Everybody Wants to Fuck Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)

No more sad love songs – we're back to doing Draculas. Also, book announcements: 

Clayface: Celebrity Dirt #4 is on sale at comic shops and the usual digital outlets. Issue #5 will be out on November 11. 

You can pick up Dead Teenagers in trade paperback at any self-respecting bookstore – and on the Internet, like it or not.

The world has run out of new things to say about Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), and I know it. The vast visual bonkers-ness of it; the way it occupies the exact midpoint between “visionary work of genius” and “self-indulgent folly;” building an actual gigantic journal page so that you can run an actual tiny train over it; Keanu Reeves’ utter Canadian inability to comprehend the British accent; it’s all been said. 

What I am here to say, though, is that Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the most direct and effective treatment of Dracula’s central material, which is: Fucking. You can draw a lot of metaphors out of Bram Stoker’s text: Jack Halberstam sees anti-Semitism, Robert Eggers sees COVID, Marxists see the depredations of the aristocracy, and maybe, on some level, all of those things are true. 

But the deepest and most central truth of Dracula — the one anguished message it cries out to the world, every time you read it — is that everybody wants to fuck Dracula. The vampire is less a character than he is the raw force of Sex, erupting up through the surface of repressive Victorian society and driving everyone bonkers. 

Sex is an inherently democratic, anti-hierarchical force, which is why we put so much effort and punishment into defining the “one” “correct” way to do it. No matter who you are — rich, poor, man, woman, important, unimportant, ruler, ruled — the most intense pleasure that humans are capable of resides in your body, and you can access it, for free, with yourself or with another willing person, at any time. 

I mean, you can also not access it, if you prefer — I’m not forgetting you, asexuals — but if you have the drive, sex reconfigures your life, and your understanding of the world, in primal ways. Sexual desire doesn’t obey the social order. It doesn’t manifest in the way it’s “supposed” to, between the people it’s “supposed” to. One of the most powerful drives we have is also the drive most likely to run in direct opposition to our social conditioning, making the patriarchy’s hold on us perpetually endangered and insecure.

No matter how often women are told to be passive, helpless, dependent, childlike beings, they can and do actively pursue sex on their own terms. No matter how much the heterosexual nuclear family is figured as the one, right, natural way to do things, people keep on being queer. No matter how often we’re told that lifelong monogamy is the purpose and ultimate fulfillment of the sexual urge, people keep cheating on their spouses. 

No matter how much you internalize the rules of your society — no matter how hard you try to be a “good,” responsible, law-abiding member of civilization as you understand it — sex exists, running through your body, reminding you of what you really want, and how extremely different it may be from what you’re going after. 

There are words for that kind of force. You can call it truth. You can call it liberation. But as long as you fear it, as long as you need to run away from or deny it, sex can only ever be a monster — specifically, in this case, it can only be Dracula, with a goofy little hair-butt and a house coat, making a series of disquieting moves on Keanu Reeves. 

Everybody wants to fuck Dracula, and Francis Ford Coppola knows this, and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is therefore nothing but a catalogue of people running headlong into their own repressed sexuality and getting cut on the  edges of their own desire. Here, we analyze the desires in question. 

TOM WAITS

Does He Want To Fuck Dracula? Yes.

Perversion Represented: Sadomasochism.

How Do You Know? Frequent, lusty cries of “master;” excited appraisals of the Master’s overwhelming power; performative self-abasement; tendency to get locked and/or tied up in places; seeming sexual excitement over being required to eat a kitten.

Is This As Weird As It Gets? Oh, gosh, no, this is an appetizer. Let’s move on. 

SADIE FROST

Does She Want To Fuck Dracula? And how! 

Perversion Represented: Women enjoying themselves during sex; polyamory. 

How Do You Know? Sadie Frost has three boyfriends, and society demands she marry but one. Also, she makes out with her best friend Mina sometimes. Society doesn’t know what to do with that. There’s only one way out of this mess for Sadie: She has absolutely got to fuck Dracula, and she does, in spectacular fashion, while wearing a red cape and requiring Dracula to present as some kind of wolfman. She also, crucially, allows Dracula to drain her blood. Before long, all three boyfriends are gathered around her bedside, lovingly infusing Sadie with their bodily fluids while she pants and moans and purrs about the terrible pain of blood loss. Chalk one up for women’s rights, and also for Dracula, a feminist ally before his time. 

WINONA RYDER 

Does She Want to Fuck Dracula? Desperately. 

Perversion Represented: Women enjoying themselves during sex (this will be a theme). 

