as hell. There's like wolves and bats and a creepy carriage driver who sort of looks like the alien from the alien movies. And there's just like all kinds of weird shit. He arrives at the castle and is greeted by Dracula. The castle which looks like a scary man with a claw hand. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And also not to appearance shame Dracula, but he looks like shit. Well, he kills a lot of people. That's fun. That's fun.

I think there's a threshold. We can body shame Dracula. We can. He's killed a lot of people. He looks like Emperor Palpatine. Yeah. I was thinking that. Yes.

He's got these two titty lump hairstyle thing. Weirdly enough is how he's described in the book. Okay. I think that a lot of what this adaptation, it adds a lot of stuff, but it doesn't really take a lot of stuff out. Like the book is really weird. He's a fan of Sailor Moon space buns.

Yes, yes. Yeah. Diabolical Leia. So he's being very weird, Dracula is. He's like flinging his sword around, his shadow is walking around independent of his movements, the palms of his hands are furry, all kinds of weird stuff. And then also Dracula sees Jonathan's picture of Mina who looks a lot like his beloved Elizabeth and he's like, oh who's that? A wuga! Hey Jonathan, you better stay here for a month but don't worry I'm definitely not going to go and steal your girlfriend in London.

Oh but while you're, while I have you, can you write three letters confirming that you're totally okay, that I can just sort of send out every so often? And Jonathan, Jonathan's such a dumbass I love. He's like, yeah, I'll do that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, no problem. Something might be kind of weird about this castle, but.

Well, I don't want to argue. Yeah, no problem. Something might be kind of weird about this castle, but. Well. I don't want to argue. Yeah. OK, so meanwhile, back in London, Mina writes in her diary about how much she misses Jonathan, how she's going to stay with her friend Lucy while Jonathan is away. And Lucy's whole thing is that she is horny.

Horny. is horny. So horny. And so you're like, well, of course I think terrible is gonna happen to her. But she's kind of a little polyamorous. She keeps being like, why can't I marry three people? I'm like, why can't you, Lucy? She has this beautiful polycule of several men

who are fawning over her. Desperate to give her blood transfusions. Yeah. One of them is a man from Texas named Quincy Morris played by Billy Campbell. Oh, he's an American actor. Oh, that's who that is. Yeah.

You might have recognized him from American acting. Okay, so another is a doctor named Jack Seward Okay, so another is a doctor named Jack Seward played by Richard E. Grant. And then the third is a lawyer named Arthur Homewood played by Carrie Ellis of Saw fame. Yes, his most famous role. Yes. And also, by the way, Dr. Jack is currently treating Renfield, the man who was driven mad after that recent trip to Transylvania. He's eating bugs and carrying on about his master, who is obviously Dracula. Back at the castle, Dracula continues to be super weird.

He's shaving Jonathan. He's licking the blood from his cut. Apparently this scene specifically, Gary Oldman was completely steamed. Oh. He'd been drinking vodka all day. Yeah, it's so fascinating. He's a very scary guy.

Yeah. He basically plays that drunk man also in, have you seen Slow Horses? No. No. I think it's him. Yeah, it's him. And he's just plays an alcoholic. But anyway, yeah, he's, I love,

I do love his performance though. He's so watchable. He turns in a great performance and he's also a very bad person and two things, unfortunately, can be true. What has, what has, I don't know what he's also a very bad person and two things, unfortunately can be true. What has he, I don't know what he's done. He was very, very abusive to his wife. Oh no.

His ex-wife, like the police got involved. Oh no. I think it was like one of those, let me just, sorry. Okay, so yeah, he was like tremendously physically abusive to his ex-wife. And this was a, this all happened after the production of this movie, but also, I mean, like you're saying, there's so many examples during the production of this movie where Winona Ryder was like, I just felt super unsafe around him and, know has sort of like walked those comments back but also

she had a like it just sounded like it was being around him was awful and like they had a famously bad relationship and then she loved Keanu. There's I have a quote from her as a as a palate cleanser. Please. This is from a Vanity Fair interview where Winona was going over her old journals from this time where she said I have these journals and I just pulled one out recently. It was from around the time of Dracula. The text says angst angst angst angst. Thank God for Keanu. Thank God I'm going to see Keanu. So they're just they're just besties and it seems like I mean Coppola says he's a prince. It just seems like everyone's looking forward

to seeing Keanu and absolutely dreading seeing Gary Oldman, who in the press junket for this movie is very forthcoming about like, yeah, I was really fucked up and I would like lean over and whisper obscenities to scare people. And- He was sleeping in a coffin every night. These really like method-y kind of things were,

but like, you know, method as a means to abuse your coworkers. Interestingly, they originally wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to play Dracula. Oh, who I haven't heard of him ever like hurting anyone doing method acting. It seems like there is surely there's a way to not hurt people. Surely. You say that but like I'm trying to think of someone who's kind of unproblematically method. Because I don't know.

I mean, the next person that jumps to mind is Jared Leto who I guess he also did that shit on a vampire movie, didn't he? Absolutely. Jim Carrey did it for a Man on the Moon when he was playing Andy Kaufman. There's so many, but there are some that are just like, all right, I haven't heard a mean story about Daniel Day-Lewis, I could be wrong. Nor have I, yeah, it might just be that, yeah. Tom Hardy as Mad Max, where it just sounds like he just sort of was like, I don't think he did,

and he wasn't mean to people, he just was like a little cold. Grumpy. Yeah. Yeah, so method acting maybe not the best approach. If you're already a piece of shit. Yeah. Right.

Okay, so Dracula, he's being weird and shaving Jonathan. And Jonathan. When you put it like that. He starts lurking around the castle and he goes into this horny fuck room with three lady vampires and they orgy him up pretty good until Dracula barges in and he's like, no, Jonathan is mine.

And then Jonathan watches them eat a baby. And he's like, oops. Don't you think though, if you were a vampire, like a baby would be so delicious. It's veal. It's human veal. I think babies look delicious a bit sometimes and I don't even eat human flesh. That is like a like a like brain reaction to where you're like it's so cute I want to eat it. They're just living the dream. Truly.

Okay so the next thing we know Dracula is on his ship called the Demeter bound for London along with several crates filled with dirt from his castle grounds. We learn that he like gets power from those. Anyway on the way Dracula is thinking about Mina. He's eating the crew of the ship etc. He arrives in London and he's in the form of like a wolf man and he lures Lucy to him who by the way has gotten engaged to Arthur aka Carrie. She picks kind of like I think at least as they're portrayed in the movie she kind of picks the flop of the three.

I think although I was I don't know I was thinking about it I was like Seward that's a lot of baggage to take home at night. He also maybe shoots up heroin at one point. He definitely, yeah, he has, I think a morphine addiction. Oh, okay, right, right. Yeah, he's very, like in the book, he's portrayed as just like a guy, but they really go out of their way to be like,

he's a bit of a mess. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever, they're not gonna be married for long. No, so she's engaged, but then she's, Yeah. Whatever, they're not going to be married for long. No. So she's engaged, but then she's seduced by Dracula's vampire powers and she fucks and gets bitten by this like wolfy version of Dracula.

And then Mina comes in and sees all of this happening and then Dracula does my favorite thing where someone's like don't look at me and runs away and disappears. So drama. No, not like this. Do not see me. And then so Mina helps Lucy get inside. And then Dracula moves into his new house in London. He then goes out for a stroll around town. We learn that contrary to popular belief, Dracula can move about in the daytime, although his powers are weak.

And he looks like how Gary Oldman regularly looks. He's dropped the Palpatine vibes and now he looks like if Ozzy Osbourne and Slash had a baby. At least. With a dash of Johnny Depp. Yeah. Yes. Unfortunately, the purple glasses really scanned Johnny Depp to me, but I thought it was really funny when he saw Winona Ryder in the crowd and it cuts to like, he kind of looks like Bono a little bit. You're like, what the fuck?

Yeah. This is the guy who's like, he must have some magical abilities cause I don't get it. I don't see it. That I will talk a lot about, but we'll get there. Okay. So he spots Mina who's also out and about and he introduces himself to her as

Prince Vlad and he's eventually able to lure her in also using his vampire powers question mark. She seems to think that she recognizes him and he's also about to bite her but he can't bring himself to do it and I'm not really sure what's going on here. Oh yeah, they're also like watching porn. Yeah. And I was like, Mina. Well she's horny.

