Review: Dracula’s Guest. By Brian Kirst

Dracula’s Guest is a weird amalgamation. It is half homage to the beautifully filmed whiteness of Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu and half overwrought store front theatre production. It also proves that those who consider Bram Stoker just as much an adventure writer as a horror novelist are correct. The title character is as often engaged in fighting off mortal companions on his overseas adventure as he is in battling the more supernatural elements in the tale.

Writer/Director Michael Feifer has niftily taken influences from several of Stoker’s stories to create this intrigue. Stoker himself is a character – a young real estate man who takes off after Count Dracula after he kidnaps his love, Elizabeth. Feifer nicely adds some originality to the standard elements of Dracula lore – unfortunately he is belied by his low budget and even the starkness he utilizes, while effective, does not help create the period richness that this tale deserves. And while Andrew Bryniarski (Leatherface in the recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is often a surprisingly fierce Dracula and Wes Ramsey (Brotherhood of Blood) is a subtly committed Stoker, their overpowering emotions often seem out of place without a Francis Ford Coppola type budget.

And while this gives this project an odd air akin to watching enthusiastic theater actors on a shaky set, it also gives the production an interesting and unusual glow. Ultimately though, and keeping in mind that this is a PG 13 epic (featuring cunning performances from Amy Lydon, Caia Coley and Maya Waterman in a series of affectionately felt character roles) and low on blood (and with a rather abrupt, slightly unresolved ending –What shall become of the child?! -What shall become of the child!? ), being Dracula’s Guest may be a rather pleasantly innocuous way to spend a sleepy Saturday afternoon.