Love Like Blood

The greatest vampire of all finds true romance in Luc Besson's Dracula

- NICK SETCHFIELD

"I DON'T LIKE HORROR films," confesses Luc Besson, the writer and director of the latest resurrection of the screen's most unslayable vampire. "They're too scary!"

So don't be too quick to label his Dracula, which stars Caleb Landry Jones as a passionate, obsessive immortal searching for a lost love.

"I don't think of it as a horror film. Not at all. It's a pure romance. I think that Léon is much more frightening than Dracula!"

Besson's career encompasses everything from that '90s hitman thriller to the dazzling futurescapes of The Fifth Element and Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets. Now he brings a visionary eye to Bram Stoker's seminal novel.

"I read it again before making the movie," the French filmmaker says. "The book is heavy and big, too long for me. I'm not a big reader. The book is a monument and you're inspired by that. I have a lot of respect for the book."

For Besson, Dracula's undead heart isn't just there to be staked. "A man, able to wait 400 years because he wants to say goodbye to his wife... I thought it was terribly romantic, and that's the only story I wanted to tell. In fact, I think the movie is closer to Beauty And The Beast."