Here we see him literally claim Jonathan as his own. His attraction is to life and beating hearts rather than particular genders. Dracula has always been an overtly sensual character. The central love triangle is not just that of two men in love with the same woman. It’s not just a subtle atmospheric exploration though. Coppola’s Dracula creates a mix of sexual tension and repression so powerful it almost shimmers as Jonathan traverses his host’s strange home. Anyone who grew up harboring a crush on someone of the same sex understands that bottled feeling. Period films are often dense with unspoken repression. There’s also the innate sense of yearning so intertwined with every moment of Dracula and each second of coming of age while queer. It almost seems made to engage young eyes and super queer kids who are too shy to audition for school plays. Even the opening gambit of shadow puppetry style tableaus showcasing the horrors of Vlad’s war add to the movie’s extremely stylized magic. Seductive reds and moonlit highlights bathe Jonathan’s trip to Transylvania. The entire proceeding has a theatrical decadence that created something completely extravagant and over the top in a way that horror movies in the ’90s rarely got to be. Coppola leans heavily into that and amps up the eroticism. I found it utterly irresistible.ĭracula has always been a sensual, tragic romance.
Campiness and sexual tension permeated Dracula. Mina and Jonathan, Jonathan and the Brides, Dracula and Jonathan, Jonathan and Mina. Who they want to make out with is neither here nor there. The same hot people I already loved, wearing delightful gothic costuming and apparently wanting nothing more than to make out. Not only is it entirely over the top and spooky without being terrifying, but it features hot people. Watching Dracula as an adult I clearly see why the film appealed so much to my younger self. They played lovers cursed by the attention of the titular immortal monster. I had burgeoning childhood feelings for both Ryder and Reeves, and their arrival in the period horror film confirmed those feelings. The fact I had been raised on Bill & Ted and Edward Scissorhands probably helped too. Given all that, it’s no surprise that I found myself drawn to the melodrama of the 1992 vision. My vicarious thrills came from reading the backs of gruesome VHS tapes and as many dog eared copies of Frankenstein and Dracula as I could get my hands on. I was already a horror hound from a young age. The deep reds of Dracula’s muscle armor, the flowing dresses worn by Winona Ryder’s Mina Harker, the tight collars of Keanu Reeves’ uptight Jonathan, and nightmarish flashes of Sadie Frost’s Lucy and the wolf punctuate the swirling mess of my early years. I have no distinct recollection of when I first watched the movie, but it’s ever present in my childhood memories. That powerful, satin-coated, shimmering masterpiece was Bram Stoker’s Dracula.ĭirected by Francis Ford Coppola, the film debuted when I was just four years old. But in the midst of it all there was one movie, a shining beacon of gothic camp that made me realize that it was possible to have a heartbreaking crush on more than one gender at once. And we never once considered that any of it ran deeper than aesthetic choices. We watched John Waters movies, made Spice Girls inspired drag music videos, and devoured the campiest horror. Some of my earliest memories feature me and my childhood best friend hosting Eurovision watch parties as tiny children, sometimes for others and sometimes just for ourselves. And I mean funny in both a “isn’t that funny” philosophical way and in a “funny haha” way. Looking back, it’s funny just how outwardly queer so many of the things I enjoyed were.