Decades Later, 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' And 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein' Make For A Sublime And Fascinating Double Feature

In 1992, when Francis Ford Coppola released Bram Stoker's Dracula, his tragically romantic take on the gothic horror story was well-liked enough. Audiences responded to what Roger Ebert called the "feverish excess" of the film. It's a film that takes the classic vampire tropes that we expect and examines them through two lenses: one of gothic romance and another that hews closer to the original source material than we'd ever really seen before.After Dracula, Coppola was interested in directing what became Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but settled on producing it, bringing in Kenneth Branagh to direct the material in a way that only he could. Audiences and critics at the time rebelled against this vision of the classic tale of the modern Prometheus, but taken together as a double feature, I think these movies elevate each other into something that was impossible to see upon their release almost 30 years ago. 

The style of story in which American Zoetrope's Frankenstein is told aligns with Dracula as a natural follow up, playing up the gothic elements of the romance and the morality of the science fiction rather than the horror elements. Frank Darabont wrote the original adaptation and is still credited as the screenwriter, but has since disavowed Branagh's version. Hearing interviews with Darabont, it's understandable. "There's a weird doppelgänger effect when I watch the movie. It's kind of like the movie I wrote, but not at all like the movie I wrote," Darabont said in an interview with Creative Screenwriting. "I don't know why it had to be this operatic attempt at filmmaking. Shelley's book is not operatic, it whispers at you a lot... That movie was his vision entirely. If you love that movie you can throw all your roses at Ken Branagh's feet. If you hated it, throw your spears there too, because that was his movie."The operatic filmmaking that Darabont found to be anathema to his script and a bug of the final film, I find to be a feature. The film hearkens back to an earlier period of film, just as Coppola's Dracula does. Where Dracula used filmmaking techniques from a previous era, Branagh brought the opera of the old epics to this small and personal tale of love and loss and playing God. Branagh himself takes on the role of Victor Frankenstein, a young man whose mother dies and he becomes obsessed with solving the riddle of immortality. In many ways it sounds and feels a lot like Anakin Skywalker's descent to Darth Vader and I definitely think George Lucas found inspiration in the Frankenstein story, but no version of it ever felt so in-your-face about it as Branagh's.While at medical school, Frankenstein meets a similarly obsessed professor (played in an unusually dramatic turn by John Cleese.) When this professor is killed, Frankenstein takes his brain and crafts a new body for him. The aesthetic Branagh aims for in Frankenstein's laboratory feels like proto-steampunk and brings the energy of creation to a town wracked by a cholera epidemic. The creature, played beautifully by Robert De Niro, is thought dead by Frankenstein and goes on his own sojourn until his rejection from society forces him to seek out the doctor for either revenge or help. The finale plays out in the same breathless pace that Dracula does, truly making these sister films. The best way I can describe this movie is as though Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon were a bombastic opera with science fiction elements. There's a similar moment in particular—young William's death—that hit just as hard as Barry Lyndon because the over-the-top emotion in Frankenstein had become so effective to me. But this film is not played for horror and jump scares. The horror comes with the terrifying decisions Frankenstein makes as he's playing god, leading up to a moment of pure terror when Helena Bonham Carter's Elizabeth makes her final choice. It comes in the ironies of decision-making. The audience squirms not from the imagery, but from the intellectual, as they're asked what decisions they would make were they in Frankenstein's shoes.The ending is one of pathos, though, and speaks to the complicated nature of fathers and abused sons in a way that is almost unexpected but somehow pitch-perfect for the breathless nature of the rest of the film. 

Taken together, Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein offer a master class in genre blending, taking what has traditionally been played for jump scares and terror as a gothic romance, bringing stories of empathy and humanity out from the subtext. Though the horror still comes in strong doses, there is no shortage of emotion and empathy in each film. And because they're both so breathlessly paced, each one an opera of ideas and action, it's difficult to pretend you aren't entertained. Both of these films are hailed as the most faithful on-screen adaptations of the books, too, and I think they're two of the best. Though some might look at these films, turn their noses up, and call them tragedies of cinema, I think they're worth looking at again to see them instead for the tragedies they document.