[4][5][6] The film stars Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, and Keanu Reeves, with Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, and Tom Waits in supporting roles.

Set in 19th-century England and Romania, it follows the eponymous vampire (Oldman), who falls in love with Mina Murray (Ryder), the fiancée of his solicitor Jonathan Harker (Reeves).

In 1462, Vlad Dracula returns from a victory in his campaign against the Ottoman Empire to find his beloved wife Elisabeta has committed suicide after his enemies falsely reported his death.

In 1897, solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R. M. Renfield, who has gone insane and is now an inmate in Dr. Jack Seward's asylum.

After he and Mina return to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead the others to Carfax Abbey, where they destroy the Count's boxes of soil.

Though furious at first, Mina admits that she still loves him and remembers Elisabeta's previous life; at her insistence, Dracula begins transforming her into a vampire.

The hunters split up; Van Helsing and Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while the others try to stop the Romani transporting Dracula.

The characters of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray in the novel represent the British Empire, which provides the unmarked, or normal, perspective in Dracula.

[15] According to John Allen Stevenson the threat of the racial "Other" was "the real horror of Dracula, for he is the ultimate social adulterer, whose purpose is nothing if it is not to turn good Englishwomen...like Mina away from their own kind and customs".

[18] Upon release, The New York Times' Frank Rich suggested that the film drew upon the prevalent fear of HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, a disease transmissible via contact/transfer of blood.

Coppola, according to Rich, gives to the viewers a movie that both frightens and arouses them by playing off their unchecked fear of the spread of AIDS as an invasion of the national bloodstream.

[21] The director had agreed to meet with her so the two could clear the air after her late withdrawal from The Godfather Part III caused production delays on that film and led her to believe Coppola disliked her.

[24] To prepare for Bram Stoker's Dracula, as the movie would be called, Coppola screened Citizen Kane, Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible and Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight.

"[30] Coppola chose to invest a significant amount of the budget in costumes in order to showcase the actors, whom he considered the "jewels" of the feature.

[22] He turned the drawings into a choppy animated film—an animatic—with added music, and spliced in scenes from the French version of Beauty and the Beast that Jean Cocteau directed in 1946 along with paintings by Gustav Klimt and other symbolist artists.

[39][22][40] Winona Ryder found the intensity of Oldman's acting style too much at times; the two fell out early in the filming process and had difficulty working together from then on.

[41] However, she has also referred to her friction with Oldman as "teen drama", stating, "He [Gary] was going through a divorce, and I think I can say this because he's pretty open about it, but he's been sober for a long time now, and he's raised three kids, and he's a dream.

[42] In 2020, Winona Ryder also stated that Reeves and Hopkins once refused Coppola's direction to verbally abuse her to make her cry during a scene that required an emotional reaction.

The site's critics consensus reads, "Overblown in the best sense of the word, Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Bram Stoker's Dracula rescues the character from decades of campy interpretations—and features some terrific performances to boot.

"[53] Alan Jones in Radio Times said, "Eerie, romantic and operatic, this exquisitely mounted revamp of the undead legend is a supreme artistic achievement [...] as the tired count who has overdosed on immortality, Gary Oldman's towering performance holds centre stage and burns itself into the memory.

[55] Jonathan Rosenbaum said the film suffered from a "somewhat dispersed and overcrowded story line" but that it "remains fascinating and often affecting thanks to all its visual and conceptual energy.

"[56] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called the film "not particularly scary, not very sexy and dramatically over the top", criticizing the tone and several of the casting decisions.

[60] Total Film writer Nathan Ditum included Reeves in his 2010 countdown of "The 29 Worst Movie Miscastings", describing him as "a dreary, milky nothing [...] a black hole of sex and drama".

[72] Bram Stoker's Dracula opened at number one at the US box office with a November record of $30,521,679, beating Back to the Future Part II.

[83] As of 2023, adjusted for inflation, Bram Stoker's Dracula's box office is $473.5 million, making it one of the highest-grossing vampire movies of all time.

[84] In 2018, the soundtrack had a 3-CD set Limited Edition re-release: Disc One and Two of this re-issue presented the premiere of Kilar's "composed score", his music as originally written for the film.

The limited edition release contained the film on VHS, which included a behind-the-scenes documentary, and the original Dracula novel by Bram Stoker in paperback.

Grey, gothic statue heads (as seen on the original film poster) adorned the front cover of the book against a gray stone background.

Costume design by Eiko Ishioka created a new image for the Count and for the first time freed him from the black cape and evening wear the character had become associated with since Bela Lugosi's portrayal in 1931.

So when I was given the opportunity to make Interview with the Vampire, I thought, 'Oh, it would be really great to expand on that epic sense of darkness and to give these characters huge, kind of romantic destinies and longings and feelings.