Horror Actressing: Sadie Frost in "Bram Stoker's Dracula"
Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 3:03PM by Jason Adams
Are you wearing the dress or is the dress wearing you? That is the question, the one every fashionista asks -- it's not just comfort but confidence; the former might assist with the latter but if you've got enough of the latter you can overcome any obstacle, good taste be damned. Like how exactly does one give a performance for the ages encased inside a neck ruffle that could be captured on the cameras of satellites orbiting the Earth? Don't ask me, ask Sadie Frost, who yanked those satellites out of the skies and stared 'em down into submission with her take on the character of "Lucy" in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 re-imagining of the classic vampire tale.
Nobody save Gary Oldman with his prosthetics parade was asked to do more inside of Eiko Ishioka's Oscar-winning kabuki-inspired outfits than Frost was...
It's not just that best remembered wedding-turned-funereal gown with the frilled lizard collar, but one dress after another that would threaten to swallow up any lesser soul: her electric orange bed-gown with the ribbed bodice and enough of a multi-voluminous cape train to engulf a city block; the shimmering golden disco caftan she writhes around enrapturedly while doing her erotically-charged death throes.
And yet Frost makes of this improbable Lucy -- who straddles both the wanton woman and the pure virgin archetypes -- a living breathing, uh, heaving person. She brings much-needed humor and heart to her early scenes opposite Winona Ryder's dry Mina, not to mention all her many beaus -- she flirts relentlessly with every person within reach while managing to maintain a girlish innocence about it at the same time. Even while begging to handle Quincey's "so big" buck knife she foregrounds Lucy's playfulness, so much so that when we later hear Quincey making a vulgar comment about her to Arthur we're outraged on her behalf.
Of course that's moments before they and we see how badly Count Dracula's corrupting influence has poisoned the poor girl. But just before this cliff-jump transformation it's her scene confessing her change to Dr. Seward (Richard E. Grant) that's always stood out to me as Frost's best, spiraling off in a dozen of these directions at once. She's wearing that overwhelming white frilled gown for the first time, while being fitted for her forthcoming nuptials never to be, an isolated noggin looking like no less than the imminent decapitation ahead.
For an actor I can only imagine that this deranged costume presents something of a challenge -- we had quite frankly never seen anything like this on-screen before. It's an outrageous backdrop, but Frost owns it, and makes of it something like her own personal soliloquy theater -- a one woman show atop a lacy stage. Her head just hovers there, encased in stepped doilies, as she swings Lucy between elated mania (the mice in the attic stomping like elephants) and terror, nightmares of eyes, her own wet with confusion.
When Seward pricks her with a needle to calm her down Frost allows a sliver of impetuous young Lucy to slip back in with her silly whiny delivery of "Oww" but watch how she swings it straight into an erotic growl, her head sliding back -- it's not the drugs, it's the blood, and it's on fire. Frost is all fire, and all of Ishioka's grand costumes seem to burn with her, a cosmic streak of color shooting across Coppola's dark night of the soulless. Her embers flamed out too fast for us all.
Reader Comments (13)
She gives my second favorite performance in the movie after Oldman. Only Tom Waits is better than everyone else.
Teenage Mike in Canada was really into this perfomance. She was someone that I would look up in any new Leonard Maltin or Videohound I came across, and I never knew why I wasn't seeing her in more movies.
I think I even saw Splitting Heirs because she was in it!
Big shame she didn't capitalize on this performance,she's everything you want Lucy to be and what a great death scene,thanks.
Iconic movie, legendary costumes, unforgettable performance.
I just rewatched it yesterday and Sadie Frost is truly outstanding.
I love this series! Please, do Deborah Kerr in The Innocents and Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, two of my favourite movies and performances of all time.
OMG I LOVE LOVE LOVE this role... she totally overshadows Winona Ryder in this.
#TeamSadie
She was great in that film. I just loved how she just became that character and was able to inject so much life into it as well as be the one to do some nudity as she is just gorgeous.
This is the best looking Dracula movie ever made
Great write up! Amazing performance, costuming, cinematography and film!
Please do Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist
Thank you, I’ve enjoyed your write-ups. Might you consider Jessica Walter in “Play Misty for Me,” Diana Rigg in “Theatre of Blood” or Julie Harris in “The Haunting”?
Loving all the kind words and especially the suggestions, everybody -- I am making a list, so if anybody else wants to suggest things go to town. I am listening :)
What doesn't get discussed enough is how amazing the guys looked in this movie. If Ishioka's work in Dracula isn't required research for costume designers, then they're doing it wrong.