She really is. Repressed. Yeah. Which I like, we'll talk about more in the productions, but like that was why Winona Ryder wanted this movie to be made where she was like, Mina's so interesting and no one cares. Like that her, like Winona Ryder wanted this movie to be made where she was like, Mina's so interesting and no one cares. Like that her like Winona Ryder is the whole reason this movie exists, which is true for

a lot of Winona Ryder movies. She's a great producer. Yeah. Okay. So meanwhile, Lucy is not feeling quite herself, perhaps because Dracula bit her and she's turning into a vampire. But she does have a great smoky eye all of a sudden. Oh yeah, she does. So Abraham Van Helsing played by Anthony Hopkins, a doctor who specializes in obscure ailments. It's so wild that Anthony Hopkins has been old for my entire life. It's like,

everyone go follow Anthony Hopkins on Instagram. Oh okay, he's got a good presence over lot. It's like, everyone go follow Anthony Hopkins on Instagram. Oh, okay. He's got a good presence over there. He's got a great presence. He'll just go live and play the piano. Oh. And be like, hello everybody. And start playing the piano.

And cats, right? And a ton of cats. He seems like a real sweetie pie. Good for him. Yeah. Okay, so he is called upon to treat Lucy and he sees the bite marks on Lucy's neck and he's like, yep, vampire, all right. But Jack, Quincy and Arthur, Lucy's three boyfriends.

I know they're all like, I want her to give her blood. No, me, no, me. But they they're like, pish posh vampires. That's not real Back at Dracula's castle Jonathan is also having a rough go of it He is getting all of his blood sucked out by the vampire ladies But he manages to escape and finds refuge in a convent When the nuns send a letter to Mina telling her to come to the convent so that she and Jonathan can get married immediately. There's so much cross European travel in this movie. It's.

They are back and forth and back and forth. Yeah, as someone who lives in Europe, how did this feel? It's exhausting, the travel itineraries of this movie. Okay, so Lucy is becoming more and more vampire-y. Then Van Helsing starts to do some research on Dracula specifically, and apparently his crimes are pretty well documented. It reminded me of the vampire research scene in Twilight. Oh my God, when she just Googles.

She buys a book and then just Googles everything anyways, which is, I was like, I do that all the time. Like I wanna have the book, but I'm not gonna open it. Read it. One of our camp clues is if someone has to Google, you know, a freaky activity happening whenever someone Googles what's happening to me or strange powers or in Lindsay Lohan's case and I know who killed me like twin stigmata

Bonus points if they're on Bing Yeah, and so Van Helsing is basically doing the 1800s version of a Google and He's very excited because I guess he's been pursuing Dracula his whole career and this is his chance to Finally hunt him down. I think yeah, he he flips out He's so excited and then he's like he's I think Anthony Hopkins is so funny and as he's like, woohoo We got to cut our head off or good like he's just like can't read the room. It's very funny on three separate occasions He's just like can't read the room. It's very funny on three separate occasions. He's like Yeah, no big deal. I don't know. We don't need to give Lucy an autopsy

we just need to chop her head off and drive a steak through her heart and then they do that on screen and then The he says it again later. You already did it. Yeah, he tells he's like, oh yeah, Mina your your best friend Yeah, she was in a great deal of pain and she and she's dead now But it's okay because we chopped off her head and stabbed her in the heart. So no worries and then she's like Such a tonal choice for this movie, which is otherwise so Gothic romantic serious erotic and then you just got Anthony Hopkins like yeah in a different movie. Basically, he's goofy The book does like regularly and then you just got Anthony Hopkins in a different movie basically. He's goofing off. He's clowning. The book does regularly mention that Van Helsing is funny.

Where that whole thing where when, what is it? Carrie Elwes, Arthur? Yes. When he's like, I'll give my blood no big deal, I'll give every last drop. And in the book they're like, Van Helsing's so funny that he said, well not every last drop. So I don't know, Bram Stoker thought he was funny.

Didn't Viggo Mortensen play Van Helsing or who played Van Helsing? It's Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman. I need to watch that movie again. So you've never seen it. I haven't seen it since it came out in 2004. I'm sure it's aged great. One thing I remember about that movie again. I'm really, yeah. So you've never seen it. I haven't seen it since it came out in 2004. And I'm sure it's aged great.

One thing I remember about that movie is that you could see the boom mics. Oh my God. I remember that from the cinema. I love that. And then is Underworld a spinoff from that or is Kate Beckinsale playing a different vampire hunter-y character?

She's a vampire in Underworld and she's just not a vampire hunter in Van Helsing, I think. And then isn't I Frankenstein a spinoff of Underworld? I don't know if it's a spinoff or if it's just made by the same guy. But there's some connection, yeah. OK, let's hope there's some connection.

Yes, of course. OK, so Dracula continues to seduce Mina. It seems like there's some connection between her and Dracula's beloved Elisabetta. Of course, they're both played by Winona Ryder. I think that Dracula thinks that Mina is like a reincarnation of his wife. I think the movie thinks that too.

The movie probably thinks that too, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is all, that whole thing is added. Like the Elisabetha thing and the erotic relationship between those two is just new. Yeah, yeah, yeah, lots to say there. But Mina is like, oh shit, I gotta go marry my fiance, but he must never know about my new lover Dracula, AKA Prince Vlad. And so she my new lover, Dracula, aka Prince Vlad.

And so she writes a letter to Dracula, breaking up with him, and that feels like a very 19th century equivalent of like breaking up over text. She does, and then she goes and he, yeah, he has a meltdown, like wow. So Mina sets off to Romania to meet up with Jonathan. She can't stop thinking about Dracula though.

I would say that he's penetrating her thoughts. Oh my God. They have some sort of psychic connection. Dracula, meanwhile, is heartbroken and crying, his eyes out and looking even more like shit. He's got this like bat face situation happening. His tears are blood. He is not having a good time. Mina arrives at the convent and we see her and Jonathan's wedding. Jonathan now has gray hair because he got all the life force

sucked out of him. He got sucked too hard. That is some good head. I can do that. I can do that. I can do that. Oh, god. Yeah, everyone's a really good sport about the fact that he got sucked up so hard.

He has great hair now. Yeah, in that scene where Van Helsing is telling Mina that her best friend has been brutally murdered by him. He's also like in front of Mina, he says, hey, Jonathan, you know all those women that you fornicated with? You didn't drink their blood, did you? And Mina's just like, what?

What? She? Okay. They just need to have a conversation about it because Mina's in love with Dracula. Come on Communication that this is just a story about two women with varying relationships to their own sexuality and their own notions of love Navigating polyamory. That's what this movie is about anyway

So we see the wedding and that is intercut with Dracula who is back to looking like Emperor Palpatine coming after Lucy again. He turns into a wolfy vampire again and seemingly kills Lucy. Everyone thinks she's dead. There's a whole funeral. But don't worry. It's so good. That, those rivers of blood. Oh. When he bites her, she basically gets

fountained in blood. It's so cool. And she's in like this gold lame thing. Lucy always has one tit out. Yes. Always. Lots of gratuitous titties. She's always convalescing in like a silver gown. With one breast.

Just, oh. Lucy's having a time. She's also, every man who comes into the room, she's like, kiss me. She makes out with so many people, it's amazing. I love it. Also, do you know about this wedding with Keanu and Winona? So they wanted it to be authentic,

so they took them to a Greek Orthodox church and filmed it with a real and Winona, so they wanted it to be authentic. So they took them to a Greek Orthodox church and filmed it with a real Greek Orthodox minister. And then they realized that actually they were potentially married. And then did they do anything about that? No, I think they were like, it's not legal, but maybe in the eyes of God, we just got married. Yeah.

I'd be okay with it. Yeah, it's cute. That would have been a dream come true for Winona because she loved Keanu so much. She apparently still texts him and writes some letters saying, dear husband. Oh, I love them. Wow. Wow. Okay. So we think Lucy is dead, but Van Helsing isn't so sure. So he takes Lucy's three boyfriends, Arthur, Quincy and Jack, to her grave site. Her coffin is empty. And then Lucy shows up, full vampire, with a...

On an incredible outfit. The look of the movie. Wow. Wow. Wow. She looks like Queen Elizabeth. Yeah. Like, it's incredible.

