Luc Besson's “Dracula” goes down for the Count

French director turns horror classic into campy romance

Caleb Landry Jones plays the Count in Luc Besson’s version of “Dracula.” (Vertical Entertainment)

There have been many retellings of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” but French director Luc Besson’s version may be the first one featuring a whole subplot in which the Count spends time developing a homemade perfume that seduces every woman he meets.

This movie is weird, even by the standards of a story about a centuries-old bloodsucker. It’s not scary at all, it’s not even that bloody, and it’s much more of a gothic romance (with flashes of campy comedy) than it is a horror movie. (Based on the press materials, its original title seems to be “Dracula: A Love Tale.”)

Even if the film doesn’t really work, I kind of dug Besson’s eagerness to depart so radically from the text and the tone of the source material. He seems to be having fun, even if his transgressions might bring Stoker back from the dead.

We first meet the Count back in his 15th-century Vlad the Impaler days, as a ruthless warrior known for putting his enemy’s head on a spike. Played by a scene-chewing Caleb Landry Jones, Vlad descends into madness when his one true love, Princess Elizabeth (Zoe Bleu), is killed by the enemy.

Vlad denounces God for letting his love die, kills his priest with a crucifix, and is damned to eternal life. After repeatedly failing to off himself (in a hilarious montage that reminded me of a similar one in “Groundhog Day”), Vlad/Dracula determines to search the world for the reincarnation of his beloved Elizabeth. (Hence the eau de Drac, which puts every woman under his spell.)

Flash forward a few centuries to 19th-century Paris, where the Vatican’s top vampire hunter (Christoph Waltz, also having fun) is dispatched to investigate a young woman, Maria (Matilda de Angelis) vamping it up in an insane asylum. In contrast to Dracula’s tortured romantic soul, Maria makes being a vampire look like a lot of fun, with de Angelis literally licking her chops in a juicy comic performance.

Christoph Waltz seems to have a ball hunting vampires instead of Nazis. (Vertical Entertainment)

Waltz’s priest ascertains that Maria’s presence means Dracula must be coming to Paris soon, hunting for Elizabeth. She is now reincarnated as Mina (also played by Bleu), the fiancee of a drippy lawyer (Ewens Abid). And if you don’t remember any of this from Bram Stoker’s original book, you’re right.

Besson does draw occasionally from Stoker’s text and takes some visual cues from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version, particularly the design of the ancient Dracula, who looks like a praying mantis in his castle lair. The best part of the film is old Drac capturing the unwise lawyer in his Gothic castle, which makes Frankenstein’s lair in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” look like a cheery suburban ranch, and playing with him like a cat with a mouse.

But even there Besson has to try something different, giving Dracula an army of animated gargoyle henchmen that, I’m sorry, just reminded me of Gru and his Minions. Besson has made a lot of movies, and his “Dracula” definitely skews closer to the weird campiness of “Valerie of a Thousand Planets” or “The Fifth Element” than the R-rated action of “La Femme Nikita” or “Leon.”

While the occasional decapitated head rolls around in the climax, the end of “Dracula” is less about whether the priest will defeat Dracula than if Dracula will be reunited with his true love. I can’t really recommend Luc Besson’s “Dracula,” but I can sort of admire its chutzpah (or whatever the French equivalent word is).

“Dracula” opens Friday in theaters. In Madison, it will play at AMC Fitchburg 18, Marcus Point and Marcus Palace.