Dracula is THE vampire.
He’s the monster by which all other monsters are measured. No werewolf, mummy, zombie or ghost has ever risen to the heights of popularity that the Transylvanian Count has achieved. He may not have been the first vampire, but he was the one who made bloodsucking cool. With a classy cape, slicked-back hair, and a chilling gaze, the sun-aphobe has thrilled audiences for over one hundred and twenty years.
I’ve always loved the idea of Dracula. And yet, when it comes down to it, I’ve never quite found a Dracula that I’ve been satisfied with. Some interpretations are painfully close to the ideal I have in my mind, while others are wildly outlandish. I’m still on a quest to find a Dracula that I can admire without reservation, but for now, here are some of the most beloved versions of everyone’s favourite night walker.
Dracula (****)
1897, by Bram Stoker.
In which Dracula has a unibrow
Dracula is one of my favourite books ever, and one of a small list of novels that I’ve read more than once. I found Dracula a compelling and truly fascinating character, and I loved the mode of storytelling Stoker employed. The letter-writing format was very cool. You got the perspective of each character, and you almost forget you’re reading something made up because the characters speak so naturally. When Mina is attacked by Dracula and retells what happened – I honestly got chills the first time I read it. I think Stoker does a terrific job of showing things when he needs to, and concealing things when he needs to just enough to let your imagination run wild. Sure, there are graphic scenes, but I find there are multiple moments where Stoker backs up from the narration at just the right moment to let you fill in the scary details – and I think that’s brilliant. When Mina can’t help but stop telling her story out of the sheer horror of the event, you know already what happened but Stoker doesn’t spell it out entirely because you get the picture…and he lets you ponder it on your own.
If there was ever a definitive version of the character, it would be hard to argue that it wasn’t the original. That said, I think there’s something about the “vampire” that is just too big an idea for any one author to perfect. There’s a million different varieties of vampire, and I don’t think any of them are the “right” one. Even the Dracula in this story I don’t think is perfect – seeing him as an old man when you first meet him, with hairy hands and a unibrow – it just doesn’t feel right. Obviously for me that’s because when I picture Dracula I picture the old school Bela Lugosi interpretation of Dracula…and that’s not what Stoker envisioned, but that’s what I’m getting at. The vampire is such a major mythological figure that looks so many different ways to so many different people, I wonder if there’s ever going to be one definitive vampire. But hey, that’s what this journey of mine is for.
Dracula (***)
1931, starring Bela Lugosi
In which Dracula stares at people for painfully quiet periods of time
Watching this film ninety years after its release, this came across as hammy, awkward, and safe. It’s also the definitive Dracula.
When people picture Dracula, Bela Lugosi is the guy that pops into their head. Stoker came up with the characteristics that made the vampire austere, classy, and refined. But the Dracula of the novel also had hairy palms, and white facial hair on more than one occasion. Stoker may have been scarce on physical descriptions intentionally so that we could fill in the blanks ourselves, but getting to see Dracula on the silver screen certainly helped cement an iconic image for ages to come. Lugosi is just as darkly chivalrous today as he was decades ago. His look is a timeless one. I mean, sure, if Dracula walked into the average dinner party in 2021, he might look a bit over-dressed, but he certainly wouldn’t look out of place at the opera or an awards ceremony or any other high-class event. What makes Dracula so different from other monsters is how distinguished he appears to be. There’s no mistaking the monstrous appearances of zombies or werewolves. They don’t do subtlety very well. Dracula is the epitome of a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and that’s definitely a characteristic that is solidified in this film.
When this film was released, sound in the movies was still a pretty new thing. It’s almost as if the filmmakers in charge here weren’t entirely sure what to do with sound. The original film has no score, apart from some music playing in a concert scene and some borrowed music during the opening credits. In 1998, a new score was commissioned – but I watched the original before knowing about this. In hindsight, I have a feeling that the score adds a great deal to the film. Silence can be a powerful ally in narrative – particularly in horror stories – but there’s just so much of it that it’s hard not to break it with a disinterested cough. I imagine that the score fills in a lot of those gaps with music that builds on the dramatic tension of the film. To be clear, I haven’t listened to it yet, but I would still recommend watching the version of this film WITH score as opposed to this film without it.
In terms of visual appeal, this movie has everything that I want. We’ve already discussed how iconic Dracula looks, but his castle in Transylvania as well as Carfax Abbey in London are both ominous, evil, and positively vampiric in design. There’s a massive winding staircase without rails in Dracula’s final home that just screams evil, and I love it. On the other hand, the plot is a bit more nonsensical than the novel on which it’s based. Renfield, a guy who is clearly a violent menace, is essentially allowed to wander free in the home of our main characters. Nobody seems to have any problem with a certified looney meandering here and there while they talk about the undead. Dracula’s demise is also sadly anticlimactic. He just gets into his coffin, and then gets stabbed offscreen. I get that violent acts weren’t depicted on screen the same way back then, but it doesn’t at all seem like our characters had to work hard to beat Dracula. They just followed him back to his house, walked in the door, and stabbed the guy. Like come on. This guy’s the Prince of Darkness, people. Show him a bit more respect than that.
