In Eastern Europe, librarian Jonathan Harker travels to Castle Dracula to accept employment by the eponymous Dracula only to get a lot more than he bargains for.
Later, Mina Harker arrives in the village to meet up with her best friend, Lucy Kisslinger, and to locate her husband. However, Dracula has his sights set on Mina and, unbeknownst to her, Lucy has already been bitten and succumbed to vampirism, becoming one of the undead. Compounding matters is that the Count sees a resemblance to his lost wife, Dolinger de Gratz, in Mina.
The wake of sequent attacks and tragic events brings in the attention of Abraham Van Helsing, who makes it clear that these tragedies are the work of a vampire and must be stopped at once.
These tropes appear in Dracula 3D:
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the novel, Lucy's hair color is implied to be blond. In Argento's film, Lucy (played by a very brunette Asia Argento) shares the brunette hair color with Mina.
- Adaptational Job Change: In the novel, Jonathan visited Dracula's castle for real estate, not realizing he's a vampire; in the film, he is a librarian who came to help sort books in Dracula's library, but doesn't realize Dracula is a vampire until Dracula shows his true colors during his reprimand on Tania.
- Animal Motifs: Dracula can take the forms of various animals, though oddly not the stereotypical bats. Owls are silent and deadly predators who attack by surprise, while wolves terrorize the land in packs like Dracula's thralls and offspring. He can also take the form of swarms of insects, scavengers that can spread disease and death but that can also go unnoticed.
- Death by Adaptation: Jonathan, who ends up turned into a vampire and later gets staked for his trouble.
- Dracula: Who else would it be?
- Dream Sequence: Mina has one, complete with trippy green coloring during the scene.
- The End... Or Is It?: What the ending meant to make it, as it has Dracula's ashes surface to attack the screen after Mina and Van Helsing leave the tomb.
- Fanservice: As expected of a film directed by Dario Argento.
- Homage: The film is an ode to cheesy Hammer Horror-style flicks of the '60s and '70s, and borrows scenes from both Horror of Dracula and Bram Stoker's Dracula.
- Improvised Cross: Van Helsing attempts to ward off vampire Lucy with two long sticks shaping a cross. It doesn't work too well.
- Kill It with Fire: What happens to Lucy after Van Helsing strikes her with the lantern.
- Kiss of the Vampire: Lucy, and later Mina, were on the receiving end of this from Dracula.
- Ms. Fanservice: Tania easily fits the bill post vampire transformation.
- Reincarnation Romance: What Dracula seeks to do with Mina.
- The Renfield
- Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything: A small group of village men attempt to plot resistance against Dracula, but Dracula prevented that. It probably didn't help that one of the attendees was one of his thralls all along.
- Sex Signals Death: Tania gets killed and turned into a vampire, courtesy of Dracula, not long after making love with Milos in the middle of the night.
- Silver Has Mystic Powers: Van Helsing uses bullets made of silver to defend himself from the vampires. Mina uses the gun still loaded with silver bullets to shoot and kill Dracula.
- Slaying Mantis: One of the forms Dracula takes, which he uses to kill Lucy's father. This is NOT a joke.
- Transhuman Treachery: Lucy.
- The Vamp: Tania behaves this way with Jonathan in order to get a chance to bite him.
- Vampire Bites Suck: It really sucks to be Tania.
- Whole-Plot Reference: To Hammer's Horror of Dracula and Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, to the point of playing recognizable scenes/moments in both respective movies - Jonathan visiting Dracula's castle as a librarian, Dracula pursuing a Reincarnation Romance with Mina, etc.
- Wooden Stake: Jonathan's fate when Van Helsing and the priest discover him at Dracula's castle.
- You Remind Me of X: Dracula pursues Mina because she reminds him of his lost love, Dolinger de Gratz.