Yes. She also has a... Amidala does vampire. Yes. Oh my gosh, it was just incredible. And she also has a... Amidala does vampire. Yes. Oh my gosh, it was just incredible. And she also has an accessory, which is a small child that she's about to eat. Tasty, tasty.

But they stop Lucy and kill her by driving a steak through her heart and chopping her head off, but not before Lucy pukes blood all over Van Helsing's face. Fun fact, for some reason, speaking of Amidala, chopping the head off on screen was George Lucas' idea. Oh. I guess originally they were gonna cut away and just hear a thud, but I guess George,

because whatever, those 70s guys all knew each other. And he was like, no, show the head. He said, Palatine vibes, he said do it. Apparently they cut out 27 minutes of gore from this movie. Whoa. and he was like, no, show the head. Palutena vibes, he said, do it. I'm glad you did. Apparently they cut out 27 minutes of gore from this movie. Whoa. Yeah, they thought it was too gory. I'd love to see that.

I wanna see what they cut, yeah. Cause all of the, this movie is like worth watching, if only for the practical effects. Cause there's like a single CGI effect in the entire movie. And it looks terrible. It looks bad, It looks so bad. But even the freaky smoke that has sex with Winona Ryder was a practical effect.

Or it was like an in-camera trick. Well, yeah, because Coppola was like, I don't want any CGI. I don't want any kind of modern tech. I want all old Hollywood stuff. And then he had to fire a bunch of people who were like, no, it can't be done. And then he had to like fire a bunch of people who were like, no, it can't be done. And then he hired his son. Who was a magician.

To do all the practical effects. That's good nepotism. If you have a magician son lying around. He's literally good for nothing else. This is Joe Blue's, he finally has. It's his big moment. Look, look, you know, there's criticisms of nepotism. That's not one of them for me.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so meanwhile, Jonathan and Mina have returned to London, Jonathan sees Dracula and recognizes him. Then the married couple have dinner with Van Helsing. This is that very funny conversation where Van Helsing is just very nonchalantly being like, yeah, I murdered your best friend, so what? And then he's like, okay, we have to form a plan to hunt down and kill Dracula. So they hide Mina away in Dr. Jack's office. And the men all go to Dracula's estate to destroy it and try to kill Dracula,

who is taking on many forms at this point. He's a human-sized bat, he's green mist, he turns into a pile of rats at one point. What a great way to get out of a party. Imagine you're just having a conversation that you don't want to be in. Pile of rats. That is a good trick.

That is a good thing to have in your back pocket. I would do that on bad dates. Oh my God, that would be so great. Wow, I mean, it sucks for the restaurant. Yeah, that becomes a ratatouille situation. Oh my God. I hope that the rats are passionate about cooking. Maybe a few flooded into a bunch of Remy's.

Oh goodness. Okay, so Dracula goes to Mina who is very writhing and horny and he's like, by the way, I am a soulless undead monster. And she's kind of upset at first but then she's like I don't care I don't care that you killed my best friend I love you always and then he bites her she drinks his blood so that she'll become a vampire and be able to be with him for all of eternity but just then all the men come in and Dracula escapes. And in order to save Mina,

they must destroy Dracula once and for all. So Van Helsing hypnotizes Mina to figure out where Dracula is, like he's using their psychic connection. They figure out he's going back to Romania so he can grow strong again in his homeland and like, I don't know, ride around in his dirt and get his powers back. Wow, try him.

I will. I love the shots of him in his coffin, in his gold lame dress, but he's just like kind of stuck and he knows maybe something's going wrong, but just see his little face kind of cocooned. He even sleeps dramatic. It's just, I just love it.

So our friends take a train hoping to beat Dracula to Romania who is traveling by boat. So it's like a race to the castle. They bring Mina along who is not feeling great, what with all the turning into a vampire She and Van Helsing separate from the others, you know, she's turning into a vampire She kisses Van Helsing. She tries to kill him a little bit as do The other lady vampires the ones who reside in Dracula's castle They've come out for a little snack, but Van Helsing chops their heads off. Not Mina's, she's still alive. Then there's a big chase with everyone racing to the castle.

There's a big battle at the castle. Jonathan Van Helsing, Arthur, Quincy and Jack are fighting Dracula and his servants. They stab Dracula in the heart. So he's like kind of dying. But Mina points a gun at her husband being like, well, when my time comes, will you do the same to me? And they're like, no. And then they-

We only kill sluts. You are virtuous. And then wait till you, but what if she wasn't? Okay, so they leave her there Mina stays behind with Dracula and Her love fixes him or something she she does ultimately fix him She lands the final killing blow by you know driving a sword through his heart and chopping off his head between Confessions of love little kisses that she's giving him, tears that she's crying.

So it's not necessarily like a triumphant ending. She's like, no, my other boyfriend, I have to kill him. The end. The end. So let's take another quick break and we'll come back to discuss. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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You're going to want to divorce me. Caroline's husband was living another life behind the scenes. He betrayed his oath to his family and to his community. She said you left bruises, pulled her hair, that type of thing. No. How far would Joel go to cover up what he'd done?

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You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Yes. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, Maren Morris is here. You came out of a marriage, you came out of quote unquote country music, and you had a huge growth spurt from what I can tell.

I realized I was expanding and growing at a really fast pace. And yes, you could throw motherhood and the postpartum thing, learning about myself. There were a lot of identity crises going on, but I realized I can't look back and slow down for people. I want to set my own pace and I will sacrifice my comfort to move at the pace that I have worked really hard to move at. Literally everything that could change in your life happened in like five years for me. And you know, it was a slow burn. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. And we're back. I just wanted to say really, I forgot to mention in my history of this movie that I watched this movie on Pluto TV. Oh, same. Did you also see the same Del Taco ad 4,000 times? No. What commercial did you see 4,000 times? I absolutely disassociate when I watch commercials,

so I don't remember. It's really hard. I will forever associate this movie with a Del Taco commercial. I was really kind of taken aback by how many times I saw it. Because I mean, Pluto TV is the poor man's 2B. They're both free, but 2B is reasonable. Sure. Pluto TV, it was every,

the runtime of this movie extended by 45 minutes with the number of Del Taco, and it was the same Del Taco ad every time. Oh, I'm sorry. No, it helped. It elevated the experience. It's so like, these, it's getting shameless. Cause at least, you know, like when, cause we're now paying, whatever now I'm like being

a boomer, but when we used to like pay for cable and by we, I mean our parents, at least you get a variety of commercials, but now it's like you're paying to watch the same Del Taco ad 4,000 times. And so anytime, yeah, I'm just, every time I see this poster, I'll be like, Del, yeah. Yeah, of course. In any case, should we start with maybe some adaptation changes?

We've hinted at a few of them. Yeah. I have not read the book, but once again, I've read the Wikipedia synopsis of the book. So basically, I know everything there is to know. Jamie, feel free to jump in or fill in any gaps. But what I've gathered is that it's a pretty faithful adaptation as far as major story events. But there is a pretty major change in the sense that in the movie, there is a love story

between Dracula and Mina. They fall in love with each other and that is completely added. That's not in the book. Yeah, the whole like time travel reincarnation story is added. And the weirdly this like, it feels wild to say, but the movie is less queer than the book,

which is something that I found interesting. Like there was an essay, oh my gosh, it's on my telephone. There's an essay I read to that and a wild desire took me, There's an essay I read to that, and A Wild Desire Took Me, The Homoerotic History of Dracula by Talia Schaeffer, that sort of traces how, like Bram Stoker, is it Bram? Is it Bram, is it Bram? He's dead.

Bram Stoker was very likely a closeted queer man. That is like what is heavily speculated. He was married, but the marriage, like people argued the marriage may not have even ever been consummated. Imagine 150 years later, people are like sexless marriage. Yeah, exactly. And like, I mean, his best friend was Oscar Wilde.

Died of syphilis. Died of syphilis. Wrote, he was a big Walt Whitman fan and he would kind of write Walt Whitman these like arguably love letters. It is very likely that he was gay and this was maybe known in his community but he wasn't obviously out.

But he started writing Dracula a month after Oscar Wilde went to, was like, I kind of forgot about this, but Oscar Wilde was punished by the government for being gay. He was like, you know, subjected to do hard labor. And then Brom Stoker starts writing Dracula a month after that.

