YMMV / Dracula: Dead and Loving It

• Best Known for the Fanservice: There is a lot of cleavage in this movie. Probably the most famous scene is Jonathan trying to turn down vampire Lucy with "but I'm British", to which Lucy pushes up her boobs and responds "but so are these!"
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Dracula has a "daymare," where he believes his vampirism is cured and goes out to enjoy the beauty of the light. Then he bursts into flame and wakes up screaming and running. The dream is never mentioned again, and neither is Dracula's apparent desire to be cured of his vampirism.
• Cult Classic: When released, the movie was a huge Box Office Bomb and received scathing reviews, effectively ending Mel Brooks' already declining film career. Today, while still considered his weakest film, it's gained a warmer reception on home video from dedicated Brooksians who feel it's perfectly good for what it is (though the jury is still out over whether or not he should have stopped making movies after this one).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: When Peter MacNicol as Thomas Renfield isn't acting his poshest, he goes full-ham when under Dracula's sway, making him stand out in what a lot of people believe to be a modest, if not mediocre comedy. James Rolfe even goes so far as to compare him to Dwight Frye's portrayal in the original 1931 classic.
• Evil Is Cool: Count Dracula. He's played by Leslie Nielsen so it's a given he'd be charming and funny.
• Genius Bonus: When Jonathan refuses to stake Lucy, Van Helsing tells him there is another way: cut off her head, fill her mouth with garlic, and tear off her ears. In Dracula, Lucy was mutilated just like that after being staked, minus the ear trauma.
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • Lucy tearing open her dress to seduce Harker with "THESE!" is almost detail-for-detail like Eva Green's invocation of that trope for Johnny Depp in Dark Shadows.
  • Steven Webber would go on to be Mathew Broderick's successor in the Broadway version of Mel Brooks' Screen-to-Stage Adaptation of The Producers.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Count Dracula himself is the hammy Villain Protagonist who seeks a new vampire bride to dance with. Turning the moronic solicitor Thomas Renfield into his slave with his powers, Dracula arrives in England and quickly charms one young woman and when she dies shortly after becoming a vampire turns his attention to Mina Harker. Charming Mina with his powers and killer dance moves, Dracula also quickly catches on to Professor Abraham Van Helsing's suspicion of his true nature. Matching wits with Van Helsing, Dracula nearly succeeds in turning Mina into his bride and is only stopped by Renfield's sheer stupidity, though the ending indicates he survives to throw one final jeer at Van Helsing. A charmingly hilarious parody of a Classical Movie Vampire, this incarnation of the Count retains Dracula's signature cunning with none of his depravity.
  • Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a wily old doctor who enjoys hosting autopsies which are secretly ways to terrorize his students in a self-imposed challenge to make them faint: something he never fails at. Brought to London to examine the ailing Lucy Westenra, Van Helsing forms a plan to protect her from Count Dracula and soon comes to the conclusion that Dracula is a vampire. Forcing the now vampiric Lucy to her coffin, Van Helsing has Jonathan Harker stake her while he hides out of the path of the eruption of blood. Forming a plan to expose Dracula and have Renfield lead him to the vampire, Van Helsing cannot resist getting in a final insult after Dracula's final ashes have been interred in their competition to get the last word.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The opening titles, which is a series of gothic drawings depicting bats, demons, dead bodies and homages to Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare.
  • Extra freaky is the sudden appearance of a photograph depicting a grotesque sculpture (one from Toddington Manor) of a man that appears right when Mel Brooks' acting credit comes up. While all the other pictures were almost beautiful in their depictions of horror, this twisted caricature of a person is just straight-up creepy.
  • Lucy's resurrection as a vampire isn't played at all for laughs and would fit as is in a straight adaptation. A lone gravekeeper forelornly mourns Lucy's passing, only to hear her calling for help from inside her coffin. He pries the lid off in a tearful panic and tries to help her out, only for her to lunge for his neck, draining him in seconds. As his body thuds to the ground, Lucy licks her freshly bloodstained teeth.
• Signature Scene: The Lucy staking scene and ensuing Gorn.
• So Okay, It's Average: Generally regarded as Mel Brooks's weakest movie, but not a bad movie in its own right. After all, a weak Mel Brooks movie is still a Mel Brooks movie!
• Tear Jerker: Lucy's death. Made even worse than the book, as Mina is not abroad this time, and in fact sees Dracula killing her. Her scream is not Played for Laughs and it's then followed by a somber sequence of Lucy's coffin being laid to rest.

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