Type O Behavior

SPOTLIGHT

If you thought Gary Oldman looked wan and sickly playing Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK—not to mention Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy—behold the picture at right. That's Oldman made up for the lead role in Bram Stoker's Dracula, lording it over three fellow travelers who appear to have misapplied their lipstick. Not pictured, alas, are cast members Anthony Hopkins, Winona Ryder, and Keanu Reeves—they're the good guys. The film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is due this month.

Mr. Stoker, as you may recall, wrote the original Dracula novel back in 1897, but is better known today as the first person in Hollywood history to get his name in a movie title without benefit of a very good agent. Still, we suspect that in the end this Dracula will be wholly Francis Ford Coppola's. Vampirism is certainly one of our more hot-blooded myths, coursing with sexual fear and aggression, and Coppola one of our more hot-blooded directors, rarely flinching in the face of possible excess. Indeed, he has ordered up a costume design based in part on the paintings of Gustav Klimt, the fin de siecle master of the decadently ornate. In other words, moviegoers interested in a polite, tidy, drawing-room sort of Dracula had best stay home.

What variations on Stoker's familiar themes will we notice in Coppola's allegedly more faithful retelling? For one, this Dracula can metamorphose into rats or a wolf as well as the standard-issue bat. Plus, unlike Bela Lugosi's or Christopher Lee's versions—or even George Hamilton's—Oldman's count is called upon to speak in authentic Romanian. Our favorite new personality tic is this, however: when Dracula goes into seduction mode, instead of the usual hypnotic stare and hammy "Velcome," he now breaks out a bottle of absinthe—even undead swingers know that liquor is quicker.

BRUCE HANDY