Reframing the classic tale of Dracula’s reign of terror in nineteenth-century England and Dr. Van Helsing’s efforts to stop it, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary provides one of Maddin’s most immediately legible and coherent narratives, one almost entirely unimpeded by his usual episodic diversions. Scored in grand orchestral fashion and performed by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, the film often evokes refined spectacles of theatrical dance such as The Nutcracker, but Maddin’s intentionally crude monochromatic lighting, his selective coloring effects, and the smeared patina of his grainy 16mm images perversely root the film in traditions outside high stage art, celebrating amateurishness instead. Feverish jump cuts and uninhibited camera movement replace the typical long, sweeping takes expected in filmed ballet, while a surplus of fog effects obscures whatever sparkle the sets and costumes may have offered in a more conventional production. The result is a malfunctioning ballet film, one that tries to infuse the director’s familiar gamut of onscreen action—awkward courting, impassioned lovemaking, petty fighting—into dance and succeeds in its utter Maddinness.