Dracula: Dead and Loving It *** (1995, Leslie Nielsen, Mel Brooks, Peter MacNicol, Harvey Korman) – Classic Movie Review 1732

Producer/co-writer/director Mel Brooks revisits one of his finest hours – the 1974 Young Frankenstein for a belated companion piece that has enough good humour and amusing jokes for tolerant Brooks aficionados to call this a slight return to form after his fairly terrible Robin Hood spoof Men in Tights.

Brooks’s best idea is to cast deadpan Leslie Nielsen as Count Dracula, the man with the fangs (with a perfect vocal impersonation of the original 1931 Count, Bela Lugosi), and to let both his silvery sleek star and the screenplay treat the old Bram Stoker story as seriously as possible in a comedy. Talking of impersonations, Brooks’s old chum Harvey Korman does a great Nigel Bruce (though he wasn’t in the 1931 Dracula) as Dr Seward and Peter MacNicol does a silly but funny version of Dwight Frye’s 1931 role as the loopy Renfield.

And what, you ask, of Brooks? Has he cast himself in his own movie? Just try to keep him out – he plays Professor Van Helsing and creditably manages to be both pretty low key and amusing. His wife, Anne Bancroft, gets an amusingly soppy cameo as gypsy woman Madame Ouspenskaya (now where have I heard that name before?) and just escapes in time before outstaying her welcome.

It’s rough and ready, but it’s a likeable horror movie spoof comedy. All it needs is a team of TV gag writers to write in a sprinkle of really funny jokes and it would be a very good one.

Amy Yasbeck (as Mina), Lysette Anthony (as Lucy), Steven Weber (as Jonathan Harker) and Clive Revill (as Sykes) co-star and Mark Blankfield, Chuck McCann, Avery Schreiber, Megan Cavanagh and Gregg Binkley are also in the cast.

The 87-year-old Brooks says in 2014: ‘I did Dracula: Dead and Loving It but I didn’t star in it, which was a mistake.’

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1732

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