Call me naïve, but I don't think vampires are symbolic of, stand in for, or have anything whatever to do with sex - not in Bram Stoker's novel, and not here, either. If Dracula symbolises anything (apart from simply being the strongest of all vampires, hence representing the rest, which by itself is symbolism enough), it's a corrupt aristocracy; that is, his symbolic value is political, not sexual. Certainly not sexual.
We're explicitly told that Dracula's followers are like drug addicts, who loathe their habit yet are unable to give it up. Everything we see confirms this theory (sometimes rather heavy-handedly). Is what they feel anything like lust? I doubt it. Lust, like true hunger, is something they have lost.
Take that first vampire. Is there anything sexual about her? You bet: she's proud and beautiful and she's wearing a thin white gown that reveals a vast amount of cleavage. She's certainly not the weedy-looking anorexic you'd expect a vampire to be. But she's also creepily pallid and not quite alive; the sense we get is of someone who is THEORETICALLY gorgeous and sexy (it's clear enough that Valerie Gaunt must have been a knockout in real life), but in fact, as appealing as a wax fish. It's the ABSENCE of sexual tension that makes the scene creepy. Later on we see her torn between Harker's lips (the remnants of her sexual desire) and his neck (the drug addiction that has replaced all her other desires). Nor does this or any other vampire's craving for blood in any way "represent" sex by replacing it, for there are many other things vampires either don't do or have lost interest in doing: eating, drinking, walking in sunlight, etc. Sex is just one loss among many.
If Fisher's film DID give rise to the sexual interpretation of vampires on screen, that's an unfortunate irony; it is itself innocent of this interpretive crime.
It's not at all a bad version of "Dracula"; the slight starchiness we detect at first turns out to be part of the charm, part of getting the tone and the characters right. Christopher Lee IS the definitive Dracula. If only he could have travelled through time to appear as his younger self in the in-all-other-ways-superior John Badham version of 1979, everything would have been perfect.
We're explicitly told that Dracula's followers are like drug addicts, who loathe their habit yet are unable to give it up. Everything we see confirms this theory (sometimes rather heavy-handedly). Is what they feel anything like lust? I doubt it. Lust, like true hunger, is something they have lost.
Take that first vampire. Is there anything sexual about her? You bet: she's proud and beautiful and she's wearing a thin white gown that reveals a vast amount of cleavage. She's certainly not the weedy-looking anorexic you'd expect a vampire to be. But she's also creepily pallid and not quite alive; the sense we get is of someone who is THEORETICALLY gorgeous and sexy (it's clear enough that Valerie Gaunt must have been a knockout in real life), but in fact, as appealing as a wax fish. It's the ABSENCE of sexual tension that makes the scene creepy. Later on we see her torn between Harker's lips (the remnants of her sexual desire) and his neck (the drug addiction that has replaced all her other desires). Nor does this or any other vampire's craving for blood in any way "represent" sex by replacing it, for there are many other things vampires either don't do or have lost interest in doing: eating, drinking, walking in sunlight, etc. Sex is just one loss among many.
If Fisher's film DID give rise to the sexual interpretation of vampires on screen, that's an unfortunate irony; it is itself innocent of this interpretive crime.
It's not at all a bad version of "Dracula"; the slight starchiness we detect at first turns out to be part of the charm, part of getting the tone and the characters right. Christopher Lee IS the definitive Dracula. If only he could have travelled through time to appear as his younger self in the in-all-other-ways-superior John Badham version of 1979, everything would have been perfect.