How Do You Know? Winona Ryder plays “Mina,” the fiancée of Jonathan Harker, who has held the title of Literature’s Dumbest Man for 129 years and running. In most adaptations, and in the novel, it’s a mystery as to why anyone would want to marry Jonathan; in this one, he’s played by Keanu Reeves, which really clears things up. Unfortunately, when Jonathan absconds to Dracula’s castle — at which point it takes him about five seconds to trip over his shoelaces and fall face-first into a dungeon full of vampires — Mina is left quasi-single, at which point Dracula is free to hit on her. Mina, tempted by the prospect of a man who does not possess all the intellectual acuity of a half-empty tube of toothpaste, fucks Dracula. Trouble ensues. 

Wait, Wasn’t She Also Making Out With Sadie Frost At One Point? Yes, but the film doesn’t bother to follow up on it. 

Well, That’s Disappointing. I couldn’t agree more. Let’s do a gay one to cheer us up. 

ANTHONY HOPKINS

Does He Want To Fuck Dracula? Yes.

Perversion Represented: Repressed homosexuality leading to deep and violent anger against women.

Isn’t That a Pretty Reductive Stereotype? Take it up with author and repressed homosexual Bram Stoker. 

How Do You Know? Anthony Hopkins — also known as “Von Helsing” — is absolutely obsessed with Dracula. He’s tracked him across countries and decades. He’s devoted his whole life to finding the man. In fact, it’s strongly implied that he has devoted multiple lifetimes to Dracula, and has been reincarnating for centuries just to find him. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, all he ever finds is women who have previously fucked Dracula. Anthony von Hopkins calls these women “whores,” chops their heads off, and mutilates their corpses, which he insists is the only acceptable punishment for Dracula-fucking — a thing he has never done, and would never do, but which no-one else on Earth is allowed to do, especially not women.

Isn’t That Just Misogyny? Maybe. But when Winona Ryder is possessed by the spirit of Dracula and offers to fuck him, Anthony Hopkins says yes right away.

I’m Just Saying, There’s A Case To Be Made That Von Helsing Represents The Victorian Medical Establishment, Which Really Did Punish Women’s Sexuality With Clitoridectomy or Forced Sexual Assault By Doctors — The Violent And Sexualized Control Of Women’s Bodies Is Built Into His Position As An Authority Figure, Rendering His Own Sexuality More Or Less Irrelevant. Oh, sure, we all know that.

Anthony Hopkins Is Gay For Dracula, Though. Right? Oh, one hundred percent.

THESE FOUR GUYS WHO ALL MYSTERIOUSLY KNOW EACH OTHER, i.e. RICHARD E. GRANT, CARY ELWES, a COWBOY, and KEANU REEVES

Do They Want to Fuck Dracula? Sure.

But Also? Each other’s girlfriends.

But Also? Each other.

How Do You Know? They have nothing in common besides wanting to fuck Dracula and/or the same women and/or going on various missions to “stake” the same “vampire” together. They are inseparable nonetheless. It’s not that they radiate desire for each other, exactly, but if they’re not fucking, it’s hard to imagine what they have to talk about. 

Be Honest: Are You Just Saying This Because One Of Them Is A Cowboy? Well, it doesn’t hurt my case.  

Perversion Represented: A group of men directing their sexual energies toward each other by sharing the same partner, or — to use a regrettably vulgar term — “pulling a train.” 

Look: Here comes that train now.  

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA, aka MONICA BELLUCCI and SOME OTHER ONES, aka THE BREAKOUT STARS OF THIS FILM

Perversion Represented: Women enjoying themselves during sex (told you); foursomes; oral pleasure; the erotic possibilities of the male nipple; occasional light baby-eating; making out with what you think is two ladies, but which is actually just one lady made out of two torsos conjoined at the waist, but which, in later scenes, does seem to actually be two ladies; really, really, really wanting to fuck Keanu Reeves. 

Wait. Don’t They Want To Fuck Dracula? Sure, but they primarily want to fuck Keanu Reeves. 

Do They Fuck Him? To a degree hitherto unprecedented. 

Can You Describe It? I honestly don’t think I can. You’d have to see it for yourself.  

I See. What Role Does Dracula Play In All This? He busts in on them mid-foursome, furious that these women have interfered with his plan. 

Which Was? Also to fuck Keanu Reeves, but to do it first, before the rest of the polycule got to him. 

So, To Conclude: Everybody Wants To Fuck Dracula. But Dracula… Wants to fuck Keanu Reeves. And so do his girlfriends. 

Yeah. That Seems About Right. Does it not? 

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) is available to rent on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

That's it for the Halloween Special this year! Because of the weirdness of the schedule, you'll probably get the next post on Wednesday, November 11, and (like most non-Halloween posts) it'll probably be paywalled. I'm not gone – just finishing up some other projects – but I'll miss you nonetheless.