Disappointing

I grew up on the other Dracula comedy, Love at First Bite and that is so much better than this. Too much of the comedy is too silly (this is coming from a Three Stooges fan- and I prefer Shemp to Curly for that same reason). I also like movies like Airplane and the first four Police Academy movies.

This film did have it's good points though. Peter McNichol's Renfield was great and nailed Dwight Frye's original film version dead on. Leslie Nielson's Dracula was very good, as was Harvey Korman (big fan of his from the 1970's The Carol Burnett Show playing Dr. Seward. I also liked Steven Weber and Amy Yasbeck (I also liked Wings a lot- the last good sitcom, (IMO), although some of Weber's comedic parts were a little over the top for me. Mel Brooks was good too, but had too many "too silly parts" as well.

An example of over-the-top or too silly comedy- the woman who gave Renfield the cross when he got to Transylvania. Her shaky voice shtick was too drawn out in her lines and she continued it from her last line WAY too long. I was like "Okay, I get it. SHUT UP already!" And in the staking scene, one blood gush would have been enough. And Nielson overreacted a bit to seeing Renfield bleed (that bleeding was overdone too).

I'll stick with Love at First Bite (with the entire original soundtrack). You have George Hamilton as hilarious adversaries (and I think they both didn't generally do comedy), Artie Johnson does a good Renfield, George and "Weezy" Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley and Isabell Sanford) make great cameos, Susan St. James is good as well as the police lieutenant and the whole original soundtrack is great (not that I mind hearing the old classical music in Dracula: DALI. It was good).

But I can't decide which I like better between, "Children of the night... what a mess they make." and "Children of the night... shut up!".