I scratched another Saturn Award winner for Best Horror Movie off my list of movies to watch yesterday, and this time around, it was the 1992 winner, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”I’m sure that I’d seen the theatrical release of this awesome movie before, but, for the sake of this little project, I decided to watch it again. However, I did do something a little different with it this time around. More on that later.
For those of you who haven’t seen this version of Stoker’s classic vampire tale, it was released in November 1992 and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It featured an all-star cast of actors, including Gary Oldman (Dracula), Winona Ryder (Mina Harker), Anthony Hopkins (Professor Abraham Van Helsing) and Keanu Reeves (Jonathan Harker).
Hopkins was fresh off his performance as Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” and this was back in the days when Reeves was more well known for his appearance in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” than for his portrayal of Neo in The Matrix trilogy of movies.
Not only did this movie with the 1992 Saturn Award for Best Horror Movie, but it also won three Academy Awards (Best Costume Design, Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Makeup).
When I looked this movie up on NetFlix, I noticed that it was available for instant viewing, in other words, with the click of a mouse, I could watch the entire movie instantly on my desktop computer at home. That beat putting it in my queue and waiting several days for it to arrive by mail.
So I figured what the heck and started the movie on my desktop. It took a few minutes for my computer to sync up with the NetFlix movie server, but once the movie got going, it was just like watching it on my television. Four or five times during the first 30 minutes or so, the movie was briefly interrupted because my “internet connection had slowed.” The problem eventually went away, and I don’t remember it happening again after the first half hour of the movie.
The movie did appear overly dark on my desktop screen, but I think that had more to do with the screen than the movie. I tried making every adjustment I could think of, but I could find little to improve this slight problem.
My biggest problem with watching the movie instantly was that it didn’t allow me to turn on the subtitles, like I would normally do with a DVD. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I like watching movies with the English subtitles turned on. For me, it adds another visual element to the movie and I find that I actually get more out of the overall experience by being able to read and hear the dialogue. Again, this was only a slight inconvenience.
In the end, I enjoyed the movie and was more than a little impressed with NetFlix’s instant viewing option. I’ve little doubt that I’ll be watching more movies instantly in the future.
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