Acting for Two: Winona Ryder plays both Elisabeta and Mina. More subtly and symbolically, the priest who informs Vlad of Elisabeta's damnation is played by Anthony Hopkins, who turns up later as Van Helsing; he also has a third role as the voiceover narrating the log of the doomed captain of the Demeter. Gary Oldman also plays the coach driver who takes Jonathan to the castle. This is likely a reference to the book, where Jonathan suspects that Dracula drove the coach too.
Dracula was just supposed to appear as himself when he's caught with Mina. Gary Oldman felt that he wouldn't be intimidating enough, and so the bat costume was created. Funnily enough, he still didn't find himself scary in that at first (see below).
As Florina Kendrick was the only Romanian on set, she taught Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder and Anthony Hopkins how to speak and properly pronounce Romanian for the scenes where they had to speak it.
All-Star Cast: Most of the leads were A-listers at the time — Anthony Hopkins was just coming off his The Silence of the Lambs triumph — with notable character actors rounding out the cast. This was effectively Gary Oldman's breakthrough role for mainstream American audiences. Oldman would become the only actor, who ever played Dracula in a movie or TV adaptation, to win later Best Actor Oscar in his career. Both Winona Ryder and Richard E. Grant would score Oscar nominations post-this movie.
Awesome, Dear Boy: Gary Oldman wanted to play Dracula because he wanted to say: "I've crossed oceans of time to find you". To him it was worth playing the role just to say that line.
It was an opportunity to work with Coppola, who I consider one of the great American directors. That was enough, really. It was my first big American movie, made on a big set with lots of costumes. For a young actor, that was a tremendous experience.
Cast the Expert: For Dracula's brides, Florina Kendrick was a native Romanian speaker, and Michaela Bercu grew up speaking the language herself. Notably, they speak dialogue in the film while Monica Bellucci, who is Italian, does not.
Costume Backlash: Mildly for Sadie Frost, who had to endure hours spent getting fitted with Lucy's big white wedding dress, and found it difficult to move in. She however said it fit the character.
Creator Backlash: Keanu Reeves said years after the movie came out that he wasn't happy with his work in it, stating he had been exhausted from making several films right on the heels of signing on as Jonathan Harker, and that he tried to raise his energy for the role "but I just didn't have anything left to give".
Gary Oldman was going through a divorce and struggling with alcoholism while making the film.
Sadie Frost was also struggling emotionally with being a new mother while she had to film the role, and the pressures that came with being surrounded by Hollywood stars. Not to mention her agent urging her to move to Los Angeles, away from her family.
To an extent, Keanu Reeves. As mentioned in Creator Backlash, he was experiencing burn-out during filming due to having been working non-stop, which he felt negatively impacted his performance.
Monica Bellucci likewise was overwhelmed by the transition from modelling to films, and briefly considered quitting the industry.
"It was horrible because, after that, I knew I couldn’t go back to modelling and it was so difficult to become an actress. Just the taste of it… Oh my God! It’s horrible! I felt like a cow that is full of milk and nobody will take it. I felt I don’t want to do this shit any more, I want to do films. But, of course, I did Dracula because I was pretty not because I was the best actress in the world. You have to work on it.”
Dawson Casting: Lucy claims to be nineteen but Sadie Frost was twenty-four when she filmed her part. Oddly enough, in her autobiography, she says she felt the character "needed to look older" than her actual age.
An extended version of the opening, showing the blood swallowing Elisabeta whole, Dracula with his face covered in it and the entire room flooding. It would then Match Cut to Lucy washing Mina's hair at Hillingham.
The scene of Mina and Lucy laughing about Arabian Nights takes place before Jonathan leaves, and it ends with the footman announcing Jonathan in the garden, and Mina going out to see him. This explains why she's wearing the same dress in both scenes.
In the carriage to the Borgo Pass, the other passengers warn Jonathan that he is cursed.
Mina on the typewriter before the ball at Hillingham, clarifying that Lucy has decided she'll be married in the Autumn, but not on who the groom will be. The suitors all get voiceover introductions from Mina, and they all help Lucy find a lost earring.
More of Dracula showing Jonathan around the castle.
A longer sequence of Jonathan exploring before meeting the brides.
An extended version of Jonathan hiding from the mercenaries as they dig, adapting a moment from the book where he breaks open Dracula's coffin intending to kill him, but is thrown back when Dracula wakes up and then dragged into a tunnel by the brides.
Scenes aboard the Demeter showing a crew member encountering Dracula below deck and getting killed.
An extended version of the ship pulling into the harbour, and Dracula killing a man on the dock. The shot of blood splattering on the sail during the montage in the finished film is from this scene.
Dracula and Mina's dance among the candles is intercut with Jonathan fleeing from the brides.
A longer version of Jonathan approaching the convent, where he throws coins stolen from the castle through the door. The coins bear Dracula's face.
A scene confirming Reinfield's death, which is only implied in the finished film.
