Snapshot: November 13-15, 1992
By Joel West
January 30, 2009
Reviews for the film were mixed; some claimed Coppola had returned to form, while others felt it was overdone, overlong, and worse...boring. Audiences tended to lean towards the latter as poor word-of-mouth quickly ripped out the legs from under Dracula. Dropping a rather drastic – by 1992 standards, when movies weren't as frontloaded as they are now – 51% in its second weekend (still $15 million); Dracula's high forecasted expectations were slowly diminishing. Adding insult to injury, its claim to largest non-summer opening was short lived, as Home Alone 2 pulled in $31.1 million the following weekend. After the Thanksgiving holiday, Dracula quickly became a non-factor at the box office and finished its run with a still very healthy $82.5 million.
While not the box office behemoth it could have been, Dracula did start a resurgence of classic horror monster and vampire films. In November 1994, both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Interview with the Vampire attempted to bleed audiences of the millions Dracula reaped two Thanksgivings before. A key similarity between these films and Dracula was certainly the talent involved. Previous incarnations had B-movie talent, while these films had critically hailed directors (Kenneth Branagh and Neil Jordan) and A-list actors (Robert DeNiro and Tom Cruise). The end result varied considerably with Frankenstein flopping pretty hard ($22 million) and Interview with the Vampire not only surpassing Dracula's opening ($36 million) but even eclipsing the century mark (final total was $105 million). The vampire genre has since oversaturated the market with notable hits (the Blade and Underworld franchises), a few flops (Vampire in Brooklyn, Bordello of Blood) and everything in between (Van Helsing, Vampires, 30 Days of Night, From Dusk till Dawn). No one would argue the influence that Bram Stoker's Dracula had on the genre over the last 16 years.
The Verdict: Bram Stoker's Dracula resurrected the vampire genre to what it is today by injecting a talented filmmaker, an epic and atmospheric tone and very clever marketing. Vampire films ever since have not strayed too far from that formula (a shout-out to Guillermo del Toro's debut film, Cronos, as being a notable exception). Unfortunately, Dracula also established the pattern of a heavily front-loaded opening followed by a quick exit from the Cineplex.
Continued:
1
2
3
Print this column
