"Canadian illustrator/animator/filmmaker Theodore Trout took seven years to craft this strange, eerie, and inspired adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic vampire tale. In 1872, British solicitor Jonathan Harker (McPherson) travels to Transylvania to conduct business for the bizarre Count Dracula (Trout), a Medieval Warlord who rose from his death as a vampire and now believes himself to be the Savior of Men. He plans to share the gift of eternal life with the unsuspecting inhabitants of London. Leaving Harker to his fate at the hands of his harem (DeKorte, Chowns, Cawsey, Cookie-Bailey), Dracula arrives in England and decimates the population, including aristocrat Lucy Westwood (Brown), best friend of Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray (Lisman). Professor Van Helsing (Grimshaw) is brought in to help diagnose this mystery illness, but he can't save Lucy from Dracula's clutches, and must be destroyed by her own fiancé, Dr. John Seward (Case). When Harker escapes Dracula's Transylvanian fortress and returns to England, they are able to determine that Dracula is the master that bug-eating lunatic Renfield (Hewitt) has been babbling about. Aided by Seward's American friend Quincy Morris (Carnell), they attempt to track Dracula down, but he has already infected Mina with his unholy blood. Led by Van Helsing, who knows Dracula's true nature - he is the Anti-Christ - they use Mina's psychic link with him to pursue the vampire back to Transylvania and stop his true reign of terror over all humanity. The film is shot in the style of a silent film, even though it features sound, songs by Priestess, and a soundtrack by "Anton Phibes and Winslow Leech." Monochromatic, Trout has painstakingly infused each frame with artistic touches, and provided the illustrations for the title sequence. He also makes for an interesting, impressive Dracula. The cast is mostly competent, although the British accents come and go, and some are about as convincing as Keanu Reeves' in BRAM STOKER'S Dracula (1992). The inclusion of gore and nudity give it a bit of a Hammer Films vibe, at times, but for the most part, it tries to be fairly original. There are more nods to Max Shreck than Lugosi, Lee, or Oldman, and the insertion of End Times religious themes is an interesting twist on the story. Copies of the film on DVD-R are available at Trout's website, as well as Amazon.com. "Dracula" being one of my all-time favorite stories, yet one of the most frequently adapted to film, it's sometimes hard to find a new version that isn't a rehash of everything that came before, a re-imaging that's now incomprehensible and unrecognizable as "Dracula," or worse, just boring and redundant. Trout and company have brought some interesting touches to the tale, although some of the animation is a bit primitive and seemingly out of place, at times. Mostly, though, it works." --Dan Cziraky
