by Tessa Swehla, Staff Writer

Bram Stoker was not the first writer to weave a vampire tale, but he did give us the vampire with the most name recognition in Dracula (1897). Literary scholars have written numerous articles debating Stoker's influences: from Polidori's thinly veiled Byron insert in "The Vampyre," to Transylvanian folklore, to the late eighteenth-century gothic romances, to historical figures like Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Báthory. Whatever Stoker's process, he managed to create a thoroughly memorable villain, seen in the novel mainly through the terrified letters, news articles, and diary entries of characters who are just trying to figure out the evil that is stalking them. Dracula in many ways became the archetype for vampires in popular culture.

The cinematic potential of the gothic prince has captured the imagination of filmmakers and audiences over the past century. I decided, as a personal project, to examine six prominent film depictions of Dracula to show how the infamous character has evolved in cinema.

Count Orlok – Nosferatu (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)

The only difference between Count Orlok and Count Dracula is copyright infringement. Nosferatu was the only film by German production company Prana, because after its release, the Stoker estate sued them out of existence. The judge in the case ordered all prints of the film to be destroyed, almost dooming it to become a lost film. It only survived due to a print that made it to the US where Dracula was already public domain. Nosferatu is now considered a masterpiece of silent German expressionism, an art movement known for its vibes, which are required of any good vampire film. Directed by F.W. Murnau, the film haunts the viewer with distorted realities and nightmarish visions.

At the center of this nightmare is Count Orlok, played by the mysterious Max Schreck. In his greatest departure from the source material, Murnau chooses to depict the vampire's monstrous side at the expense of the sensuous one. Orlok is an emaciated giant whose black coat emphasizes his hunched shoulders and paleness of his skin. His twisted long fingers end in curved talons; his mouth is set in a perpetual grimace to show his long teeth; and his ears are almost batlike in their size and shape.

Bodywork is important to any depiction of Dracula, and Schreck plays Orlok with menacing yet jarring movements, his arms too long to sit comfortably against his sides. Murnau knows how to direct him too. In one particularly well-known scene, as Harker…I mean HUTTER WHO IS DEFINITELY NOT HARKER…sleeps in the castle, we see the door to his room open in a series of stop-motion movements that culminate in Orlok's sudden appearance in the doorway in what might be the slowest jumpscare of silent film. The camera then focuses on a sustained shot of Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), and the only indication we have of Orlok creeping closer is his shadow slowly eclipsing the slumbering real estate agent.

It's a film that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. It’s big contribution to Dracula lore is Murnau's addition that vampires can be killed by sunlight, a detail not present in Stoker's original. More importantly, the film popularized the idea of vampires, opening the doorway for future adaptations.

As a side note: it occurred to me while watching Nosferatu, that I was watching a film that turned one hundred this year, which is always an awe-inspiring experience.

Count Dracula – Dracula (dir. Tod Browning, 1931)

Learning from the mistakes of Prana, Carl Laemmle Jr. legally acquired the film adaptation rights for both Stoker's novel and the earlier stage adaptations on behalf of Universal Pictures. He then proceeded to assemble an A-team of creators: Tod Browning as director, Karl Freund as cinematographer, and Garrett Ford as screenwriter. The result was Dracula, the first of the Universal creature features.

This is the Dracula that most people are familiar with: the one dressed in evening wear with the cape and the widow's peak. The most brilliant decision of the film is casting Hungarian sex symbol Bela Lugosi as the titular count. Lugosi manages to integrate Schreck's strange hand gestures with slow hypnotic seduction. We rarely see the character's strength and only some of his powers, but he prowls through every scene like a giant cat. When he wraps his cape around Mina (Helen Chandler), the movement is equal parts sensual and menacing. Is he biting her? Making love to her? Is there a difference?

Lugosi never became comfortable speaking English, often learning parts of his lines phonetically. On the one hand, this accent does play into the cultural anxieties that Stoker's Dracula represented: a wealthy Eastern European invading Britain to corrupt white middle-class women. On the other hand, Lugosi's performance of "The children of the night, what music they make," is luxurious.

Browning was a somewhat absentee director, leaving a lot of the day-to-day work to Freund (who is often considered an uncredited director). Freund took this as an opportunity to flex his creative muscles, often playing with Dracula's movements in and out of shadow and trick shots with mirrors, which just adds to Dracula's mystique.

With the exception of Dwight Frye's Renfield, Lugosi's Dracula and his vibes are the stars of this adaptation. To me, this will always be the Dracula all subsequent Draculas should be measured against.

Count Dracula – The Horror of Dracula (dir. Terence Fisher, 1958)

When British production company Hammer Horror began making horror in the '50s, they started with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), but quickly realized the potential of casting Christopher Lee as a vampire. The Horror of Dracula, written by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Terence Fisher, was so popular that it spawned six more films with Lee playing the Count, establishing him as a horror icon.

Lee, who at this point was a fairly obscure actor, dials up both the blood and the sexuality. He's dressed in tie, tails, and cape, but Lee's tall frame and fast, fluid movements give a new spin on the character. Dracula growling at his Bride (Valerie Gaunt) in defense of Harker (John Van Eyssen) might be the first time a vampire made that sound on film, now a staple in vampire films. This is the first Dracula film to openly equate his bite with sex, going so far as to have Lee lovingly rub his face over Mina's (Melissa Stribling) before biting her and leaving her thrown across her disheveled bed. Not to mention the way she glows afterward as she tells her husband how satisfied she is. The whole impetus for Dracula's journey is that Harker kills his Bride at the beginning of the film. What's a Dracula to do but come to London to find a new Bride or two?