There are lines in the book that are cut from the movie, I think the most glaring, which I didn't even honestly notice until I read this essay and once you see it, you're like, oh, duh. You don't see Gary Oldman, Dracula sucking men. They change, which is very much a feature of the book. You only see hetero sucking in the Coppola movie. And there's actually a lot of hetero sucking added.

Like in the book, they're not like feasting on Keanu and sucking him dry all day long. He's a prisoner. Yeah, like there's a lot of hetero elements added for this movie that is still very queer campy, but like it's interesting that in the book, there's more, the line that is changed that Talia Schaeffer points out is when the vampire gals

are like around Jonathan and they're like, we're gonna, you know, suck you off. They don't get to do it in the book because Dracula bursts in and says, how dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on don't get to do it in the book because Dracula Berson and says, how dare you touch him? Any of you, how dare you cast eyes on him? When I have forbidden it back, I tell you all this man belongs to me. Francis Ford Coppola cuts out this man belongs to me. That is not said in the movie. There's just these moments that in the book, like in the context of who Bram Stoker was, when he when he wrote it, feel intentional that are taken out in the 90s.

And then yeah, all the Lucy stuff, which is like another hetero element to like make Dracula a straighter character, arguably. Right, right. So also I saw that in the book, the Lucy character is more like prim and proper and not so horny. Yeah, I honestly do prefer Coppola Lucy.

Oh, same, yeah. I have lots to say about this rendition of the character. She's problematic as hell, but God, I'm so glad she exists. She went out having fun. She went on top. She had three boyfriends at the time of death. Jealous. That's great.

Yeah, seriously. So those are the main adaptation changes as far as I could tell, which led me to a lot of questions I had. Oh, yeah. The only other thing is like, this is the only adaptation that I mean, there's 700. It's probably not the only, but the only popular adaptation of Dracula that actually makes an effort to like, put it in a place in history because if like all monster stories are about the other but the story of Dracula is about Like or one of the facets of the story is like anxiety around Eastern Europeans migrating West and like Dracula was the embodiment of this

Xenophobia and this anxiety potentially anti-Semitic as well, right? Yeah. But I've also seen that he could represent like an anti-feudalism sort of perspective as well. And like the rise of the bourgeoisie and the rise of capitalism and meritocracy, as it were, against this kind of archaic form of government. That makes I that makes especially in the context of like characters like if Nina and Jonathan are representing England especially Jonathan because he's like so prim and proper

that it leads to his ruin. Yeah. And that's interesting. Yeah. Vampires can be anything you want them to be. There's such a great standard. It's so fun. There is a, there's a thesis paper about every aspect of Dracula. Okay. So the, these adaptation changes particularly revolving around the love story that's added in between Dracula and Mina. I did not realize that until doing research for this episode that that was a component that is not in the book and is added in for the movie.

So I was like, cause as I was watching this, I was like, what is, like, is there a vampire spell that he's casting on her? Like what, what sort of like powers and mind control like seduction powers, et cetera, does he have slash that he's able to use to sort of exert power over both Lucy and especially Mina? And is that more clear in the book?

Do we get more kind of like world building and backstory about what his powers are and how he's able to get Mina to fall in love with him. Turns out that's not in the book at all. So this is just a thing in the movie where I'm like, okay, now is it that he is using these mind control powers on her?

Is it that she is a strong-willed person, but no one is a match for the likes of Dracula? Or is it that Mina is a strong-willed person but like no one is a match for the likes of Dracula or is it that like Mina is a woman and this is a movie made by men and therefore they think that she's like mentally and emotionally weak and fragile and susceptible to kind of maybe vampire powers or maybe just like oh a man is paying attention to me. I read it as she is the reincarnation and as she accesses that, she's accessing a past love. But I don't think the movie does a great job

of showing or telling that. And so the first time I watched it, I was like, wait, she loves him? When did that happen? How? Yeah. Yeah, it just happened so quickly. There's a few moments like that in this movie where,

and I never say this, but I kind of wish this movie told a bit more and showed a bit less. Like there's a few times where it's like, wait, what and who and how did that? What am I supposed to be getting from this bit but I think that the movie thinks that there are lovers across time that are finally reunited and that's what he ignites in her rather than it being a manipulation which is also the plot of the Haunted

Mansion starring Eddie Murphy with another another character named, I think, Elizabeth. I also weirdly thought that. Yeah, I guess my, I feel like that laring to me felt like misguided. Like, I wanna believe it was well intentioned because I think if I'm putting on like 1992 brain, it's like they're expanding the character of Mina but to give her another love interest but I think you can also see or I'm kind of going off of like when Oda Ryder's take on it which is that like the

expansion of the story is intended to emphasize her repression. And it's like through accessing this past love with Dracula, that she is able to actually experience lust and sex. And it's almost like, it reminds me of, we talked about this in the Twilight video, citing the Natalie Wynn video about like the ravishment fantasy. And like, she's able to be her horniest self through this like mystical connection with this past love. I don't like how

it's written and I do feel like it ultimately kind of like is like how can we make Dracula like straighter or like there are other ways to do this but I I might get my read of it was that it was intended to, because her relationship with Jonathan is like very sterile. Like she's like, we've kissed, but nothing else. I did appreciate that they made out at the altar. I was like, that's a move. That's a move. I want to do that. But she's just inactive. She's like basically pretending that her, that Jonathan is Dracula. Exactly. Yeah, I think that it was an attempt written and directed by men to emphasize how repressed she was.

Yeah, it's a 90s attempt to give this character a bit more, but because it's in the 90s and it's in this cocktail of like erotic thrillers, the way we give her more is by making her horny. Right. I think there is something interesting in that and I think the ideas about yeah like repression and how horny can you be before you have to have your head cut off like I think that's kind of a fun thing but there's almost something more feminist in the original text which is just like Mina's a girl who gets shit done and she's a scientist and she kills Dracula and like she doesn't need to have a romance with every man she meets. Yeah, that was like I do. I prefer the book for that reason. Also, she has a job. She's like they mentioned it in the movie, but it never really comes up. But she teaches a school.

Yeah, she's really smart. She's a very active, like I think she's kind of the protagonist of, you could argue, I mean she's certainly a more active character than any of the men trying to kill. You could argue that like her and Van Helsing are like pretty equally active and powerful when it comes to taking Dracula down. And in the book it's not because she's like secretly in love with him at a soul level.

It's because she needs to kill Dracula. It needs to be done. Maybe there would have been a way to explore her being repressed and horny without it needing for her to also have like true love with Dracula. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Because that obviously is a thing that existed at that time

and women, you know, weren't allowed the access to their sexuality that they are now so that's a cool thing to kind of explore. But I don't want to know what Francis Ford Coppola's version of that is necessarily like. But what I think is interesting because I'm trying to remember I so I was not a huge fan of the new Nosferatu in which Lily Rose Depp plays the Mina, she's called Ellen in that one for whatever, because it's a ripoff, but that's the Mina character. And I feel like it, for me at least, wasn't much better. I thought it was worse, and we won't spoil Nosferatu, but maybe we'll just have to do a different episode on that.

Why are they not active? Yeah, I thought that was handled way worse. Right, so it's like, unfortunately, I think whatever, it sucks to have to use this yardstick of like random famous men. And you know, I guess I'm a fan of like Robert went to the library Eggers, but I thought that, yeah, like it was worse in 2024, like she was less active

than she was, but also she's most active in the original text. So it's, I don't know. The bottom line is the movie, I don't think makes it clear enough what is going on with her internally. Like, is it that she's being, you know, mind controlled by these vampire powers? Is it that she is a reincarnation of his past lover

from 500 years before or whatever? Is it that she's just a fragile woman? Because there are different moments where when she first meets Dracula on the streets of London, she's very firm with him. She's just like, you're trying to get around? Buy a map, bitch. Leave me alone, you're annoying and weird. I'm engaged. I have a fiance. And then all of a

sudden she's like, I'm sorry, I've been so rude. Let's hang out. And then they go and watch porn together. I just wish it was clear that if this is what happens, I wish it was clear that like that happens because he's Jedi mind tricking her or whatever, because I assumed that's what he was doing, but it just. But there's no visual manifestation of that on screen, so I'm just like, what is going on? I was like, we need to have a little shee. Like, woo.

