CANNES CRITICS MAUL DARIO'S DRACULA

The Croisette ran red with the blood of Argento's Bram Stoker redux, so cutting were the critics reactions.

The latest opus from horror legend Dario Argento was met with jeers and walkouts at the 65^th Cannes Film Festival. Revered for his horror classics Suspiria, Deep Red, Inferno, Phenomena and Tenebrae, the Italian ‘Maestro of the Macabre’ has spent the last 36 hours on the media merry-go-round, fielding questions regarding the dismal response to his latest work, Dracula 3D.

A lurid adaptation of Bram Stoker’s literary classic shot in the rich reds and blacks for which the director is famous, Argento corralled a cast that includes Rutger Hauer as vampire-hunter Van Helsing, the director’s daughter, screen siren Asia Argento (left, with her father at the Cannes premiere), as Lucy and respected German actor Thomas Kretschmann (Below, clowning with his director) as The Count. Shot in ‘Stereoscopic 3D’, the grand production is a French/Spanish/Italian co-production budgeted at Euro5,000,000.

In the film’s festival press-kit, Argento somewhat abstractly states “I was very faithful to the story, but not to the character of Dracula as we’ve come to know him all these years. In fact, I added many aspects to his personality from my imaginary world.”

The internet was buzzing with negative feedback to the trailer, but any work from the Giallo master is keenly anticipated and the film had been afforded the first Midnight Screening slot at the 2012 event – a prestige placement reserved for significant genre works.

But it was soon clear that Argento’s latest was far from his best. In one of the first reviews published, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it “risible gothic trash.” Observing that Argento was “a director stuck in stylistic gridlock for well over a decade now”, Rooney went on to observe that Kretschmann “heads an old-school Europudding cast – an orgy of different acting styles, poorly post-synched into stiff English” and that “the 3D serves mainly to make the whole sad, cadaverous enterprise more ludicrous.”

Soon, the wave of negative opinion in the wake of the screening surfaced. The horror-friendly site Film School Rejects was gentler than some, saying “In short, it’s shit, but that doesn’t mean people won’t still love it;” Chris Haydon of Filmoria.com said it was one of “the most boneheaded, preposterous and inane versions of the story I’ve ever seen;”

Movie.com’s Eric D. Snider was amused, suggesting the film would be “laughable if it were the first film by a Hollywood producer's nephew.” But he soon sharpened his critical claws, stating “As the twenty-first feature by a 71-year-old genre veteran, it's embarrassing.”

Dracula 3D’s theatrical fate remains uncertain. So fiercely underwhelming was the response from the Cannes media, it is unlikely the film will travel into foreign cinemas. That is an pricey predicament for the producers of the relatively expensive film and particularly dire given the full effect of the 3D technology will be lost as a home video item.