Dracula: Dead and Loving It

The one key element to UNDERSTAND and to enjoy a send-up like this is having the knowledge of its background. If you are not familiar with the original story of Dracula, as well as seeing both the Bela Lugosi and Gary Oldman movies, with others in between, then the gags will be lost on you.

People have rated that Brooks is losing his touch. Not so. His audience is losing touch with his level of intellect. A send-up's gags are only funny to those who recognize the source, and realize the play of the situation taking place. In Spaceballs, for instance, the final conflict between Helmet and Lonestarr, Helmet makes a play on the "Luke I am your Father" scene from Empire Strikes Back. But if you have never seen that film, you won't know that, and so the line "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate" would be lost on you totally.

The acting is great in the movie. Those attacking the "bad" British accents should refer to other Dracula films to understand the joke. In oother Dracula films, accents come off as so fake, it's painful to watch, and that's the joke. The style of the film itself takes heavily from the Bela Lugosi version, in its design and arrangement of characters, though references to the Oldman film are used as well. Leslie Neilson did a great job in the role of Dracula, and his Renfield, Peter MacNichol, was a superb performance.

This movie deserves full credit for its level of parodistic comedy, even if it is lost on viewers. If you can't stand this movie, or find it unentertaining, then maybe you don't understand its roots well enough to appreciate it.