Because it does just kind of, I don't know. Yeah, I feel like Coppola trusted us a little bit too much in that moment, because it does just sort of seem like a decision she makes versus something that's like happening to her. Right, like I need to see her eyes glaze over or something, you know. So that was very confusing and that made me,

I was just like, what is happening? And I don't like the implications of this. I guess it does make sense if she's a reincarnation, but I don't like the implications of this. I guess it does make sense if she's a reincarnation, but I don't love that either. I would much prefer the version that we see in the original text. I mean, it's like, Crystal, like you're saying, like there's like, there has to be a way to explore,

cause I'm all for the like stuff that's not in the book of like Mina wanting to explore her sexuality and like find a wanting to explore her sexuality and like find a means to explore sexual passion that is just like not allowed and certainly not with her like dork husband but this just is like not the way to do it. What do you think the movie thinks about her sexuality like that's the other thing I wasn't entirely clear on like is it is it encouraging it or is it saying that like because Lucy's punished but like because it just ends where it does like I don't know does she go back with

Jonathan at the end or is she like awake now and she's like I can do better we don't know we don't know yeah I hope she just goes off and just like she gets three boyfriends, you know? I would love that for her. She's clearly not happy with that man and the movie makes it clear that she's not. But I don't know, does the movie kind of think she needs to get back in her box? Hard to say. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Because it is like emphasized in the movie that she's like her quote-unquote value is her virtuousness And it doesn't really come all the way around on that to say like I think that it feels like the movie still thinks that at The end but yeah, it's confusing. Yeah, it's a little bit ambiguous Right because I mean if you compare her with Lucy It's the classic kind of Madonna-whore complex thing where Mina is virtuous and she's virginal and but she still falls in love with Dracula and therefore she's also polyamorous because she loves Jonathan maybe we're led to

believe she also loves Dracula. She's emotionally cheating on both of them. But she can be saved because she's the more pure, virginal one. She gets a redemption. She's the one to kill Dracula. Her love releases everyone from the darkness of it all versus Lucy, who she's horny, she's having sexy dreams, she's far more sexually curious, she's got three boyfriends lusting after her, and then she is punished because of that by being killed. But I think she's such an interesting character because yes the story does ultimately punish her for her horniness

but before that she still has these three men who are like tending to her no one's really judging her they're not like well you deserve this for having sex with a wolf and but it does seem like Dracula's decides she's an easy target like there's almost like right there's a sense that she's disposable. And as soon as she dies, it's like this Van Helsing, those jokes about cutting her head off. It's like, he's not mourning her because, well, she was a slut.

Right. Like, she got what she, the movie kind of is very, she got what she deserved or. I agree. I wish there was like a slightly different just version of her presented on the screen. Where I get stuck again is that like all that is true but Lucy and Mina have a great relationship the whole time.

And like, so it like, Lucy does feel very clearly judged in a way that elevates, it's sort of presented in the book of, oh, poor Lucy, that sucks, oh. But this is like, she dies because she wanted three boyfriends. But in both, their friendship is so strong, they're not, unlike a lot of Madonna horror stories,

they're not turned against each other. They're not compared to each other and their friendship. There's like a scene that I really kind of was like, oh my gosh, is that Mina wants to stay with Lucy instead of to go rescue her like Dracula ass husband, where she's like, I don't wanna go. And Lucy's like, no, you have to go get your Dracula ass husband. like you have to.

But it's like against me and it's better judgment. Like her love for Lucy is stronger than like her love for this guy she married. And so I do like that at very least for all of the movie's faults, like that friendship is intact and that like mutual respect between them isn't intact because I feel like it would like a lesser adaptation would be like, and

there's even like Mina says like, oh, like, Lucy's so pretty, but it's not like, oh, I can't believe how hot she is. She's been like, it's just like, wow, my beautiful friend. You know, it's sweet. Like, I wish I was as pretty as Lucy and all these men adored me. It's not like jealousy or envious it's just more just like oh good for her. Everyone loves her. It's so sweet that Lucy's like kind of encouraging her sexuality as well like there's something very yeah lovely about that she's like look at his book isn't it fun and she's like you don't need to be ashamed like right

Yeah, but then the plot punishes her for feeling that way. So it's so hard. Yeah, I know I love the scene where they're flipping through Arabian nights and like looking at all of the horny drawings and and the meanest like I could never can people even do this Yeah, I did it last night. I love it, but. Yeah, I like that. I feel like that's a, you know, it's very stretched, but I like, you know, that's a dynamic I'm familiar with of like your friend that had sex before you being like,

it's awesome, try it out sometime. I'm like, okay. I wanted to talk about, so, you know, there's different interpretations of the book as we discussed as far as like fears around immigration and like Eastern Europe infiltrating Western Europe and like ethnic otherness and things like that. So what the movie does is basically the good guys

in the story are white Anglo-Saxon Christians from England, or I think Vivan Helsing is Dutch, but you know, it's all like- It's still colonizer vibes. Right, but for sure. And then the bad guys, the bad people in the movie are from Eastern Europe, Turkish people, and Romani people because you get this villainization

of Romani people. This is something we've discussed a lot on the podcast. In this movie, they are depicted as the mindless, loyal servants of Dracula. They're doing his evil bidding for reasons unknown, maybe that he's promised them eternal life, we're not sure, but also the G slur is used repeatedly throughout the movie.

And then you have, within the first 30 seconds of the movie, you've got voiceover that's villainizing Islam because it's like, oh, yes, Muslim Turks invade Romania, threatening all of Christendom. Right. So the way that like historical context is brought in is just offensive, which is like irritating, not surprising, but it's like Coppola had such an agenda to like show that Italians are not the stereotypes they're presented as, but any nationality that he doesn't associate with, he's like,

they are, they are. You're like, okay. Right. Yeah, I mean, and that's like an element of the story that if you wanna do a book adaptation, that's like something that you can really like move in a different direction in a more thoughtful way and this movie just sort of shows it.

Yeah. What else? I'd love to shout out the costume designer. Yes. And the production design in general, but the costume designer on this movie was Eiko Ishioka, who won- Righty. Yes, but she won an Oscar for costume designing

this. I think these are some of the best costumes I have ever seen in a movie. Oh my gosh. And that she also did my favorite, she did Mirror Mirror too, the best Cinderella costumes ever. She's so good. So the embarrassing thing that I thought of when I saw this, I was like, these might be the best costumes I have ever seen in a movie. And I was like, what else is up there? And I was like, the cell. And I was like, that's an, these might be the best costumes I've ever seen in a movie. And I was like, what else is up there? And I was like, the cell. And I was like, that's embarrassing,

intrusive thoughts that I've just had. So then I Googled it, I was like, no, they are really good. And then it turns out she did those too. Yeah, she did a lot. I mean, she would do, ugh, I was so sad to see that she'd passed because I mean, God, Sotel was so good. So she was a graphic designer by trade.

So she's actually got a Grammy as well for album art design. And she nearly, she was nominated for two Tonys for costume design as well. So she nearly had an EGOT in, but in the sphere of design, which is so cool. That's amazing. So cool.

Only musicians do that. That's amazing. And also I just want to shout out that she did an ad for a Japanese department store called Parko with Faye Dunaway. And it's just Faye Dunaway, one long shot of her unwrapping and eating a hard-boiled egg. It is so surreal.

Wow. Yeah, but anyway. What a legacy. Yeah. Go check out Eiko Ishiyoka's work. She did a music video for Björk. Yeah, it's just really cool. It's beautiful. I appreciated that. Yeah, I was looking for more about how Coppola was choosing

who to collaborate with. And I guess he was just like, find me someone weird. And they're like, we've got the gal, we've got her. And it's, oh my God. Apparently she came to his attention because she'd done some posters for Apocalypse Now that were stunning. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, and you can actually see those, and they're really great as well. So she was not a costume designer before this movie.

He just hired her because she was an amazing graphic designer. That rocks. I was obsessed with Dracula's suit of armor in the opening sequence. It's so cool. Because it looks like, The texture. Yeah, it looks like muscles with the skin removed.

You know, it's like very sinewy. I was like, that looks like the bodies exhibit. Yes. Real bodies, yeah. But it's like really beefy and bulky. And I was just like, what is this? And his helmet is wild. Yeah.

And then again, also just all of the makeup design, like I think every monster look he does is like a hit. It is so good. It's that Lucy outfit really, I gasped. Yeah. So thank you this movie for all of that. Indeed. The last thing that I had, I was like racking my brains

for what movie we covered recently where this also came up. I'm curious what you both think about it, because this is from, but when this movie came out, Frank Rich, who worked in, okay. I knew this was where this was going. Frank Rich, who, you know, not a Smutless record, but he is the producer of Succession. So he's anyways.

