Part of the problem here is that the screenwriters have attempted to compact the entire dramatics of the comic’s first two year run into a single plot. And what ends up on screen is probably one of the most unusual Dracula films ever conceived. The bizarrely contrived plot includes not only Dracula, but vampire hunters, Satanists, appearances from Satan himself, rival vampires, zombies and Dracula’s son who is divinely raised from the dead and turned into some sort of superhero-come-avatar-of-Good. In this wild jangle sides cannot help but get confused – even Satan is reduced to little more than just another super-villain. In one of its better parts the film constructs an origin story for Dracula, identifying him in all but name with Vlad the Impaler, and making him a good person who was corrupted in the name of defending his homeland to be resurrected by Satan. But creating sympathy for Dracula confuses the issue – it makes the vampire hunters seem obsessive; even the Almighty in creating someone to destroy Dracula cannot help but seem unforgiving.

But for all the torrid dramatics that the plot contorts, surprisingly little of it ever translates into visual excitement. The animation is very limited – it does appropriate the robust dramatic style of the Marvel Comics artists of the 1970s, but the fact that only the most limited part of the drawn action moves at one time virtually kills excitement off. What there is is very melodramatic and flat. The characters are insipid and of little depth.