Dracula: Dead and Loving It starts in Transylvania during the year 1593 where British solicitor R.M. Renfield (Peter MacNicol) has a meeting with Count Dracula (Leslie Nielsen) to conclude the sale of Carfax Abbey in England. Once the forms are signed Dracula travels to London to take up residence in his new property which is situated next to a mental asylum run by Dr. Jack Seward (Harvey Korman) & as Dracula introduces himself he notices Lucy Westenra (Lysette Anthony) a friend of Seward's daughter Mina (Amy Yasbeck) & takes an unhealthy interest in her as he changes into a bat, flies into her room while she is asleep & drinks her blood. Lucy becomes ill & Seward calls in Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Mel Brooks) an expert on rare diseases who quickly realises that Lucy has been bitten by a Vampire. It's up to Van Helsing to save the day & Seward's daughter Mina who Dracula intends to become his next victim...<br /><br />This American French co-production was co-written, produced, directed & starred Mel Brooks & to be honest it didn't do that much for me. The script by Brooks, Rudy De Luca & Steve Haberman follows Bram Stoker's original novel surprisingly closely & retains most of the relevant action & character's but just spoofs everything up. While the story is solid the decision to turn the film into a silly slapstick comedy first & foremost is one that doesn't work, surely Dracula: Dead and Loving It would have worked much better if the filmmakers had worked around the principal that they were making a horror film first as per the original novel & structure the comedy, the gags & the spoof material around it. As it is Dracula: Dead and Loving It is a comedy first & horror a very distant second while I think it would have been much better the other way around with it being a horror first & comedy second like The Evil Dead (1982) or Dog Soldiers (2002), I mean you can't really add horror to comedy yet I would say you could add a comedic element to horror. Just a thought. Another big problem with Dracula: Dead and Loving It is that it's just not very funny, in fact as to prove my point the best scene is when Harker & Van Helsing stake Lucy through the heart & are covered in gallons of blood, horror first guys, horror first... The only other funny moments in it are two running gags, one about enema's & the other a silly duel between Van Helsing & Dracula about who has to have the last word.<br /><br />Director Brooks uses loads of ancient gags & jokes from silly accents to moronic slapstick like where Dracula rises from his coffin & hits his head on a low hanging chandelier, hey this is classy sophisticated stuff. To it's credit the film looks really good & it has great sets, costumes, special effects & period production design. Apparently the dialogue in Dracula: Dead and Loving It spoofs a lot of the dialogue from the original Dracula (1931) with Bela Lugosi, well that's fine if you've seen the original Dracula which I haven't & I'm sure many other people haven't either so I have to ask myself what was the point when there was always going to a large amount of viewers who haven't seen the original Dracula, it seems like a bit of a waste & an in-joke a lot of people weren't going to get. Brooks goes for comedy all the way so forget about any scares.<br /><br />Technically Dracula: Dead and Loving It is pretty darn good but this aspect of things only leads to more frustration when one thinks what this film could have been, as someone who has sat through loads of low budget horror I could only think what the likes of Hammer could have done with a budget like this. The acting wasn't anything special & everyone plays it over-the-top, I must say that I personally thought Nielsen was awful as Dracula & had little screen presence.<br /><br />Dracula: Dead and Loving It is a comedy that isn't very funny & a horror that has no horror, it fails at everything it tries to do. It's not a totally worthless film as it's quite nice to look at & it has a strong story thanks to the original source but as a whole it didn't work for me.