But he wrote about this movie in relation to the AIDS epidemic. What movie were we talking about recently where it also was, it was- Was it Interview with a Vampire? No, it was more recent than that. I got a, but in that case, the movie was, I think the director was asked,

were you trying to make a comment on the AIDS epidemic? And he was like, oh no, oh my God. Because if he was, it would have looked really bad. Right. What was the, I'll scroll through our list. Yeah, I remember the conversation. In this case, I wasn't able to find any reference of Coppola acknowledging that that was something that he intended, but it was definitely something that was mentioned around the discourse of

this movie when it came out. And it is still talked about now. There's an article I have here from 2021 from Film Days by a writer named Joshua Sorensen, who sort of reflects on how he feels like this movie was in conversation with the AIDS epidemic in 1992. And yeah, I just wanted to say that. I think it's like, I don't know. Yeah. It feels icky to me. It's kind of a big blind spot, especially because the movie does kind of collate vampirism with an STI. Right.

Because Van Helsing talks about like, civilization. Yeah. And there's this, it's all very, like vampirism is very sexually transmitted in this movie. So it is kind of weird that it exists in this time where, you know, it's such an incredible cause of death. And the movie's kind of like, we're not worried about that. Yeah, we are going to make the allusions to it being sexually transmitted. Yeah, I mean, a lot of horror movies, it feels like a lot of horror movies either maybe intentionally such as perhaps it follows, draws this parallel or people watching

and consuming the movie draw the parallel. And that is perhaps a cultural problem because that ultimately villainizes STIs and the people who have them. So for anyone who's like, Oh yeah, obviously, um, you know, vampires sucking each other or sucking other people and transmitting their vampirism and all of that being horrible. And that's the same thing as contracting an STI.

It's not the best. I guess that's it. Maybe just another example of FFC, like de-gaying this. Yeah, yeah. And so a lot of the gay stuff that was there in the book or that kind of was an obvious parallel that you could make has been kind of omitted. Yeah, I have a bit from this piece by Josh Rastorgenson

where he, I mean, he gets into it at length, but he sort of draws, I mean, he mostly draws it to Lucy's character and mentions the sort of dequeering that FSC does, but he says, quote, "'But even if Dracula's dequeering is an attempt "'to capture the increasing universality "'of the HIV AIDS epidemic,

"'it is textually undermined as the only two characters to contract disease on screen are the ones who are queer coded, Mina and Lucy, because this piece is really pushing the Mina Lucy agenda. The film is caught between two mindsets. It seemingly aims to move beyond the stigmatic relationship between the LGBTQ plus community and HIV AIDS in the public consciousness, but that intention is not supported by the framing. The fact that Mina and Lucy contracted only because they saw it out recalls the I don't have it do you mentality that led to the spread of the epidemic in the first place. I don't know what to make of this. I kind of am glad FFC has never commented on it. I don't really care to know what he thinks. Yeah, and maybe in a sense he wasn't qualified

to talk about it anyway, so maybe we're better off that he steered clear. Yeah, I think so. And also it's like, again, going back to the original text, it was, I guess, blood transfusions were super new at the time, and some premstoker wasn't thinking much harder than like, this is wild, what if I made all these guys do it?

Oh yeah, the part where I think it's Arthur and then one of the other boyfriends gives like donates blood to Lucy. I'm just like, do you even know what your blood type is? Are you the universal donor? Do you have a matching blood type as Lucy? That's her type. Her type is universal donor.

Yeah. But yeah, I just wanted to say that that was an element of the conversation. I don't know what to make of it. Yeah, nor I. Anyways, I think that was the last thing that I had. Yeah, I just love that every 30 to 90 seconds in this movie, there's just something on screen where you're like, oh my god, either a costume or some special effect or blood gushing from something or blood being puked

or furry palms of hands or Dracula climbing up the wall of the castle or anything like that. It's such a dense movie. There's like so many shots. Well said. But yeah, I think, I hope it's, I don't know if we've really clarified when we've been talking about this,

but this movie is so camp. It's so silly. Like as much as it's got big themes and it's kind of got like this lush production that makes it feel like a prestige movie, it's also very, very, very, very silly. And I mean, the women have nothing to do. Basically, they spend most of the movie gasping. Riding and gasping with a boob out. That is the role for women in this movie. Gary Oldman is like campus tits in it. Just everything he does. The bad accents.

Oh my gosh. Winona Ryder. He's got so many Americans. Why does he cast British people? What are you doing? Winona Ryder pronounces the word clerk like clork. There's also a moment where she says home. We went to his home. Home. Home. And then again. Oh my gosh. And then, oh, I forget what Keanu's line read. Oh, he keeps saying, Budapest. Which for all I know is maybe how you pronounce it in. Also, we love Keanu, but his excuse for this was I was tired.

Yeah. He was like, I had just done Point Break, I just did a lot of movies in a row, I just was kind of sleepy, and so that's why I didn't do a good job. You're like, that's what you say in the Francis Ford Comfort movie, you were sleepy?

Wake up! Oh, I love it. Gary Oldman, I think, does potentially the best evil cackle that has ever been on screen. It's good. Van Helsing, very camp. Oh my gosh. Anthony Hopkins brings it.

Although he might be the worst person in this movie. Like the worst man. What do you mean? In a movie full of bad men, I think Van Helsing might be kind of the worst. The character? Yeah. Oh yeah, I was like not the worst performance.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He does a great job. He does a great job, but it's like, he's the toxic mask presence. He's kind of worse than Dracula in a way. Dracula's eating a lot of people, but Van Helsing's just like Christian values, but also kind of gleefully killing ladies.

Right, yeah, and this movie, we didn't get much into the religious aspects, but I feel like it's like very much in conversation with the like xenophobia of like basically any Non-christian religion is the occult. You're like, okay Van Helsing describes Lucy he says after she's been bitten and turned into a vampire He says Lucy is not a random victim attacked by mere accident.

She is a willing recruit, a breathless follower, a wanton follower, a devoted disciple. She is the devil's concubine. Basically just like, he was shaming. He's literally, I don't know why, like that, that did make me laugh when he could, cause he's literally like kind of jumping up and down. He's like walking away and saying all this fucked up stuff. He's like, she's married to the devil. And he's like also doing something. I want an all female rock band called Devil's Concubine. That's so good.

We can work with this. Anthony Hopkins also plays the clergyman at the very beginning of the movie. Oh. Yeah, that's him. He's in a scraggly wig and stuff. But yeah, he's the one where Dracula comes back from impaling thousands of people.

And he's like, I denounce God. And Anthony Hopkins' priest is like, no, don't. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. And it's pretty good. Yeah, there's just, I love the like vampire orgy room in the castle. Yeah.

Yeah, where is the like prestige HBO series about Dracula's brides? Justice for them. The way they died was very lackluster for me. Yeah. I could have used, again, and like, I could have used some names. I could have used some names.

I could have used some names and some stories. How did you become a vampire? I'd love to see their story. Cause they're just seem to be having a great time. They're lezing off, they eat the occasional man, they eat the occasional baby, they eat the occasional horse. Yes, they eat a horse. And this horrible Christian man comes

and cuts their heads off. It's just. Ugh, give them a chance, get to know them. Seriously. Yeah, meanwhile we're celebrating the boring nuns. They're handing out crucifixes. Boring, get a life, eat a horse. I did appreciate at the very least that even though Mina in the movie, you know, basically

just forced into this love story that was invented by the movie, which was written by James V. Hart. Yes. So he adapted the book and wrote the screenplay for this movie. He's a, his other credits are, oh yeah, he did Hook, and then he also went on to do Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Wow, how about that? Which is always a story that should be adapted by a woman. Come on.

Come on. But for what it's worth, even though she's not credited, again, as a Winona had, Winona took this script to Francis Ford Coppola and was like what do you think? And then... Sorry, go. No, I think you were about to say it. As an apology for dropping out of Godfather 3. Yeah, which only, I mean, and good call by Winona on that one. Because didn't Sofia Coppola

replace her? Was that the part? And apparently the reason I haven't seen, famously haven't seen any FFC movies, but apparently the reason she's so bad in it is because she had one day to prep for the role. And that was a case of nepotism maybe gone wrong. That's it, yeah. It's one thing to hire your magician son.

