The cheesy visual effects, the faddish 3D crud, the overblown score, bad lighting and uneven digital photography and the awkward acting and direction are the least of the problems with Dario Argento's "Dracula 3D." Its adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel removes so much of the good stuff from the book and replaces it with bad ideas taken from other Dracula movies and a few bad ideas of its own. The movie would've benefited from a brisker pacing, at least a half hour of it cut, and some camping up. The one thing Argento manages to exploit well, and it's important, is the story's inherit sex appeal. Sold as Dracula "reimagined," the only parts that seem to have been reimagined were to make this movie very cheaply and to show larger nude breasts. As for cheap Dracula adaptations, I've seen much better, but on the latter account, it succeeds.Perhaps the most significant part of Stoker's tale to be axed is its invasion narrative, of the Count traveling West for his blood lust. Instead, in this movie, Jonathan and Mina Harker, as well as Van Helsing, travel to Dracula and the small village he inhabits. Jonathan is changed into a librarian--an expansion of his role in Hammer's 1958 "Dracula"--for this purpose. At least, the filmmakers found some decent locations for the town and the surrounding woods. Intentionally, no doubt, we never get too good of a look at Castle Dracula--just a few small interiors and partial exteriors. On top of this, the screenwriters add the story of a pact between Dracula and a group of the townspeople, which has them looking the other way as Dracula feeds off their neighbors. I don't see any reason for this storyline, and it should've been cut. So should have the character of the priest. The role of Renfield, a character actually from the novel, is poorly used here, too, and he would've been better left out, just as are Lucy's three suitors, who she only mentions but we never see.Removing Lucy's three suitors, however, subtracts from the movie the blood transfusion business from the book. Consequently, the themes of infidelity, venereal disease and the use of technology to defeat the ancient Count are largely absent. There'e still Mina and Jonathan's infidelity somewhat, and the movie introduces a jealous fem vamp (again, this is similar to the '58 "Dracula," which also only had one bride for Dracula instead of the book's three). The novel was written in an epistolary style--that is, it consisted of diary entries, letters, phonograph records and other accounts from multiple narrators. Inconsistently, the movie retains some of Jonathan's journal writing, but drops that of Mina or any other character, and Jonathan's internal narration doesn't add much here.Another part that this movie rips-off of other Dracula movies and one that I've repeatedly bemoaned in my reviews of those other movies is the insertion of a reincarnation romance--making Stoker's Dracula, the personification of evil, into a lovesick crybaby. Once again, the Count believes Mina to be the reincarnation of his dead wife. Moreover, Dracula tells Mina that he recognized her as such from a picture, which the movie never showed us him seeing (the picture is a device first used in Nosferatu (1922), by the way). (A similar hole is made in a scene where Van Helsing knows that Mina's memory of Castle Dracula is hazy even though the movie never showed us her telling Van Helsing that.) The movie also includes a book that Jonathan looks at in Dracula's library that suggests that the ancient vampire was once the historical Vlad the Impaler, but fortunately this is only a brief scene. Stoker only made this connection with the name "Dracula" and with a couple sentences of speculation in the book by Van Helsing.As for the good--or at least not as bad--stuff, there are several scenes of gratuitous nudity. This is the only Dracula adaptation that I've seen where Mina gives Lucy (cringingly, played by the director's daughter) a bath. The sex scene between Tania (a name taken from the '58 "Dracula) and a married man is laughable. The long shots of them entirely nude makes it obvious that he's thrusting at air and that there's no actual penetration. Some of the cheesy special effects are equally hilarious. I'm OK with Dracula being able to turn into various creatures, including an owl and flies, as well as the usual wolves. The mantis is my favorite. Appropriately, this Dracula repeats Stoker's "children of the night" line. Dracula is also seen scaling the walls of his Castle, as per the novel. On the other hand, I don't know why the movie retains the part about Lucy wearing a scarf to hide her bite marks when the movie changes their location to the back of her knee. Its one of many baffling decisions Argento and crew made to add clutter to this hackneyed and hacked-out Dracula.(Mirror Note: Jonathan notices that Dracula doesn't have a reflection in the glass from a bookcase. In another scene, Jonathan freaks out from seeing his own blurry reflection. This latter scene is a bit confusing--is the reflection's blurriness an indication that Jonathan just isn't well or that he's turning? Is it a subjective shot or not?)

