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The Image:
I suppose there's no point beating around the bush. This AVC-encoded 1080p 1.85:1 transfer of Dracula looks dreadful. Simply terrible. There's almost no new detail distinguishable from the DVD versions. The picture is overly soft and often too dark. The drop off to black is outrageous. Details in shadow are practically not there. Now, to be fair, Dracula was shot soft, and a lot of the effects used don't help. But even then, there should be some sort of difference between a 480p transfer of the film and 1080p. In this case, the difference is almost negligible. I can't believe how bad this looks.

These are technical issues. They are the heart of the problems with this disc. However, there are aesthetic concerns that are worth mentioning as well. This transfer of Dracula was supervised by a representative of American Zoetrope, who relayed Francis Ford Coppola's wishes on how the film should look. The final product contains some major changes from the way the movie has looked previously. Dracula is a stylized film, and the colors used to reflect that: Vibrant tints of orange and blue gave the film an otherworldly look. Now, a good majority of the colors have been drained, at times making the film look almost black and white. Other changes, such as turning a light from white to green, have been made for no discernible reason. There is some debate as to how closely these changes reflect Coppola's actual desires. But until we get some kind of statement from Coppola denouncing this transfer, I can only assume that this is at least a reasonable approximation of what he would have done had he personally supervised it. I actually don't hate these new colors, but they are decidedly different and purists will want to pick up the Superbit DVD Sony released several years back. Nonetheless, these changes are not the true heart of the issue, and have no bearing on the low rating I'm giving the image on this disc. That is solely based on the poorly handled technical aspects, which is what people should be most up in arms about.

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Overall Rating: 2.75 out of 5, including 1 review
In-House Review:
Dracula Will Make You Feel Blu...
2.75 out of 5.00 - Film: 3 Features: 3 Video: 1 Audio: 4 - 10/4/2007

See the title character shielding his eyes on the box cover for this Blu-ray release of Bram Stoker’s Dracula? That’s not because of the sunlight, that’s because he caught a glimpse of the horrible transfer Francis Ford Coppola’s movie has been given in high-def (and presumingly on the standard DVD special edition as well).

How bad is the video on this Blu-ray release? Well, if I hadn’t known going in, I would have swore I was watching a standard DVD...and a poor one at that. Not only is the picture “soft,” with tons of grain and little definition, but even the color that stood out in previous releases of Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been pulled back or removed all together for an earthier and muddier look.

The question here is, what exactly happened? Rumors are that Coppola’s American Zoetrope studio insisted on handling the current transfer themselves, and if that’s the case, let’s hope they don’t get their hands on Coppola’s Godfather trilogy or Apocalypse Now if and when those films come to hi-def. I’m not kidding, folks – of all the hi-def movies I own on both formats, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is far and away the worst looking of the lot.

I suppose it’s some consolation that the transfers of the movie don’t seep over to the bonus material. The extras that are presented in 1080i – consisting of a Coppola introduction to the movie (at the beginning of his feature-length commentary track), and some behind the scenes featurettes – are crisp and clear, and even offer some clips from the movie that are far sharper than the same footage from the movie transfer on this disc. Deleted scenes are also included on this release, but they are presented in standard resolution.

The audio doesn’t suffer the same fate as the video, as we get a nice uncompressed PCM 5.1 track here, in addition to a 5.1 Dolby Digital track. French, Hungarian, Czech and Polish 5.1 are also options, as is Russian 4.0.

How do the extras rank? Well Coppola’s commentary track is a mixed bag, offering insight at times, but also going on long rants describing the purpose of each scene...purposes that the typical film viewer doesn’t need explained if he or she is paying attention to the film. The behind the scenes featurettes are far more interesting, especially when covering the pre-production and preparation for the shoot. Here, we discover that Coppola had all the actors stay with him as they rehearsed scenes and went through a number of acting “exercises” that have to be seen to be believed. One of them involves the cast standing in a large circle and “throwing” sounds back and forth between each other. To see professional actors doing this kind of improvisation is funny. To see acting giants like Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman doing it is down right hilarious.

As for the movie itself? While much of it seems more like a stage play than an out-and-out horror movie, it remains one of the better Dracula movies to hit screens in recent years. Coppola is one of the few who have taken the character and made him sympathetic...Oldman’s Dracula is more tortured than evil.

Sadly, because of the awful transfer here, I can’t recommend picking up Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and that’s a shame. Here we have a title that would have looked great on Blu-ray and we get a release that barely looks good enough for DVD, let alone the hi-def format.

Prince Vlad must be rolling in his coffin....

Editor's Note:
Kim Aubrey, who works for ZAP Zoetrope Aubry Productions LLC and worked on the Blu-ray transfer of this title, took some issues with some of the statements in our Empire Review.

In the interest of "fair play" and making sure our customers had all the facts, we thought it fair to include his comments here:

If the electronic transfer of the film that you are seeing reveals grain structure...that is, if you are SEEING the film grain, then by definition, you are seeing all of the sharpness that was captured by the film camera. We can’t manufacture sharpness or definition in the telecine process. It is true that in the standard definition home video era, it was common to dial in some electronic edge enhancement to overcome the limitations of NTSC Video and television receivers of that era. And it was common in pre HD transfers to “filter out” the grain giving movies more of a “TV look” which was considered desirable at that time. But the “detail enhancement” they used in that era was erzatz definition....fake. An illusion of detail. Again, if you are seeing “tons of grain” then you are seeing a faithful reproduction of the film element.

American Zoetrope, Francis Coppola’s company does not own (and has never owned) the facilities to do feature film telecine mastering...aka the film transfer. The studio that OWNS the title (in this case Columbia-Sony) owns Dracula and they commissioned and paid for the new transfer in 1996 because they believed that the old one was wanting. I agreed with them. I was post production executive on the film in 1991-1992 and I always was horrified at what the home video and TV editions of Dracula looked like because they were so far from what Coppola and Ballhaus had done for the original release prints. So orange-y. So bright. Zoetrope’s role in the new transfer was to make sure that the transfer colorist had access to a pristine original “final answer print” to screen and refer to. A final answer print is a vaulted 35mm film print in Sony’s possession that bears a signature from the original production indicating that the director or director of photography was satisfied with the color timing and that this print was to be the gold standard...the reference for all 35mm release prints to be compared with and accepted/rejected. It was a controversial answer print at the time. It was dark. The soundtrack was considered very avant-garde. Coppola was breaking rules. Some critics appreciated it, others did not.

- DVD Empire
by Shannon T. Nutt

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