But I guess she was just doing her dad a favor. I know. Yeah, that's Francis Ford Coppola's fault. That's not God. Because wasn't she like a teenager? And also, Winona Ryder is an amazing actor. She's been nominated for, she was really on a roll before they were like, we have to kill her

because she shoplifted. I'm like, kill her, then kill me. Because I shoplift all the time. But anyway, so obviously Mina's role is changed for the movie. But I do appreciate that she doesn't, she's never like, well not never, but she doesn't ultimately become

like the damsel in distress. I feel like this type of movie would have, oh Dracula kidnaps her and then they have to go and rescue her. Rather she's bait, which isn't better really, but at least they bring her along. It makes me sad to be like, but at least she knows she's bait

because often they're like, she has no idea, don't tell her. Right, right, right. And again, like not to, but like in the most recent Dracula adaptation, the Lily Rose depth character is like inside for 90%. I remember when she left the house on purpose and I was like, yeah.

But like, you know, Nina is still not as active as the original book that was written 100 years before this came out, but at least there's that. She does do the conclusion of the movie. Like it's her, which is cool. Yeah. Indeed. Does anyone have anything else they'd like to discuss?

That's all I have. I guess one last thing where Coppola brought in someone to coach Winona Ryder and Sadie Frost who plays Lucy during their like erotic scenes because he felt uncomfortable discussing sexuality with these young actors so he brings in an acting coach named Greta Seacat which doesn't seem like quite the same thing as a like intimacy coordinator. But I don't think that existed then. Right. Right. Right. But at least it was something. It was

some attempt to hopefully and I don't know how that went exactly with this acting coach. But at least there was some attempt. Apparently, the same thing happened with the brides of Dracula who had all been cast on the basis that they would be nude in the movie But then when it came time to shoot everyone was too nervous to ask them to take their clothes off Yeah, and so I think he ended up getting his magician son to ask them So maybe that's why he ended up hiring Greta yeah never never no offense to any listening male magicians,

but never underestimate the delusional confidence of a male magician to ask you to do something you don't want to do. I think potentially they did want to do it. They did agree to it, right. But it's like the magician, you dispatch the magician. It's just insulting. I do appreciate the magician. It's just, it's insulting. I do appreciate at least, I mean, again, it's such a little thing, but like a director

that knows their limits, that is like, this is out of my comfort zone, which is like directors are entitled to have things outside of their comfort zone as long as they take care of it. I've got some kind of warm fuzzy feelings for FFC after researching this. I have no idea what he's like beyond this. He's probably done some really horrible stuff. But apparently even when this movie was coming out, he was so afraid of finding out if it was a success because his

career was really riding on it. He took all of his family on holiday and he like couldn't look at it. He was too stressed and scared. And he finally got his wife to be like, to check the box office. And she was like, add it up, it's a huge hit. But he was just like really scared and nervous. For what I can tell, and listeners set me straight if I'm wrong, he's a relatively scandal-free director. I was also very, and he's not my favorite director

by any stretch of the imagination, but I just like, I do like watching him talk. I like that he takes big weird swings even when I don't like them. And I really like that he made Anthony Hopkins play Zip Zap Zop. Like it does seem like, you know, comparatively, especially in the generation of directors

that he's a part of, he seems like a relatively sweet person. Right, he's coming off of making what's largely considered some of the greatest movies in American film history between the first two Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now. So you think that would inflate his ego so much that he would just be a terror on set, but it seems like maybe not. So. For instance, for Coppola, good guy question mark. The bar is so low, isn't it? I know. I know.

But it is, I mean, his career is, guest of the show, Maia, made a video when Megalopolis came out that had like traced his like wild history in like movie finance where like, if he didn't have the winery, he'd be so fucked many times over. But like that even after one of the other Coppola movies

we've covered that I always forget is directed by him is Peggy Sue got married. Oh, that's right. And like, so he, I don't know, I feel like, that's like a real artist. That's so cool that he was still like trying shit out and is still trying shit out that is often straight up bad, but it definitely not safe.

Like this movie is not making safe choices. Everyone, like producers, critics, everyone in the industry basically thought this movie would be a huge flop at the box office. And we're like surprised that it wasn't because it was made for a budget of 40 million dollars which seems less than i would have thought because of how much like just money you see on screen with the practical sets and effects and costumes and all that which he dealt with by shooting and this ended up i thought it was like

a creative choice because he was like paying homage to the original monster movies or whatever but he shot it entirely on sound stages. I think it looks awesome because it shot on sound stages. Yeah, well, part of that was because he had gone over budget and like time scheduling for his previous movies and he's like, I don't want to make anyone mad again. I'm going to do it, play it safe and like shoot inside kind of thing.

And this way the studio execs could keep an eye on him and they could visit the set every day as well I'm gonna do it, play it safe and shoot inside kind of thing. This way the studio execs could keep an eye on him and they could visit the set every day as well and see what he was doing. They're like, okay, do we have, is Reeves playing zip, zap, stop? Good. Good job.

But anyway, made for a budget of $40 million and grossed on $219 million. In 1992 dollars. It was one of the biggest movies of the year. Yeah it beat out like Back to the Future 2 and so good for him. Do you think this movie is remembered particularly? Not as much as I would think. It obviously has a cult following obviously people return to it but I feel like it doesn't get brought up quite as much as you would expect. That's kind of how I feel too. Yeah I've been I until you started raving about it. I don't know if I even knew it existed until like the last couple of

years but also the Dracula space is very crowded. There's a lot of competition in Dracula movies but this is like definitely one of my favorites. It's number six on Vulture's Dracula. Really? Wow. It's number six. Sorry, what's number one? I think it's the original Nosferatu.

Let me check. Which, you know, fair enough. No, not Dracula 2000. This is technically Dracula rankings. Dracula performance rankings. Gary Oldman comes in at number six. Number five is Christopher Lee, who apparently played Dracula in like 20 movies.

Oh wow, he definitely was in like a 1959, I wanna say, adaptation. He started playing Dracula in 1958 and played him all the way through 1976. So maybe that's out of sheer volume. Actually, Nose for Atu, the original Nose for Atu is number four. Okay.

Number three. Played by Max Shrek. Shrek. Exactly. Number three is William Marshall in Blackula and scream Blackula scream. Number two is something I haven't seen, Klaus Kinski in the Werner Herzog remake of Nosferatu.

Oh, haven't seen that one. He's supposed to be the most soulful Dracula. And then number one's Bela Lugosi. Fine, fine, I get it. Sure. Bela. Bela, anyways, it's a crowded space, the Dracula space. Yeah, where does Gerard Butler?

Gerard Butler comes in at number 29. Brutal, brutal. Of how many? 32. That makes me want to see that movie so much more. It sounds like a truly perfect candidate for your show. Yeah, yeah. I think Dracula's on a plane at one point.

Oh my God. I think instead of the Demeter, it's a plane. Have you seen I, Frankenstein? No. Oh my God, you've got to cover I, oh wait. I think instead of the Demeter, it's a plane. Oh. Have you seen I, Frankenstein? No. Oh my god, you've gotta cover I, Frankenstein. Okay, great. Yeah, it's that but Frankenstein. Perfect.

And it's Aaron, what's his name? Aaron Eckhart. Yeah. Coming off of his playing Two-Face, thinking he's gonna start a franchise and it does not happen. It's so awesome. Bill Nighy is there.

Fab. It's great. That's awesome. Well, does the movie pass the Bechtel test? Really? I do think it does. OK, here's what I've concluded. Obviously, Mina and Lucy talk quite a bit in a number of different scenes.

And sometimes they're talking about a typewriter, or a dream, or a book. But it's almost always in the context of, like, oh, you're writing, you're using a typewriter or a dream or a book, but it's almost always in the context of like, oh, you're writing, you're using your typewriter to write a letter to a man, or I had a dream about hetero sex with a man. So, and then they more explicitly talk about Jonathan, about Lucy's three boyfriends, about Dracula.

So it's very, even if there's like a kind of almost technical pass I feel like the context or the subtext is always still about Men and like the point of every scene is ends up about sex or men, right? I think so Yeah, let me see what the technical passes were because I did kind of forget. Oh, did you cancel back till test calm? Scholarly Journal? Yeah, people think we spend the whole show trying to figure this out and sometimes we don't even remember to do it. It does.