I may not be the biggest fan of famed Italian horror director Dario Argento, but I definitely have nothing but the utmost respect for he and his contributions to the world of cinema. He's done some incredibly work and his style is the sort-of thing that movie-goers dream of and film students salivate over. So I loaded up his recent 3D adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" with a certain sense of intrigue. I saw an early concept trailer some time ago that looked woefully bad, but it was clearly unfinished, so I opted not to judge the film by its quality. I needed to see the entire completed film start-to-finish to be fair and balanced in my assessment....I should have just stuck with the trailer. It had all the camp and unintentional hilarity of the finished film, but none of the prolonged and shockingly boring padding."Dracula 3D" might just be one of the worst adaptations of the character I've ever seen thanks to the nonsensically and bizarrely awful production. While lead Thomas Kretschmann salvages what he can in a surprisingly decent performance, the film just implodes around him. Forget what you've heard about the incompetent craftsmanship, laughable visual effects and amateurish direction, because despite what you might suspect... it's far worse than what you might have imagined. Nothing will quite prepare you for just how poor this work is in virtually every conceivable sense.The film predominately follows Mina Harker (Marta Gastini), as she travels to the village of Passo Borgo at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains sometime after her husband Jonathan (Unax Ugalde) was sent to meet Count Dracula for business. Soon enough, she encounters the vampire count (Thomas Kretschmann), who is entranced by her resemblance to his beloved Dolinger- who had died some centuries ago. And it soon becomes clear that he desires Mina for a dark and devious purpose. And so, Mina must team with famed vampire hunter Van Helsing (Rutger Haur) to try and stop the vile vampire lord...The film is an absolute trainwreck. The quality of filmmaking is shocking, with very little effort put into basic facets of production like frame composition and flow, and a complete lack of post- production tweaking like color- timing or pacing. Most sequences are constructed with only the most basic of set-ups; poorly framed with one or two cameras simply set- down somewhere vaguely near the action on tripods with a complete lack of cinematic lighting or eye towards capturing the scene dynamically. It feels completely thrown together without interest. Completely apathetic. And outside of maybe mildly tinting scenes vaguely a dark blueish- green during the night or lazily brightening the image with a mild yellow "tinge" for daytime scenes, it seems no effort was put into trying to manipulate the cinematography. The editing is also inorganic and lacks any sense of real flow, lending to the film feeling bloated and boring despite being less than two hours long. There's plenty that could have been done to improve the speed at which scenes play out, but the lack of effort prevents this.The effects? My god, the effects! This was a 2012 film, but it boasts digital trickery about on par with a 1992 TV-movie. I know not to expect "Avatar" quality digital trickery, but when an early green- screen sequence at a train-station actually boasts some of the same stock background elements I got for free online over five years ago, lazily patched together with no treatment to blend them realistically, you know the effects are gonna be something else... in all the wrong ways. Digital creatures all move with hilariously inorganic motion and shine like plastic. Green-screen sequences look cartoonish and completely unreal. And then there's the Mantis. If you've seen the trailer, you know what I'm talking about. It might be the worst digital effects sequence I've ever seen. It comes out of nowhere, lacks any set-up or pay-off and looks like something out of a children's cartoon. It might be the single most unintentionally hilarious thing ever committed to the screen.Add to that flat performances from the bulk of the cast, forgettable music that fails to thrill or enthrall, atrocious cinematography and some of the most bland screen writing I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing, and you got yourself one of the most perplexing failures in recent cinematic memory. If it weren't for one or two decent roles performed by actors far too talented to be here, the unintentional humorous moments of camp that crop up here and there and gorgeous co-star Miriam Giovanelli's penchant to be nude for much of the run- time, it'd be unwatchable. Argento... you're a talented man. And you've made some phenomenal films. But crap like this won't do."Dracula 3D" barely scoots by with a 2 out of 10. If you want some laughs, maybe pop it on. But even then, they're few and far in- between, and the bulk of the film is just an incoherent, incompetent, boring mess.

I haven't seen the 3D version, so I am not at liberty to judge that (though a friend told me that a scene with a naked lady almost at the beginning is looking good). What I can say, is that the movie in general is not looking good. I watched it on DVD but it's painfully obvious that there was almost no money to spend. While small budget movies in America make it look like they do have a big budget, Dario Argento is not able to make it look like anything.Family "issues" aside (though Asia never had a problem with her body, so let's not read anything into her being naked once again in a movie by her dad), it's the acting altogether that will have you shaking your head, if not giving you a bad feeling. It's a disaster and not in a good or funny sense. In Giallo you could have fun with how ridiculous and how bad the acting was (or the "plot"). Unfortunately there is nothing to laugh here. There is a bit of the mentioned eye candy for lovers of the female body, don't wait for any male hunk to appear though.The "special" effects are another tragic category that add to the confusion. If it were a student movie you might be able to forgive and forget, but for a former (?) maestro of the horror genre this is just pitiful. And that's me being nice. He might be forced to have his actors talk in English (which makes them look worse), but that doesn't change the fact, that the direction is bad too, the script is lacking and a general absence of anything that might be able to save this .... I do wonder if his early work might have been elevated by the people surrounding him (Goblin and other people) ...

I'm quite shocked at these reviews. How can anyone justify a comparison between this and the Hammer version? The Hammer version was miles better. This looks like a PBS quickie with amazingly bad CGI. It is dull, the sets are uninspired, the acting superbly bad and the directing atrocious. You have to be a die hard Argento fanatic to make your way through this amazingly poor and unfaithful video. As mentioned the mantis scene is just bizarre, and I don't know if he was trying to make this silly or what. Giving this a good review makes me very confused as to where these people are coming from. This in no way hearkens back to the 70's or 80's, so either pop in Coppola's version or Horror of Dracula and spare yourself the trouble.