Review: Netflix’s ‘Dracula’ mini-series is a hyper-sexual feast

In 1997’s “Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction,” Romanian-American poet, author, and teacher Leonard Wolf considered the implications behind our culture’s obsession with Count Dracula. “Some years ago, I thought I had a key to the power of the vampire image,” he writes in the introduction. “In an essentially sociological reading of [Bram] Stoker’s ‘Dracula,’ I was willing to believe that the vampire count stood for the modern industrialized world’s fascination with ‘energy without grace, power responsibility’ [Wolf, Leonard. A Dream of Dracula (Potter, 1992)]. I saw in Dracula a symbol of the unbridled, and often exploitative expansion in the twentieth century of industrialism and the factory system.”

As dangerous as Dracula is, and has always been, we’re hypnotized by his blood-sucking nature – it’s dark, brooding, and somehow tragically alluring. Wolf continues, “When America was still involved in the war in Vietnam, I had no trouble seeing in Dracula an apt symbol of that disastrous and bloody conflict. It seemed to me, too, that Dracula stood for the American fixation on youth and for our well-known unwillingness to confront the reality of our own death.”

Bingo.

What’s more, as Wolf adds, in the last 60 years or so, we’ve come to layer on a very clear sexual overtone behind Dracula’s late-night scavenges. “Contemporary readers and filmgoers are drawn to vampire imagery because it speaks to them about deeply inner (and especially sexual) temptations and doubts,” he outlines.

Such a sexual frenzy lies at the heart of a new mini-series streaming on Netflix called Dracula (which also aired on BBC). Claes Bang (The Square) gives a monstrous, naughty, and totally magnetic turn as the titular character – infusing his line readings with a cool smolder so arresting it’s hard to rip your eyes away from the gruesome humanity. Blood drips from his long, sparkling fangs with alarming frequency, but Bang’s performance is relentlessly charismatic. His eyes trace the silhouettes of his prey, and a momentary lustful thirst hangs in the balance, caught between adoration and abhorrence. Wolf then hits upon a perhaps ghastly conclusion: “The point is… that the blood exchange represents every variety of sexual union: men with women, men with men, fathers with daughters, mothers with sons, women with men. Moreover, the vampire’s embrace is perceived an an intimate entry.”

Dracula bathes in a primal sexual energy. It’s sometimes painfully clear cut and other times rather confusing – triggering both a rampant appetite and a growling disdain. It’s all a bit homoerotic, too, which is direct as it is unexplainable. Series creators and screenwriters Mark Gatiss (Sherlock, The League of Gentlemen) and Steven Moffat (Sherlock, Doctor Who) pounce around in enough of Bram Stoker’s original story – setting the initial episode in 1897 Transylvania – to give a proper grit and style, which is later utilized to surprising effect for a mighty time jump to the present day. Even in modern days, there remains a truthful nuance and approach to the storytelling as much as the cinematography itself.

Chopped into three, 90-minute installments, the mini-series consistently keeps the fang-toothed twists and turns aimed right at your neck. Operating opposite Bang’s Dracula, Dolly Wells (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) portrays the unconventional nun named Sister Agatha with her own untamed hungers: those of wit, fearlessness, and a hunt for absolute truth. She’s unmistakably quippy and proves time and again she’s more than capable of going toe-to-toe with such a mangled beast, and through her earnest pursuits, she must contend with her own wavering faith without losing her sense of self. Where episode one “The Dark Compass” rearranges Jonathan Harker’s (John Heffernan) unfortunate fall, episode two called “Blood Vessel” kicks things into oceanic overdrive – setting to the high seas aboard a ship named the Demeter headed for England. Little do the passengers know – a smorgasbord of colorful debutantes, including a dashing in-the-closet gay couple, and deck hands alike – but havoc is about to rip through their lives and their bones. The final chapter, titled “The Rules of the Beast,” skips forward more than 100 years to detail what this incarnation of Dracula looks like under a modern microscope (using the character of Lucy Westerna, portrayed by Lydia West, as the flawed protagonist) – and it mostly works in upping the literal and metaphorical stakes.

Netflix’s Dracula is not Bram Stoker’s Dracula. You might as well get that out of your head right now. It’s mildly campy, but drenched in style and poise. It guts you, but it fulfills you. It steals your breath, but it fills your lungs. Claes Bang adheres to the groundwork presented by Bela Lugosi (from 1931’s Dracula, directed by Tod Browning), but injects the character’s veins with a rich flavor that could prove to entice such a long-standing character back to the cultural forefront. Gatiss and Moffat blend bright colors of the classic adventure tale with the psychological vampire (there’s a lingering taste of “Luella Miller” in the mouth), breaking off genre tropes or upending them entirely, and even though episode three drags mid-way through, the story recovers for the knockout punch. How bloody delightful!

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