A longer version of the ending, showing Mina reuniting with Jonathan, and confirming the two do get their happily ever after. This one does not have Mina chopping off Dracula's head.
Sadie Frost - a brunette - dyed her hair red to play Lucy because producers felt she resembled Winona Ryder too much. Sadie actually didn't even bother auditioning for Lucy purely for this reason, but was approached after Francis Ford Coppola saw her in Diamond Skulls.
Gary Oldman also shaved the front of his hairline to accommodate the make-up process.
Michaela Bercu had to endure "hundreds of steamed hair extensions a day" for her small part as one of the brides.
Winona Ryder, Gary Oldman and Sadie Frost had to spend a weekend together in Coppola's home - where they stayed in character the whole time.
Gary Oldman struggled to find himself scary in the giant batsuit, so Coppola said to whisper something scary into each actor's ear. No one knows what he said - but they all look terrified.
Oldman was also drunk when they filmed the part where Dracula licks the blood off Jonathan's razor. They also waited until after midnight to shoot it, putting the cast in "the proper mood".
For the scenes where Lucy is writhing around on her bed in ecstasy, Gary Oldman was also off camera whispering seductive things to Sadie Frost. She later joked that the things he said were "very unrepeatable".
When Mina is caught drinking Dracula's blood, Coppola was shouting "slut!" and "whore!" at her off camera to make her look guilty and ashamed. According to Ryder, Anthony Hopkins and Keanu Reeves both refused to join in Coppola's berating despite his demanding.
Subverted in the scene where vampire!Lucy brings a little girl into her crypt. The child actress was terrified at the sight of Sadie Frost in the make-up, so Sadie broke character and did a lot of sweet-talking to get her to finish the scene.
Winona Ryder wasn't giving the right reaction to Mina seeing Dracula in London for the first time. So Gary Oldman grabbed a zucchini off a nearby cart when she wasn't looking - and flashed it in front of his groin.
In order to get emotional for some of Dracula's sadder scenes, Gary Oldman had an album full of pictures of his son and looked at it before shooting.
Edited for Syndication: Along with trims for violence and nudity, all of Renfield's scenes were cut when Fox aired the movie in The '90s, presumably for time.
Keanu Reeves was put in as Jonathan at the request of the studio, who wanted a Mr. Fanservice to appeal to the female moviegoers.
Roughly twenty-five minutes of footage are said to have been cut because test audiences found the movie too gory.
Fake Brit: Americans Winona Ryder and Tom Waits as Mina and Renfield respectively, and Canadian Keanu Reeves as Jonathan. Waits does a near-flawless accent, Ryder's is decent enough and Reeves is, rather infamously, not at all believable.
Fake Nationality: The Romanian Dracula is played by the British Gary Oldman. The Welsh Anthony Hopkins also plays the Dutch Van Helsing. Dracula's brides do not have their nationalities stated but only one of them - Florina Kendrick - is Romanian.
Font Anachronism: We see a ticker tape typing out the message sent to Van Helsing from Dr. Seward. The type appears to be OCR (optical character reader) font which was not created until 1968. Keep in mind that the movie takes place in 1897. That's a 71 year difference.
Friendship on the Set: Winona Ryder became friends with Keanu Reeves, and recalls reading her journals from when she was filming and finding them full of sentences like "thank god I'm going to see Keanu".
Funny Character, Boring Actor: Lucy is portrayed as a bubbly and vivacious flirt. In her autobiography, Sadie Frost talked about how unconvincing she felt she was to play such a character. At the time she filmed the role, she had a newborn baby and was Happily Married.
"I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd betrayed Francis and was just shy Sadie, the most unattractive girl in the world."
God Never Said That: For years it was reported that Francis Ford Coppola regretted casting Keanu Reeves as Jonathan given his infamously bad English accent in the film, especially after it became known that it may have been in response to a request of the studio, who wanted a Mr. Fanservice to appeal to the female moviegoers. Coppola had to set the record straight in a 2015 interview, saying that he didn't regret casting Reeves as Jonathan, and claiming that he worked harder on the English accent than most people realise.
“He tried so hard. That was the problem, actually — he wanted to do it perfectly and in trying to do it perfectly it came off as stilted. I tried to get him to just relax with it and not do it so fastidiously. So maybe I wasn’t as critical of him, but that’s because I like him personally so much. To this day he’s a prince in my eyes.”
Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder didn't get along well at all during filming. The rest of the cast was shocked because the two had been friendly during rehearsals, then came back from a break in the schedule seemingly hating each other, with no indication given (then or later) as to what had happened. It turned out that they had different acting styles - she needed an acting coach to help her evince the necessary emotions, while he was an intense method actor, whose approach unnerved her. Later in one of her interviews Ryder dismissed situation simply as "teenage drama" and said that she became friends with Oldman (who admittedly was going through a divorce and dealing with alcoholism at the time).
