| Duration | 1h 32m | Rating (UK) | 15 |
| Source of story | A slightly unusual take on the Dracula story | ||
| Director | Gary Shore | ||
| Writers/Script | Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless (Characters by Bram Stoker) | ||
| Starring | Luke Evans, Sarah Gadon, Dominic Cooper, Charles Dance, Diarmaid Murtagh | ||
Elevator Pitch: When a Turkish army arrives at his door and demands 1000 boys to become Janisarries, Prince Vlad of Transilvania realises that drastic action is necessary, and so he takes up the offer of an evil vampire to become one of the undead and be imbued with superhuman strength. Alone he faces and destroys a Turkish army, but that is not the end of his problems, and when the sultan arrives with an even larger force, and a means of defending himself against Vlad, now known as Dracula, he must once again go into battle and if he survives, face a future as a vampire.
Content: Vlad and his young wife often look as of they are going to get down to it, but are always disturbed, so no sex or nudity and just a bit of drinking. Some slightly disturbing scenes when Vlad meets the evil vampire in a cave and a lot of sword fights and similar, quite a bit of the time in the dark. Inevitably people are bitten in the neck as we approach the finale.
A View: Vlad was already known as the impaler, and so we would struggle to empathise with him, even more so when he becomes a vampire, and a pretty tenuous plot is only saved by almost continuous action. I did not like it and neither did the critics, but it made a lot of money so must have suited some cinema goers. If you are a follower of the various vampire outings you might enjoy it, so probably worth an hour and a half of your time for nothing.
Additional Info: Vlad the Impaler was a real person in the 15th century in central Europe, and it may have been his enthusiasm for skewering people that inspired Bram Stoker and gave rise to the legend.
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