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I suppose there's no point beating around the bush. This AVC-encoded 1080p 1.85:1 transfer of Dracula looks very underwhelming at a first glance. There's almost no new detail distinguishable from the DVD versions. The picture is very soft and extremely dark. The drop off to black is quite noticeable. Details in shadow are practically not there. Now, to be fair, Dracula was shot soft, and a lot of the in-camera 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.

These are technical issues. 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.

Since my publication of this review, I have conversed with Kim Aubry, post production supervisor on the 1992 release of Dracula and freelance producer of the bonus content on this new release. According to Kim, "I was never satisfied that home video and TV editions of Dracula looked much like the release prints that were sent to movie theaters back in 1992....The feeling in the home video business was: the transfer had to be bright, it had to be saturated and colorful, it had to "punch" and it had to exist within the very limited palette of NTSC TV specifications. Allowing a diffuse shadowy background set to taper off to obscurity...that level of subtlety could not be seen or reproduced by most TVs, and so the levels were cranked up. TV versions of Dracula revealed much more of Dracula's castle set backgrounds than the original film prints did." Kim adds, "Simply put, the newer transfers are much closer to the final answer print which was the filmmaker's ideal at the time. What I can tell you is that this new HD transfer is as close (overall) to MY memory of the original film as anything that I have seen, and I worked round-the-clock completing Dracula in Summer-Fall 1992. (I saw a LOT of answer prints and release prints at a LOT of screenings.)" (Note: These comments are the sole opinion of Kim Aubry and are not to be considered official statements by Sony or American Zoetrope).

Furthermore, renowned film restorer Robert Harris (he of Lawrence of Arabia fame) also gave the transfer high marks, echoing many of Kim's comments, stating that the limitations of older televisions required home video editions that looked quite different from the original theatrical release. He goes on to call it "one of the most perfect [releases] to come from the Sony vaults." On the other hand, I've received many firsthand accounts from people who have either seen the film recently, or remember seeing it in 1992, and even got comments from a projectionist who ran the film for months during its original release, all who claim that the colors here are not representative of the original prints.

I should stop here and say we're really talking about two different things: The colors and the detail. I would imagine that there is more detail to be found in the 35mm than what we're getting here. But I am willing to take the word of both Kim Aubry and Robert Harris that this is an excellent representation of what we would get on film. To that end, I have raised the image quality rating to three stars. Simply due to the way it was shot, Dracula will never look crystal clear in high definition. But if this truly is closer to Francis Ford Coppola's vision, then I'm all for it. As far as the colors go, there's clearly some debate as to how close these are to the colors presented in the original theatrical release. But there is no debate that this edition does look different from all previous home video releases, and those who have grown accustomed to the look of the film as presented on previous DVDs or laserdiscs may want to hold on to those older versions. I myself actually like these colors and take no issue with them, but in this particular case, every one will just have to decide for themselves.

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