30 years later, Mel Brooks' Dracula satire is still his weirdest misfire

Even Leslie Nielsen couldn't bring this undead comedy to life

Mel Brooks is arguably one of the most iconic spoof movie directors of all time, with films like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein still serving as comedic touchstones decades later. The same cannot be said for Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Brooks’ vampire send-up skulked into theaters on December 22, 1995, and the reviews were brutal. Famed film critic Roger Ebert put it bluntly: “The movie’s not very funny.” Three decades later, that hasn’t exactly changed, although with hindsight, it’s possible to see what Brooks was at least going for with his bizarre Dracula parody.

Plot wise, Dead and Loving It is basically a beat-for-beat retelling of the original 1931 Dracula story with Leslie Nielsen (The Naked Gun, Airplane) in the title role. Perpetually doomed solicitor Thomas Renfield (Peter MacNicol) becomes Dracula’s servant after he visits the vampire’s Transylvania estate, where the bloodsucking demon drives him insane. Later, when the pair arrive in England, Renfield is tossed in a sanitorium. The Seward family, Dracula’s new neighbors, are tormented by the vampire until he’s eventually exposed and killed by Van Helsing (Brooks). There are deviations here and there, but it maintains that same classic framework.

Dead and Loving It starts off fairly promising, with a few good jokes as Renfield is warned by the townspeople on his way to Dracula’s castle, but it quickly devolves into uninspired poop and cleavage comedy. The film is a weird mix of bits that feel like classic Mel Brooks and ones that feel lazy.

You can see glimpses of the trademark Brooks brilliance, like a delightful back and forth between Nielsen and Brooks where they’re both trying to get in the last word of a conversation. The duo’s scenes together offer a few hilarious bright spots in what feels like one of the longest 90-minute movies I’ve ever watched, only for the film to quickly devolve into something else.

Part of that departure from the wackier tone of films like Spaceballs is purposeful, however, and it’s what makes the movie feel so conceptually confusing. In an interview with Nielsen, he explains why this horror comedy needed a slightly more serious tone: “That was the trick, the very fine line Mel had to walk, to have the comedy and yet still have the seriousness of the story, to still have you feel that at a certain point that you’re liable to get a bite on the neck.”

In the same interview, he compares the role of Count Dracula to Frank Drebin of the Naked Gun series, calling the latter character "consummately oblivious.” Conversely, he says, he wanted to “play Dracula convincingly, so that people can be slightly afraid.”

Perhaps it's partially from misplaced expectations that the film was such a flop (it made just over $10 million on a budget of $30 million). Instead of harebrained parody, it’s more of an understated homage that aims to keep some of the genuine fright of Lugosi-era Dracula. The problem is, nobody warned the general public. The original trailer for the film presents it as another goofy Mel Brooks spoof, and that’s what viewers undoubtedly expected to see.

It also doesn’t help that the genre Brooks is spoofing has a lot of crossover with what was already covered in Young Frankenstein, one of his most beloved comedies. They say comparison is the thief of joy, and I can confirm that comparing the two films is absolutely depressing.

The two films just aren’t designed to be compared, and when looking at Dead and Loving It through the lens Brooks and the team intended, the movie does get a little easier to take. Some scenes, like one where Dracula tries to hypnotize and command dimwitted subjects, are served well by being comedic yet more subdued, with Nielsen’s deadpan delivery selling the tone perfectly.

However, it just doesn’t feel consistent, like Brooks couldn’t decide what he wanted the movie to be. There are moments when the audience is supposed to actually be scared, but I’m never going to be even “slightly afraid” of this version of Dracula when I previously saw him slip on bat poop and tumble down the stairs.

Is Dracula: Dead and Loving It the worst Mel Brooks comedy? I’d argue it is. But is it worth watching anyway? Well, that depends. The movie does have its supporters — its review section on Rotten Tomatoes is sporadically scattered with users calling it an underrated masterpiece that doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves. One could also argue that the worst Mel Brooks movie is still better than some of the fare being churned out in the modern day media landscape.

I did laugh out loud a few times during Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which is more than I can say for a lot of other spoof films (Epic Movie is 90 minutes of my life I’m never getting back), and as a big fan of Leslie Nielsen, it’s just fun to watch him do anything at all. Even with the not-so-great hand he was dealt, he tackles the role with the same enrapturing comedic gravitas he always does. Unfortunately, it’s just not enough to save Dracula: Dead and Loving It from feeling tonally confused and toothless…or should I say fangless?