Yeah, so I think it's just technical passes. I guess that like, I mean, it doesn't pass the Bechtel test by in our estimation. I do think that like the only thing I could give it sort of a like it's trying is like two women talking about passion and lust during a time where that wasn't permissible but it is connected obviously to like hetero lust but polyamorous hetero lust. I mean does it count if they're just like we're both horny? When that wasn't legal. Like it's your head cut off in this culture. Does it count if they're just like, we're both horny? When that wasn't legal. Yeah. Like, it's your head cut off in this culture. Does it pass the test when they kiss each other? Cause I would argue that kissing is communication.

It's true. The language of love. It's true. I think you could, I would agree to a soft pass argument, but like it's not, you know, if we had to talk about it for this long, it's not a great pass. Yeah.

Right. But examining it through the Bechdel cast nipple scale, a scale where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens. Ooh, this one's tricky. I think it's sort of like a split down the middle for me. I would give it 10 out of 10 on the horny scale. I would give it probably

like an 8 out of 10 on the rompo meter. I'll give it like actually probably two nipples on the nipple scale because of the adaptation changes made specifically to Mina's character making her less active forcing her into another romantic situation which might involve coercion we're not sure might just be that she's a reincarnation of someone but it still feels there's like coercive elements to it that you know Dracula is playing Jedi mind tricks on her or whatever unclear the representation of Romani people and the kind of albeit brief but villainization of Islam should have been deleted from the movie and yet it wasn't. Um, yeah, I don't know.

I just wish that the movie was more gay and less, let's punish women for having sexuality. So two nipples, but maybe that's too much even, but I just, it's so camp. It's so awesome. The production design and the costume design all this. I know that doesn't factor into the nipple scale, but like, it's just hard not for me to be obsessed with this movie. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I'll give it two nipples and I'll give one

to Winona Ryder's pronunciation of Clark. She's like, oh Jonathan doesn't want me to marry him because he thinks that he's not worthy because he's just a law clerk. And then I'll give my, oh I'll give my other nipple to this scene where Lucy has approached Quincy and she's like, oh my God, it's so big. Can I touch it? And then it's just me and being like, my friend Lucy is amazing. And you're like, I love that.

Yeah, and it ends up being about Quincy's knife, but it's really about. I do think that a lesser movie would, it's not to start the episode again, but like a lesser movie would, not to start the episode again, but like a lesser movie would make Lucy out to be this like big joke, like broad, you know, slutty character. And she's not that she's not punished. She's punished about as her as one could be. But it isn't like, oh, we shouldn't like or respect this character. Like this character isn't

worth virtuous Mina's time. Like she's like,'s like wow that's awesome I love that she does that. That's great so that's who gets my nipples and I love the movie. The end. I'm gonna go I'll go too as well I feel like as a yardstick it is like so gorgeous it is so campy but if the movie from 1992 is less gay than the book from 1897, there's a problem. We have a problem. But yeah, I think that the Mina adjustments, it was an attempt. I didn't love the attempt.

I liked the idea of exploring this character's passion and the restrictions of the time that Bram Stoker probably wouldn't have been able to or maybe not thought much of. But I just didn't, I felt like the direction they did it was very 1992. Very, yeah, like erotic, thrillery in a way that I feel like didn't really do the character much of a favor. But it's like such a great movie. I do ship Mina and Lucy. I do love their friendship. I think that they are the best onscreen pairing. And I wish that they had just run away from whatever the fuck was going on in this movie.

Yeah, I think that they should have paired off and then Lucy's three boyfriends should have gotten together. That would be very good. Everybody should just be gay. Be gay. Do crime. Eat babies be gay. Be gay. Do crime. Eat babies. Eat horses.

But did you not think that their kiss was a little bit male gaze? I would agree with that. Yeah, yeah. It's like Dracula's like, and now you're gonna kiss. Yeah. I mean the way that like Lucy's tits are out in every scene gratuitously.

It is very gratuitous. I don't know, I'm not, I couldn't find what to, I was like, it was a hot kiss, oh no. Yeah, I think you're right, you're right. And we have to say it. Yeah, I'll go two nipples, one to me and one to Lucy. Perfect. Done. Perfect.

Yeah, I think for all of the reasons you've said, I'm gonna also give it two nipples. We've got consensus. One of the thing that I remembered about why I hate Van Helsing and it's just symbolic of like the kind of man stuff that's all over this movie is at the end of the movie, Winona's turning into a vampire

and she's like gonna try and seduce him and turn him into a vampire. And so she kisses him, but he fully kisses her back and she's like gonna try and seduce him and turn him into a vampire and so she kisses him but he fully kisses her back he's like yeah he's like great yeah I've been waiting I assumed this would happen for me at some point. Based on what? It's so annoying yeah it's like yeah there's just man's fingerprints all over this production and it really holds back any of the things it's trying to say about women's sexuality, surprising to no one. So anyway, yeah, two nipples. I'll give one to the costume designer, Echo,

and I'll give the other to feminist icon, the pile of rats. Oh my God. You gotta go to the pile of remis. Feminist icon, queer icon, that pile of rats, everything. One more nice thing about my two favorite male actors in this movie was that Francis Ford Coppola did encourage Gary Oldman to say gross things to people in their ear. So he was complicit in that, which Winona Ryder would say later she was very uncomfortable

with, she really didn't like it, she felt unsafe. I guess that Francis Ford Coppola asked Keanu and Anthony Hopkins to do the same thing. And they were like, no, we're not gonna do that. She's an actor. I think she'll be okay. And I love those guys. So I was glad to know that they did the right thing.

Yeah. And Anthony Hopkins also apparently she was afraid of fire. She has a like lifelong fear of fire. And so they had to do that scene where they're she was afraid of fire. She has a lifelong fear of fire. And so they had to do that scene where they're in a ring of fire. And as soon as they stopped filming, he picked her up and carried her out of the fire. He was like very protective of her.

And yeah, he also didn't, he didn't want to shout, you slut, on a film set, which was, you know, also a low bar. Yeah, it was like, wow, feminist icon, what? So many men want to yell at that. Well, there's a lot of men barely clearing the bar of decency in the story of this production. Yeah, did we do it?

We did the episode. Crystal, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. And if you're listening, allow me one last shameless plug. And if you're anything like me and two weeks between episodes of the Bechdel cast is far too long, feel free to check out Camp Classics for more of my unqualified opinions about movies.

Amazing. Please cover I, Frankenstein. Yeah, can't wait. I am going to need to move on from vampires at some point. Yeah, and guess who's gonna be waiting for you? Hoodie Frankenstein, Hoodie Nunchuck. You did not say Hoodie or Nunchuck earlier. Sexy Hoodie Nunchuck. I love my favorite shot in all of movies.

They show the passage of time of like 300 years of just a static shot of I, Frankenstein on top of a mountain swinging nunchucks and they're like 300 years past. And then it just cuts to the present. You're gonna love it. Oh, I wish I could see it again for the first time. I love it. Where can people follow you online?

So I'm at, Crystal will see you now on Instagram and TikTok and my podcast is at camp classics podcast on Instagram. Yay you can follow us on Instagram as well at Bechtelcast you can also subscribe to our patreon aka matron that's the best way to support the show it's only five dollars a month and you get access to two bonus episodes every month and the entire back catalog of almost 200 bonus episodes. So there's no- Time is a brutal mistress. And I think that's where our I Frankenstein episode lives.

That was a matri on episode if I remember correctly. Yeah, that we've, Caitlin let me do that one as a treat and then entered the community. So I Frankenstein. So I owe you a debt. It started as a joke and then it became a passion. I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you for thanking me again. Of course. And yeah, check out our Linktree. There's links there to stuff. Link tree slash Bechtelcast. Love you. Bye bye. Bye.

Goodbye. The Bechtelcast is a production of iHeartMedia hosted by Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited by Mo Laborde. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Voskrasensky. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus. And a special thanks to Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree.bechtelcast. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast, Betrayal. Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone.

Most of all, his wife, Caroline. He texted, I've ruined our lives. You're going to want to divorce me. How far would he go to cover up what he'd done? The fact that you lied is absolutely horrific. And quite frankly, I question how many other women are out there that may bring forward allegations in the future.

Listen to Betrayal on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are

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