Oldman and Coppola sometimes publicly clashed with each other on the set over creative choices, e.g. the appearance of young Dracula in the film. You can even see in the behind the scenes extras where they showed on set footage filming a scene where Oldman and Coppola noticeably get angry at each other when filming a scene.
Irony As He Is Cast: In the second Brazilian Portuguese dub by Dublavideo, Luiz Carlos de Moraes dubs Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, the irony being that in the original Megassom dub, he was the voice of Gary Oldman as Dracula.
Never Work with Children or Animals: Florina Kendrick had several snakes in her hair for the scene where the brides seduce Jonathan, and had to work with them for two days before shooting so that she could do the scene without being terrified.
Meaningful Release Date: This film was released to coincide with the 95th anniversary of the release of the novel, and with the 80th anniversary of the death of Bram Stoker.
At the ball in Hillingham, Jack can be seen handing a squashed hat to Quincy and apologising for it. The extended version of the scene shows him awkwardly sitting on it after Quincy put it on the couch.
It's not said how Jonathan got away from the brides in the finished film. A deleted scene shows him making a crucifix out of two wooden poles and fending them off before he leaves the castle.
Practical Effects: Francis Ford Coppola was adamant that every effect seen in the film was done in-camera. He and his son, Roman, worked hard to use pretty much every trick in the book (model work, forced perspective, projection, multi-exposure, reversed shot, etc.) to achieve this goal. Coppola even went so far as to shoot scenes with an antique, hand-cranked Pathé camera to get an uneven, stuttering effect that was impossible to achieve with modern film cameras.
The Simpsons: The third segment of "Treehouse of Horror IV", titled "Bart Simpson's Dracula", is a parody of the film, with Mr. Burns in the role of Dracula.
Romance on the Set: While promoting her film Destination Wedding (co-starring Keanu Reeves) in August 2018, Winona Ryder poked fun at this concept by claiming that she might be married, in the eyes of God, to Reeves, who also played her character's husband in Dracula. Apparently Francis Ford Coppola wasn't happy with their wedding scenes in this film, and to achieve greater authenticity, reshot the sequence with a real priest.
Spared by the Cut: A death scene was filmed for Renfield that takes place before everyone finds Mina with Dracula, but was cut. Book savvy viewers will infer his death from his final scene, but he appears to survive.
Star-Making Role: This brought Gary Oldman to the attention of mainstream American audiences, and had the effect of typecasting him as various villains in the 90s.
Gary Oldman wanted to say "I never drink... wine" as an homage to Bela Lugosi from Dracula (1931) (the line as originally written was nearly verbatim to the novel: "...and I do not sup.")
At a preview screening, none other than George Lucas suggested that Mina decapitate Dracula at the end. Coppola agreed and the scene was added in.
Unbuilt Casting Type: This brought Gary Oldman to the attention of American audiences as a villain. But here although he's playing Dracula, he plays him as a Tragic Monster and as one of the most sympathetic portrayals yet.
The project was originally going to be a Made-for-TV Movie, directed by Michael Apted. Winona Ryder saw the script and brought it to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola. Keen to work with her again after she fell ill and had to drop out of The Godfather Part III, Coppola decided to direct the movie as a feature. Michael Apted stayed on as producer.
An early idea was to have simple, impressionistic sets using only light and shadows - with minimal props. The studio vetoed this idea, and insisted on proper sets being built. This is also why the costumes became so elaborate - the sets were going to be plain to allow them to stand out.
The battle scene in the prologue was originally intended to be performed with shadow puppets instead of actors. The idea was used later in the film when we see, in the cinema house, a shadow puppet battle similar to the prologue battle.
Francis Ford Coppola wanted Johnny Depp to play Jonathan Harker, but the studio wanted someone who was more of a heartthrob. Christian Slater was offered the role, but turned it down, saying, "If you're not gonna play Dracula, what's the point?" William Baldwin and Charlie Sheen auditioned for the part.
Liam Neeson was considered for, and very much wanted, the role of Van Helsing, but after Anthony Hopkins, still riding the success of The Silence of the Lambs, showed interest in the role, Neeson was ultimately turned down.
Steve Buscemi was the first choice to play Renfield but turned it down. Ian Dury auditioned for the part.
A scene that was storyboarded, but not filmed, involved Seward and Holmwood coming across the dead bodies of Harker, Morris, and Van Helsing impaled on posts before the climactic confrontation, and then realizing that this is simply a hallucination conjured by Dracula, using his powers of psychological persuasion.
James V. Hart's original version of the script was more of a straight up horror movie, and did not include the Dracula/Mina romance.
What Could Have Been: According to designer Barry Oursler, the game was originally intended to be a licensed Alien game.
For the video games:
What Could Have Been: Early magazine ads for the Sega CD game showed a stage that took place in a corridor with a sloped stairway, as well as Harker having different sprites that looked more relaxed than the final game's own.
on the float for the Krewe of Raj is a homage to Lucy's wedding gown.