Ever since watching Bad Sisters earlier this year, I’ve been really interested in seeing Claes Bang in more stuff. The list of options is long, but when I saw that this miniseries on the Bram Stoker classic was only three episodes and featured Phil Dunster in one of them, I knew I was in!
Dracula is a tale as old as time, though I feel that this one may do the best job at weaving all of those stories together. We meet Dracula in several different time periods, but all of them are tied to the Van Helsing’s and their desire to see this murderous beast out of this world. He’s been alive a really long time though, so not only is he smart, but he’s clever. We first see Dracula sucker in lawyer Johnathan Harker, who turns into a longtime snack (both figurative and literal), eventually becoming one of the undead, as well. Luckily a loved one puts him out of his misery by the end.
In the second tale, Dracula is on the Demeter, headed for England, and making his way pretty quickly through all of the passengers. Until I had seen a trailer for a movie basically just like this, only it looked way worse, I had no idea this was ever part of the Dracula tale. He manages to pass as another rich passenger looking to go to England, but as crew members start bailing and the other rich passengers start dying, some convincing turns the remaining survivors attention towards Dracula. By the end of it Van Helsing thinks she’s bested him, but we all know that it’s quite difficult to kill the undead.
Some one twenty five years later, Dracula’s coffin at the bottom of the ocean is disturbed, so he finally does make his way to England, and despite all of the advances in technologies, I’d say he adapts quite well. It’s actually a bit of a shock how quickly he is captured. It’s here where all of the stories converge, but in the form of Ven Helsing and Harker ancestors. They manage to succeed in his undoing, but it’s interesting that of all the evil you see Dracula commit, he still manages to be sympathetic. Having never read the novel, I have no clue if loneliness was his true fear, or that if the Van Helsing ancestor is meant to perish with him in the end, but I found the who thing ultimately romantic and I’m not mad about it.
Now, each of these “episodes” were in fact just short movies, because they were LONG. And I never quite found myself in the mood to finish the series in one go. Or in one month for that matter. Yes, the first episode was watched on the way home from California about six months ago, while the final two were split up on different flights home from Las Vegas and Denver, respectively. But I got it done, and I hope I disturbed at least a few people on those plane rides. I’m curious to see what I’ll settle for next in Bangs’ career, but this too was a top tier entry.