Some ‘special effects’ are also incredibly dated, which is to be expected. Dracula’s bat form is a hilarious puppet, and the boat sequence was actually borrowed from another movie. But at the end of the day, a good cast and a good story can triumph over almost anything. While certain elements of the plot were a bit disappointing, the script still had nuggets of vampiric perfection:
“To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious!”
“There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”
“I never drink…wine.”
And through it all, Bela Lugosi absolutely killed it as the titular vampire. Apparently he was worried that this role would end up defining him, which, of course, it did. He had already performed as Dracula in the Broadway adaptation of the novel, but he didn’t use that as an excuse to skip developing his own performance. Apparently the actor who played John Harker remarked in an interview years later,
"I can still see Lugosi, parading up and down the stage, posing in front of a full-length mirror, throwing his cape over his shoulder and shouting, 'I am Dracula!'”
To be honest, that’s exactly the kind of person I want playing Dracula.
To say this film is dated is an understatement. But to say this movie should be left behind is a crime. This film, like its namesake, cannot be allowed to die. It must be born again and again. It must be a story that never sleeps long before returning to the land of the living. It is a story that is and must remain undead.
Dracula - 1992 (*1/2)
In which Dracula wears sunglasses
They just can’t get this guy right.
I’m telling you, I haven’t seen one version of Dracula that I’m completely satisfied with since the 1931 version - and honestly, that was so long ago I can’t say for sure whether or not that one worked for me either. Dracula is such an iconic character, but his portrayals and characteristics have varied so widely that it’s hard to pick a “definitive” interpretation. Sure, I admire how closely they followed the original novel in this film, but there’s so many things wrong with it as well. And it’s not just that they do weird stuff with the idea of vampirism - it’s that the movie as a whole is just flat out weird.
I can’t tell you how much stuff I had to fast-forward. I know vampires and sexuality go hand-in-hand a little bit, but like come on. Less smooching and more murder, please. Then there’s the weird super-imposed shots throughout the movie - blue fire coming from nowhere, eyes showing up in the sky, and just a general feeling of weirdness from beginning to end. It’s overblown, ludicrous, and melodramatic. Evidently some people find that that works here, but I certainly do not. Like, why does Dracula change forms like six times? He’s an old guy, a dog, a werewolf, a young guy with ridiculous sunglasses, a weird bat-faced guy, a demon, and probably one or two other things. It’s just too many images at once. I’m all for a vampire that’s two-faced, but six faces is a bit much.
This just isn’t the kind of vampire movie I’m looking for at all. Please don’t waste your time.
Dracula the Undead (*)
2009, by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt
In which Dracula isn’t all that bad of a guy
I can’t tell you how excited I was to read this book, and how utterly disappointed I was by it. The letter-based narrative format of the original was abandoned. I felt that this was a defining feature of the original, and that it was a feature that enhanced the storytelling by making you feel like you were piecing together the story yourself. Now it just felt like regular fiction. Next, they made Dracula a good guy and basically undid some of the events of the original. How can you attempt to “do justice” to a book by saying parts of it never happened? NEXT, I felt that they really amped up the graphic content beyond what they needed. I get it. Horror stories have graphic content. But what I loved about the original is that Stoker had a mix of horrific images and moments where he left you to fill in the blanks. Within the first few pages, you witness a vampiric torture scene that in my opinion far overshadows any graphic scene in the original book. I think there’s a big difference from being scared and being sickened, and I was the latter.
I didn’t finish this book. Once I discovered that Dacre Stoker had never published a book before and was a pentathlon coach trying to capitalize on his forefather’s fame – and when I learned that there was a vampire-spirit-thing rape scene later on in the book, I gave up. This wasn’t the sequel I wanted.
Dracula Untold (***)
2014, starring Luke Evans
In which a woman can handle falling off a hundred foot cliff but not a bit of blood loss
This is one of the few vampire flicks I’ve seen that I actually like – which is a little embarrassing considering nobody else seems to enjoy it.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that this is basically a medieval superhero movie. A guy with a sick cape wanders into a cave and comes out with crazy powers that he uses to save his family. He’s self-sacrificing to the very end, and by the end of the film he’s so much greater than he ever thought he would’ve been otherwise. I mean, yeah, he’s a blood-sucking vampire now, but come on – the cape billowing moments alone prove my argument.
