Starring: Leslie Nielsen, Mel Brooks, Lysette Anthony, Amy Yasbeck, Steven Weber, and Peter MacNicol.
Summary: A mysterious force is sucking blood from the helpless beauties of England in this Mel Brooks' Dracula spoof.
The movie begins in Transylvania in 1893. The count is visited by a traveling salesman named Thomas Renfield. Renfield is visited by voluptuous female vampires in the night, and they molest him. Dracula walks in on the scene, and decides that Renfield will be his new slave. Together they sail for England; along the way Dracula kills all of the crew. Dracula goes to the opera to meet a man named Dr. Seward who has property adjoining Dracula's. He is attracted to Seward's daughter Lucy. That night he flies into Lucy's room as a bat, and then regains his form after Seward and Jonathan, the fiancée of Seward's other daughter, have come to investigate a strange noise in Lucy's room. Dracula drinks Lucy's blood. Renfield is locked up in Seward's Sanitarium because it is believed he killed all the crew of the ship they arrived on . Seward lets him out for lunch, and he eats bugs from the ground so he is locked up again. Seward finds Lucy pale so he contacts Professor Van Helsing (Mel Brooks). His diagnosis is that Lucy has a vampire bite. To protect her they adorn her room with garlic. Dracula can't enter the room so he frees Renfield who is caught trying to steal the garlic. Somehow Lucy ends up outside and they find her dead. After Lucy is buried the professor decides she should be dug up and have a stake driven through her heart because she might turn into a vampire. The Count visits Seward to offer his condolences, and the professor decides that he is the vampire. Lucy wakes up in her coffin and kills the gravedigger. Jonathan has gone to check the grave and he finds Lucy alive. He calls the professor who tells him he must drive a stake through her heart. With Lucy dead, the Count decides to go after Lucy's sister Mina. He takes her to his castle and they dance all night. In the morning Jonathan comes to Mina's room, and it is discovered she has also been bitten by the vampire. They hold a ball to determine who the vampire is. With a huge mirror reflecting the images of the party goers, it is obvious that the Count is the vampire since he does not have a reflection. Dracula leaves the party, but Seward and the professor know to follow Renfield and he will lead them to the Count. The end up in an old chapel, and the sun is coming up. There is a struggle, and Renfield opens a hole in the ceiling to let Dracula escape, but the light kills him. Mina wakes up and recovers from her vampire bite, and Renfield follows Dr. Seward back to the sanitarium.
Commentary: As with all spoofs, this movie isn't meant to follow the exact story line of the original, but there are some parts that are just blatantly inaccurate. Characterization and plot schemes are direly changed.
The majority of John Harker's role in the Bram Stoker novel comes from the beginning of the story when he goes to Transylvania to meet Dracula on behalf of his employer. In the movie, the insane asylum patient, Renfield, assumes this role and then later changes into a mad man. A couple of key characters are completely omitted. Lucy's mother, Mrs. Westerna, is not portrayed and neither is Arthur, Lucy's husband. The absence of Arthur leads to an inaccuracy of plot sequence. In the book, Arthur drives the stake through Lucy's heart, but in this movie, John Harker does it.
In telling the story, many things have changed. Lucy never converses with Dracula in the book, but here she meets him at the opera and is instantly attracted to him. She goes as far as to seductively undress in front of the window when she knows he's watching. The entire finale is made up because rays of sunshine did not defeat Dracula in the literary ending.
--Marianne Refuerzo