Call it The Law of Pyrotechnics as Applied to Cinema. At every good fireworks display I've attended, the masters of sparklers and rockets have been careful to keep their launches decidedly uneven in beauty and volume. A heaven-storming explosion is followed by a mere crack and trickle of fire, that trickle by a fair amount of thunder, and that thunder by another Jovian upburst. The result is an audience kept in a state of constant, pleasurable anticipation.

In Bram Stoker's ...