The way Dracula turns into bats during combat is freaking awesome. He’s a brooding destructive being of darkness, and Luke Evans does a great job as the title character. He’s definitely got that vampirish look to him, and he manages to look intimidating in pretty much every scene. I love all the fight bits, even though I wish some of them showed us his fighting prowess in greater detail. The main thing is that the bat bits were great.
The Master Vampire or whatever you want to call him – the guy in the cave – was great too. The scene of him and Dracula together is exactly what it should be. It’s got that “Deal with the Devil” vibe to it, and the Master Vampire is perfectly sinister in every way. His voice, his mannerisms, and the set all work together to remind us that we’re on the threshold of something big. Loved that bit.
Now, admittedly, there are some dumb parts of this movie. When Dracula’s wife falls off a cliff, she honestly seems like she’ll be able to get up and walk it off if we had just given her another minute. The end of the film is clearly a setup for a cinematic universe that crumbled long before it could get off the ground. The movie also doesn’t quite end up with the Dracula we know and love. His climactic scene proved that he wasn’t yet a cold-blooded monster, and yet I think we’re supposed to think that that’s where he’s gotten to by the time the credits roll. I dunno. I think they might have leaned too heavily on the “hero” bit of “antihero”.
To sum it up, I think you should give this movie a chance. There’s cool fight scenes, a great vampiric aesthetic, and lots of shots of bats and capes billowing in the wind. Batman fans will find themselves right at home.
Dracula (**1/2)
2020, starring Claes Bang
In which the rules matter immensely until they don't
Man, this was ALMOST fantastic, but it tripped at the finish line.
I love Dracula and have always loved the quintessential vampire. I've read Bram Stoker's novel twice, and am always intrigued when a new vampire flick comes out. However, time and time again I've always been disappointed. People can't help re-imagining the vampire and messing it up. We've got sparkly vampires, vampires that don't freak out over crosses, and don't even get me started on Hotel Transylvania. As much as I love the original Dracula, I have to admit that even Bram didn't get it exactly right - his initial description gives us a Dracula with a unibrow and white hair on the back of his hands. Gross.
There's something about the vampire that makes it bigger than any one person's interpretation, but I've always been of the mind that we should all agree on a few things when it comes to Dracula:
He looks like Bela Lugosi's interpretation from 1931 (when a kid dresses up as a vampire for Halloween, they're always trying to look like him)
He can't stand sunlight because it either sets him on fire or turns him to dust
He won't come into your house unless you invite him in
He hates the crucifix and anything explicitly Christian
Garlic is, at the very least, mildly annoying to him
He needs to drink blood (specifically HUMAN blood) to survive
My point is that I've never seen a PERFECT Dracula interpretation on film. But in the first two episodes of this series, I thought that I might finally get my wish granted.
The first two episodes are terrific. They're scary, exhilarating, and most importantly, Dracula is every bit the vampire you expect him to be. He's a vampire that follows the rules, and part of the appeal of monsters in stories is being able to predict certain things about them. Knowing Dracula can't come in unless he's invited allows for the brilliant scene where Dracula taunts a group of nuns from outside their convent, threatening to kill all of them except for the one who invites him in. That's great stuff!
I also loved the design of the first two episodes. It's 1897 and we're deep in the heart of Dracula's hometown, complete with a haunted castle and a desolate dark landscape. Everything looks and feels haunted, just like a Dracula story should.
At the end of the second episode, we find out that Dracula's popped up in modern times. Although I was sad to see his original time period left behind, I figured that this was a way to throw him in a fresh environment and maybe pave the way for an exciting second season. I didn't mind Dracula being in the 21st century as the third episode progressed, as much as I missed the gothic aesthetic.
But those final five minutes ruined everything! We find out that all of Dracula's 'rules' are essentially made-up. He follows them because he's afraid of death. Sunlight doesn't hurt him. Crucifixes mean nothing. It was all just in his head.
And then he goes and dies while sucking a lady's blood and they both pop up in the sun for some reason.
What on earth happened here?!
I was so excited for where I thought this show was going. There was a bit in the series where it was revealed few undead ever make it to the level of finesse and self-restraint that Dracula has achieved. I was really intrigued to learn how Dracula became as skilled as he did, just as I wanted to get some sort of idea as to whether or not he was the ORIGINAL vampire. More than that, I wanted to know what statement they were going to make given Dracula's fear of the cross. Does this mean God is real (at least in the world of the story)? Is Dracula actually the devil himself, or some sort of spawn of product of Satan? Nope! It's all just made up!
I really hated those last five minutes, because all the brilliance and rule-following of the first two episodes got chucked out the window. I was really hopeful about this series given that it was made by the same guys who gave me four great seasons of "Sherlock", but right at the end it all fell apart.
If you like vampires, watch episodes one and two, and then stop there.