What is there left to be done with Dracula? Since his birth in a book more than a hundred years ago, the world's most famous Transylvanian emigre has cast his spell on both Broadway (an early teaming with Bela Lugosi) and radio (assisted by Orson Welles). But his true home has long been in movies, beginning with the classic (if now musty) Universal Pictures breakthrough in 1931, and continuing into the 1970s with a series of increasingly strained Hammer horrors starring Christopher Lee. The count has never been entirely castle-bound, either, turning up at various times in a dreadful Western ("Billy the Kid Versus Dracula," 1966), an awful rock musical ("Son of Dracula," 1974), a limp porn flick ("Dracula Sucks," 1978), and a couple of comedies, too. (Mel Brooks is said to have offered Kelsey Grammer $3 million to star in the 1995 "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," but had to settle for Leslie Nielsen instead.)

Now comes "Dracula: A Love Tale" (just "Dracula" in this country, thank you), the umpteenth iteration of the bloodsucker legend, brought to us this time by French writer-director Luc Besson ("Leon: The Professional," "The Fifth Element," "Lucy"). Besson is an indefatigable entertainer, and his expensively upholstered film offers a lot to look at: acres of polished drawing-room wood, floaty organza gowns, gleaming brass music boxes and clanking, custom-made armor. But the picture is also overlong, and likely to defeat the sustained interest of anyone already familiar with the traditional Dracula narrative — which would have to be just about anybody who's ever made serious room for movies in their lives.

In other words, you know this story in your bones. An English real estate agent named Jonathan Harker (here played by Ewens Abid) ventures abroad, into the gloomy Carpathian Mountains, to meet a mysterious new client — Dracula, of course, played by the loomingly bizarre Caleb Landry Jones. This ancient-looking character is in need of new digs, so to speak, and Harker offers him a crumbling abbey in the center of Paris. A deal is done — not without bloodshed — and Dracula relocates.

The story remains familiar, although with some fresh touches. Dracula, who lost his beloved wife 400 years earlier, has been searching tirelessly for a reincarnated replacement. This turns out to be Harker's fiancee, a young woman named Mina (Zoe Bleu). The vampire's pursuit of Mina draws in two new characters, a gabby priest (Christoph Waltz) and a bland physician named Spencer (David Shields). Naturally, they're determined to put an end to Dracula's bloody reign, and at this point in movie history, we're pretty sure they will.

Director Besson knows that longtime Dracula adepts might nod off if he played all this stuff as if it were brand-new. So his script adds some enjoyable filagree. Renfield, Dracula's groveling stooge in the old Universal days, has been replaced here by a crazed novice vampire called Maria (Matilda De Angelis), whose practice attacks have already irritated Dr. Spencer. ("She drank most of the blood from my clerk.") There are some unsuspecting nuns driven into an erotic frenzy by a special perfume Dracula has concocted (wonderfully silly), and a herd of living gargoyles who scamper around keeping things lively. In addition, Besson, clearly a traditionalist at heart, has also reinstated the heaving bosoms of the old Hammer-era heroines.

The movie is not unwatchable, but it's never going to scare anybody — we're all blase Dracula scholars by now. And Jones is a problem in the lead. He lacks the silky gravitas that other actors have brought to this role, and his look — especially the ornate hair style — owes almost everything to Gary Oldman's take on the character in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 "Dracula." Lacking serious jolts of terror, and a tighter script, Besson has little to offer us beyond atmosphere. Which is nice, but not enough.

Photos courtesy of Vertical Entertainment