Dracula: Dead and Loving It is a 1995 comedy film starring Leslie Nielsen, directed by Mel Brooks. It is a parody of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, and of some of the films it inspired. This is the last film Mel Brooks directed, as of 2013. It reportedly cost $15 million but took less than this at the U.S. box office.
Brooks co-authored the screenplay with Steve Haberman and Rudy De Luca. He also appears as Dr. Van Helsing. The film’s other stars include Steven Weber, Amy Yasbeck, Peter MacNicol, Harvey Korman, and Anne Bancroft.
The film follows the classic Dracula (1931), starring Bela Lugosi, in its deviations from the novel. Its visual style and production values are particularly evocative of the Hammer Horror films. It spoofed, among other movies, The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).
The year is 1893: solicitor Thomas Renfield (Peter MacNicol) travels all the way from London to “Castle Dracula” in Transylvania to finalise Count Dracula’s purchase of Carfax Abbey in England. As the sun sets, and the stagecoach driver refuses to take him any further, Renfield continues on foot despite the villagers (including Chuck McCann and Anne Bancroft in cameos) pleading with him to turn back.
Renfield arrives safely and meets Count Dracula (Leslie Nielsen), a charming but rather strange man who is a vampire. He then casts a hypnotic spell on the suggestible Renfield, making him his slave. Dracula and Renfield soon embark for England. During the voyage, Dracula dines upon the ship’s crew. When the ship arrives and Renfield (by this time raving mad in the style of Dwight Frye) is discovered alone on the ship, he is confined to a lunatic asylum.
Meanwhile, Dracula visits an opera house, where he introduces himself to his new neighbors: Doctor Seward (Korman), Seward’s assistant Jonathan Harker (Weber), Seward’s nubile daughterMina (Amy Yasbeck), and Seward’s ward, the equally nubile Lucy (Lysette Anthony). Dracula flirts with Lucy and, later that night, enters her bedroom and feeds on her blood.
The next day, Mina discovers Lucy still in bed late in the morning, looking strangely pale. Seward, puzzled by the odd puncture marks on her throat, calls in an expert on obscure diseases, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Mel Brooks). Van Helsing informs the skeptical Dr. Seward that Lucy has been attacked by a vampire. After some hesitation, Seward and Harker allow garlic to be placed in Lucy’s bedroom to repel the vampire. Dracula uses mind-control to make Lucy leave her room, and kills her in the garden.
Van Helsing meets Dracula and begins to suspect him of being the local vampire after the two trade words and phrases in Moldavian, each attempting to have the last word in the foreign language ‘discussion’. Lucy, now a vampire herself, rises from her crypt, drains the blood from her guard, and tries to attack Harker. Van Helsing rushes in just in time and chases her back to her coffin…
Wikipedia | IMDb | Related: Young Frankenstein
James Berardinelli of ReelViews wrote: “Alas, Dracula: Dead and Loving It doesn’t come close to the level attained by Young Frankenstein. It’s a toothless parody that misses more often than it hits. … Ultimately, however, Dracula is infected with the same disease that has plagued the last several Brooks films — it’s just not all that funny. Sure, there are humorous bits here and there throughout the running length, but not enough to justify an entire movie. … “
Joe Leydon of Variety wrote: “Leslie Nielsen toplines to agreeable effect as Count Dracula, depicted here as a dead-serious but frequently flustered fellow who’s prone to slipping on bat droppings in his baroque castle. … Despite his initial appearance in a fluffed-up wig very similar to Gary Oldman’s hairdo in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nielsen sticks with a Bela Lugosi accent and a traditionally Continental interpretation of the part. … Trouble is, while Dead and Loving It earns a fair share of grins and giggles, it never really cuts loose and goes for the belly laughs. Compared with the recent glut of dumb, dumber and dumbest comedies, Brooks’s pic seems positively understated. Indeed, there isn’t much here that would have seemed out of place (or too tasteless) in comedy sketches for TV variety shows of the 1950s.”
