I don't remember this well enough to rate it.

Dracula, on BBC One (UK)
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This aired in the U.K. in 2006, and in the U.S. in 2007. Well, I haven't read the original book (or hadn't when I saw this), but I think this departs somewhat from it. (Rereading this after reading the book... wow, did this movie ever depart from it.) And while I think there were some vaguely interesting ideas, I still didn't find this version particularly memorable. Anyway... it's about... love, as well as religion and empire. I didn't really follow everything that went on, but there was a fellow named Lord Arthur Holmwood, who married a woman named Lucy Westenra (Sophia Myles). However, he was waiting to consummate their marriage until he could be cured of syphilis, which he only recently learned he inherited from his parents. But this being Victorian England, he didn't want anyone to know about his condition. Even if not infecting his wife and not telling her the reason meant allowing her to fret over why he was so distant.

However, he had a plan to cure the disease, which involved the help of a man named Singleton, who was a member of an occult secret society, the Brotherhood of the Undead. They sent a man named Jonathan Harker to Transylvania to deliver some papers to Count Dracula, which included information about property Arthur had bought for Dracula in London, as well as a ticket on a ship headed to England, so Dracula could move there. Dracula at first looked old, creepy, Gothic... but after killing Jonathan, he looked younger. But once he got to England, he didn't do anything that was expected of him, because he didn't really care about the interests of his benefactor, Arthur, nor of his faithful servants in the Brotherhood, including Singleton. His primary goal was in spreading vampirism throughout the British Empire, though of course he'd have to start small. He was also interested in Christianity, which he didn't seem to put much stock in, because... I guess vampirism was his own religion. Or something. Yes, as I said, religion and empire, interesting ideas, but I don't think they were well-enough explored. Of course, there wasn't really time....

Meanwhile, he was also interested in Mina Murray (Stephanie Leonidas), who was coincidentally both the best friend of Lucy, and the fiancee of Jonathan... and she was now in mourning, because everyone on Dracula's ship had died, which was assumed to include Jonathan. Still, she befriended Dracula. Alas, he couldn't get to her because she always had a cross pendant or whatever on her. So instead he took Lucy. Well, there were a couple of other characters in the story. One was Dr. John Seward, a friend of Arthur's, and also he had always loved Lucy, so... there was some tension between himself and Arthur since the marriage. And he eventually found a man named Abraham Van Helsing (played by David Suchet, far removed from the familiar image of his Hercule Poirot), who apparently had been hired by the Brotherhood to research pre-Christian religions and myths like vampires, and now they had him locked up. But he would provide some information that would prove useful to Arthur and Seward, who along with Mina would all have to try to destroy Dracula.

And that's about all I can tell you. It wasn't bad, I just felt like if you're going to change the story and introduce new motivations and such, you really should do more with them. But like I said, there wasn't time. So basically the ambitions of the production end up boiling down to pretty people acting on some nicely Gothic sets.


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Novel: Dracula
(The following is a list of things I've seen or want to see. There have been countless other things that have adapted or parodied the novel.)

Adaptations: Dracula (1931) * Bram Stoker's Dracula
Other movies: Nosferatu * Taste the Blood of Dracula * Dracula 2000 * The Batman vs. Dracula * Dracula Untold
TV: Buffy vs. Dracula * Dark Prince (2000) * Hellsing * Dracula (2006) * The Librarian 3 * Dracula (2013)
Parodies: Blacula * Dracula: Dead and Loving It * Mina Murray's Journal
Ensembles: Drak Pack * The Monster Squad * Van Helsing * Hotel Transylvania * Penny Dreadful