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Lucy (Tara Birtwhistle) is an outgoing, optimistic young woman who is
always surrounded by her three suitors (Stephane Leonard, Matthew Johnson,
Keir Knight), whose only problem seems to be choose one of the three to
become her husband and who couldn't be happier ... until one night she is
visited by a creature - Dracula (Zhang Wei-Qiang) - who sucks her blood,
and continues to do so every night. And with the loss of blood her
lifeforce seems to dwindle. Soon, she has a downright condition, but all
the doctors seem to be unable to determine what it is ... until the
mysterious Doctor Van Helsing (Dave Moroni) enters the picture, finds
signs of vampirism and orders an immediate blood transusion. Furthermore,
he orders her to be locked in, guarded and covered in garlic ... to no
avail, that night, Dracula returns and sucks the last of her blood.
Lucy is soon dead and buried, but the story doesn't end here, because
she reuturns to the world of the living every night to suck little girls
and the like dry. Ultimately, Van Helsing has to convince Lucy's suitors
to come with him to Lucy's crypt to stake and behead her to put an end to
her existence as a vampire for good.
Lucy's best friend Mina (CindyMarie Small) meanwhile has gone to Europe
to look after her husband Jonathan (Johnny A.Wright), who has struck a
realty deal with Count Dracula but was then held captive at his castle and
was terribly injured when he made a daring escape.
Soon though, Mina herself falls into the clutches of Dracula and is
abducted by him ... but Van Helsing and company are already hot on his
trail, and ultimately they use a combination of stakes, crucifixes and
sunlight to kill the vampire.
To turn a world-famous horror story like Dracula into - of all
things - a ballet might not sound like the best idea to begin with, and to
turn that ballet into a film sounds like nothing short of disaster ... but
fortunately, the producers were smart enough to not have the film directed
by some faceless dance-video director, but by Guy Maddin, who might know
little about dancing (and was always one to admit it), but all the more
about making inventive, unusual and highly original films - and who always
showed a predilection for silent (as in without dialogue, not without
music) films.
The finished film falls short of being a Guy Maddin-masterpiece like Tales
from the Gimli Hospital or Careful, mainly probably due to
the fact that the source material - written by someone other than Maddin -
had its limitations as it is. However, Maddin still managed to turn what
could have been a - for all non-ballet lovers - boring dancemovie into a
triplike experience, almost a journey into another world. And Maddin
proves, against all odds, that the combination of ballet and horror can
work - at least if done by Maddin himself ...
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find Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary at adultvideouniverse.com
