Like director Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," released just the year prior, "Dracula Rising" features a reincarnation romance and makes Dracula the historical Vlad the Impaler. As others have suggested, this movie was made to piggyback on the success of Coppola's film, and it's highly derivative of it. It also boasts Roger Corman as a producer. But, to be fair, Coppola and company stole the bad idea from the 1974 TV-movie "Bram Stoker's Dracula" made by Dan Curtis. And, even before that, the blaxploitation vampire flick "Blacula" (1972) featured a reincarnation romance. Also since the 1970s, Dracula movies have blown out of proportion the actually-slight connection between Bram Stoker's novel and the historical Vlad the Impaler. The name "Dracula" and a couple sentences of speculation by Van Helsing are the book's only connection to the historical prince. Stoker didn't even bother to research Vlad's actual country, so now we have a bunch of stupid Dracula movies locating the historical Prince of Wallachia in Transylvania.
Fortunately, "Dracula Rising" is somewhat ambiguous with its locations--mostly set somewhere in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't know their history, either, and mistake the history of Western Europe, of Catholicism and witch burning as seen in the film, with the Orthodoxy of Eastern Europe. Rather than impaling monks, as mentioned in the film, the best-known enemies of the real-life Vlad were the Turks (even Coppola's film got that part right). Vlad the Impaler is a minor character in "Dracula Rising," though; the titular character doesn't show up until over an hour into it and, then, only briefly. He wears a mouth mask akin to Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), another movie about a batman rising from the dead. He only removes the mask to incestuously turn his son, also named "Vlad," into a vampire. Most of the film focuses on Dracula's son and his reincarnation romance with Theresa, who somehow is reincarnated hundreds of years later, but looks the same, has the same name, is always an artist and uses the same curling iron in both medieval and modern times.
I thought Dracula was bold in Hammer's 1966 "Dracula: Prince of Darkness," for his attack on a monastery, given vampires' known aversion to Christian iconography, but that's nothing compared to the two young vamps here, who live in one. They even continue to dress like the monks they were in life. In one of the few instances from "Dracula Rising" that recall Stoker's novel, Theresa takes a taxicab to the monastery, but the driver won't take her all the way--just like the horse-carriage ride to Borgo Pass in the book.
"Dracula Rising" is a B-picture, and it shows. The musical score and sound recordings are overblown, including, as fellow reviewer Perception_de_Ambiguity mentioned, the whooshing of fans, which inexplicably form a motif early in the film and, then, are abandoned. Bat-mimicking helicopter shots likewise appear only in the beginning. Negative shots serve as transitions to flashbacks. This effect, for other purposes, has been used in other Dracula movies, including the 1922 "Nosferatu" and the 1977 TV-movie "Count Dracula," but never as obnoxiously, nor accompanied by storm-like sound effects, as here. And, boy, are there a lot of flashbacks; it's like a cheap vampiric "The English Patient" (1996). There are also two clichéd make-out sessions that put even Universal's 1979 dime-romance-novel "Dracula" to shame: one on a bed surrounded by white drapery and another beside a waterfall. Best of all, however, is the ending, which is ludicrous in every way, from its low-budget animation effects, to a script calling for a vampire fight in Hell, fireball throwing included. Had the rest of "Dracula Rising" been so unintentionally hilarious, it would've been so-bad-it's-good, instead of just mostly bad.
(Mirror Note: No mirror shots, but a snapshot does reveal that vampires' images can't be captured in a photograph. "The Return of Dracula" (1958), "Scream Blacula Scream" (1973) and "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" (1973), among others, used this idea before.)
Fortunately, "Dracula Rising" is somewhat ambiguous with its locations--mostly set somewhere in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't know their history, either, and mistake the history of Western Europe, of Catholicism and witch burning as seen in the film, with the Orthodoxy of Eastern Europe. Rather than impaling monks, as mentioned in the film, the best-known enemies of the real-life Vlad were the Turks (even Coppola's film got that part right). Vlad the Impaler is a minor character in "Dracula Rising," though; the titular character doesn't show up until over an hour into it and, then, only briefly. He wears a mouth mask akin to Bane from "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), another movie about a batman rising from the dead. He only removes the mask to incestuously turn his son, also named "Vlad," into a vampire. Most of the film focuses on Dracula's son and his reincarnation romance with Theresa, who somehow is reincarnated hundreds of years later, but looks the same, has the same name, is always an artist and uses the same curling iron in both medieval and modern times.
I thought Dracula was bold in Hammer's 1966 "Dracula: Prince of Darkness," for his attack on a monastery, given vampires' known aversion to Christian iconography, but that's nothing compared to the two young vamps here, who live in one. They even continue to dress like the monks they were in life. In one of the few instances from "Dracula Rising" that recall Stoker's novel, Theresa takes a taxicab to the monastery, but the driver won't take her all the way--just like the horse-carriage ride to Borgo Pass in the book.
"Dracula Rising" is a B-picture, and it shows. The musical score and sound recordings are overblown, including, as fellow reviewer Perception_de_Ambiguity mentioned, the whooshing of fans, which inexplicably form a motif early in the film and, then, are abandoned. Bat-mimicking helicopter shots likewise appear only in the beginning. Negative shots serve as transitions to flashbacks. This effect, for other purposes, has been used in other Dracula movies, including the 1922 "Nosferatu" and the 1977 TV-movie "Count Dracula," but never as obnoxiously, nor accompanied by storm-like sound effects, as here. And, boy, are there a lot of flashbacks; it's like a cheap vampiric "The English Patient" (1996). There are also two clichéd make-out sessions that put even Universal's 1979 dime-romance-novel "Dracula" to shame: one on a bed surrounded by white drapery and another beside a waterfall. Best of all, however, is the ending, which is ludicrous in every way, from its low-budget animation effects, to a script calling for a vampire fight in Hell, fireball throwing included. Had the rest of "Dracula Rising" been so unintentionally hilarious, it would've been so-bad-it's-good, instead of just mostly bad.
(Mirror Note: No mirror shots, but a snapshot does reveal that vampires' images can't be captured in a photograph. "The Return of Dracula" (1958), "Scream Blacula Scream" (1973) and "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" (1973), among others, used this idea before.)