Dracula: Dead and Loving It
Short description
Count Dracula leaves his isolated Transylvanian castle for Victorian London, where fresh blood is easier to come by. After recruiting the Englishman Renfield as his assistant, he sets his sights on Mina Seward and her friend Lucy, drawing the attention of Professor Abraham Van Helsing, a vampire hunter who proves harder to shake off than the Count expects.
Mel Brooks directed and produced the film, his tenth as director, following Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He wrote the screenplay with Rudy De Luca and Steve Haberman, and appears on screen as Van Helsing. Leslie Nielsen plays the Count, with Amy Yasbeck as Mina, Peter MacNicol as Renfield, Lysette Anthony as Lucy and Harvey Korman as Dr. Jack Seward. The film is a comedic treatment of Bram Stoker's novel.
Released in December 1995 and running 88 minutes, the production had a budget of 30 million USD and took about 11 million USD worldwide, a fraction of its cost. On IMDb it holds 5.9/10 from 49,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.1/10 from 1,148 votes. A film critics' rating of 3.3/10 from 37 reviews places it clearly below both audience scores, which are close to each other.
What's left behind the scenes
- Unlike the original source material, Mina is the daughter of Dr. Seward, and Lucy is his niece.
- Some scenes parody the film "Dracula" (1992), for example, Dracula's shadow sometimes behaves too independently. And in some scenes, Leslie Nielsen delivers Bela Lugosi's lines verbatim, but with different intonation.
- 150 liters of fake blood were spilled during the scene of driving a stake into the heart.
- The heroine's name, Ann Bancroft, Madame Ouspenskaya, is a reference to the actress Maria Ouspenskaya, who played a Gypsy in the classic Hollywood horror films “The Wolf Man” (1941) and “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” (1943).
- During the ball scene, Dracula requests a csárdás, but the orchestra plays “Hungarian Dance No. 5” by Johannes Brahms.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
