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Dracula. The name conjures a multitude of disparate images. Bela Lugosi. John Carradine. Count Chocula. Innumerable ghouls of the silver screen, and a muppet. Ever since F. W. Murnau's great 1921 silent film, "Nosferatu," Dracula and cinema have evolved together.

Dracula the screen role is more seductive, protean, and undead than the legendary Transylvanian himself. In Francis Ford Coppola's resurrection (exhumation?) of the character, we see Dracula in his most romantic incarnation to date. Gary Oldman plays Dracula as a Byronic hero, a Slavic warrior prince who slaughters Turks in holy war. When his wife, Elisabetha, hears a false report of his death, she commits suicide, and the Church pronounces her soul damned. In a fit of rage and sorrow, the prince vows to join her in damnation and becomes a vampire. Essentially, the torture of his vampirism derives not from the forfeit of his soul but rather the pain of lost romance. Doomed to an endlessly lonely and tragic existence, he just wants to be loved--is that so wrong?

Enter Winona Ryder's character, Mina, an English schoolteacher and the nineteenth-century reincarnation of the Transylvanian princess. Dracula's glimpse of her photograph sets the stage for the love story which drives the film. Although a monster, Dracula is a rather compelling romantic hero--top hat, John Lennon glasses and all. Oldman successfully evokes the quirky, bordering on psychotic, vulnerability he brought to other peculiar roles in "Sid and Nancy" and "Track 29."

Coppola skillfully plays his actors off of the typecasts we've come to expect of them. For instance, Dracula seems all the more seductive for the fact that Keanu Reeves, the would-be romantic lead, is such a milquetoast. Ryder, after whetting our appetites in "Beetle-juice" and "Heathers," is the vamp we've always wanted her to be. And Anthony Hopkins, who claims not to have brought Hannibal Lecter to bear on his role as Dracula's off-kilter nemesis Dr. Van Helsing, nevertheless gives us a few sparkling moments of Lecteresque macabre humor.

Likewise, the film itself comments on the very process of filmmaking. The aesthetic of Coppola's Dracula reaches into the past for vintage camera tricks like motion reversal and in-camera multiple exposures, smoke and mirrors from a bygone era of cinema. Roman Coppola, cinema scion and visual effects director, explained, "There were a lot of Victorian parlor amusements that were optical tricks that developed into film. A lot of stage magicians were the first to buy projectors and cameras. Our inspiration was the fact that it would be unique to use techniques that are inexpensive and fresh and that no one has really seen in a long time." In fact, the novelty film craze of Victorian England makes its way into the plot of "Dracula," as the ardent vampire pursues Mina through the London cinematograph exhibition. The characters watch images on a screen as we watch them. The film constantly dances around the subject of images--projections on movie screens, shadows which act on their own accord, and a mirror, which Dracula smashes because it doesn't reflect him. There's a certain ironic justice in the fact that Dracula, this character who has no reflected image, is one of the most persistent images in film.

But enough egghead commentary. There's also lots of blood and guts and campy overdone sex scenes in the film, most of which involve poor Lucy (Sadie Frost), the character who is ravished by Dracula in some of his less appealing forms. Meanwhile, back at the castle, a bevy of vampire harem girls keep Keanu Reeves, er, too weak to escape. Like Anne Rice's Interview With a Vampire, "Dracula" gives vampirism an allegorical overtone of sexuality out of control. Periodic shots of blood cells under a microscope underscore the linkage of vampirism, sex, corruption, death, and, you guessed it, AIDS by implication. But even this association is fairly true to Bram Stoker's book. Stoker, by the way, died of syphilis.

The verdict on "Dracula?" It's a worthy addition to the vampire genre. With exemplary casting and nifty vintage special effects, you don't vant to miss it.