This Dracula does not just bite women though. While both Orlok and Lugosi's Dracula are equal opportunists when it comes to biting and sucking blood off of thumbs (yes, that scene does happen in both films), the way Lee tenderly cradles an unconscious Van Helsing–played by Lee's BFF Peter Cushing–before attempting to feed from him emphasizes the queer nature of the vampire. Maybe he isn't so set on a woman being his Bride. After all, a creature that penetrates to feed cannot be all that straight.

Lee's bodywork is good in any film he has been in, but the one weakness of this film is that bodywork is almost all he gets to do as this character. The only lines he has are in the first scene where he greets Harker. While Lee can pack more emotion into a look than most actors can in a monologue, I kept wishing that there was more interaction between him and the other characters–especially Van Helsing–beyond a simple antagonism.

Prince Dracula – Bram Stoker's Dracula (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)

A Dracula fever dream, Francis Ford Coppola's long-maligned Bram Stoker's Dracula is worth giving a second or third watch. It is a movie committed almost solely to vibes, going all in on the religious and supernatural imagery that was simply too expensive to produce in previous adaptations.

Coppola's film–which also had an anniversary this year–finally dares to depict the dual nature of the character: Dracula (Gary Oldman) is both the monstrous nosferatu and the alluring prince of darkness. The film begins with the old Schreck-like vampire wrapped in an extravagant red dressing gown with a seemingly endless train in his Transylvanian castle. Oldman's performance here is just on this side of camp, exaggerated yet eerie. While his prosthetics and make-up are not as repulsive as Schreck's, he looks like an inhuman creature trying to ape humanity but getting it utterly wrong because his fashion sense is stuck in an earlier century. Or possibly in Hell. However, just as with Schreck, Oldman has a director who understands how to use effects to highlight his performance. Coppola manages somehow to top Murnau's use of shadow play, actually giving Dracula's shadows weight and personality. In one marvelous moment, Dracula's shadow knocks over an ink well, spilling darkness all over Harker's (Keanu Reeves) desk.

When Dracula arrives in London, he uses Lucy's (Sadie Frost) blood–and body–to make himself the carnal prince we are more used to, although this one has long hair and wears smoked glasses. This adaptation is the first one to refer to the character as a prince, partially because it also wants to tie the character to the historical figure of Vlad the Impaler.

Dracula isn't just sexual in this film though; he's romantic. His primary motive in the film is to regain his lost love through the reincarnated Mina (Winona Ryder). Presenting this character as a complex and tragic figure most likely stems from the renewed interest in vampires engendered by Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. This represents a culture shift in what Julia Kristeva calls "the abject" in horror fiction: our reaction to seeing a breakdown between ourselves and the other. While previous Dracula incarnations represented the other (foreign, queer, sexual threat), this Dracula collapses those boundaries, allowing the audience to see themselves in his monstrous love. Because the film allows him interiority, we can simultaneously shudder at his brutality and root for him in his quest. Ultimately, this character can only end badly, but it is a character worth revisiting.

Drake – Blade: Trinity (dir. David S. Goyer, 2004)

It is common knowledge that the Blade films saved Marvel from financial ruin before the beginning of the MCU. The third entry in the franchise, Blade: Trinity, goes back to the Dracula well for its big bad.

I have included this Dracula not because I think this is a particularly good film (it isn't), but because Dominic Purcell is such an unexpected choice to play this character. Whether known for Prison Break (2005-2009) or his role in the CW Arrowverse, Purcell tends to gravitate towards a gruff but secretly loveable bruiser, a stark contrast to the svelte portrayals of Dracula in past films.

However, Blade: Trinity is not interested in your grandpappy's Dracula. This Dracula, it screams, is a badass warrior from the dawn of time, the perfect foil for Blade (Wesley Snipes). While in theory this premise could, and does, get a bit silly in its machismo, two things save the character from itself. The first is the rather novel idea that Drake–the "hip" modern name he calls himself now, I guess–is not a religious outcast but the result of an evolutionary mutation that made him an apex predator. This more biological take on vampirism as a species that exists parallel to humans was becoming more popular with films like Underworld (2003), so it makes sense that Dracula would eventually be depicted in a similar paradigm. Plus, the red contacts Purcell occasionally wears to make his eyes look like a shark's is probably one of the most creative vampire eye designs I have seen in a long while.

The second is Purcell's commitment to drawing out some kind of nuance in what could have been a by-the-numbers action villain. Drake is tired of being the best. He's tired of his legions of whiny descendants who all want him to fix their messes. He's tired of living forever. He does not have anything against Blade personally; he sees Blade as the answer to his ennui. It is unfortunate that this character did not have a better film. And a cape.

Vlad the Impaler – Dracula Untold (dir. Gary Shore, 2014)

With the success of the MCU and The Avengers (2012), it seemed like every studio in the early 2010s was trying to find a shared universe concept. Universal was no exception. Looking to capitalize on their oldest IP, they decided to reboot the old creature features in what would become an ill-fated attempt to create The Dark Universe. After all, Lugosi's Dracula had appeared alongside Frankenstein's Creature (Glen Strange) in Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein (1948), so the idea that all these creatures existed in the same universe was not much of a stretch.

The main issue with Dracula Untold (2014), the film intended to launch the Dark Universe, is that it and director Gary Shore cannot decide what they want Dracula (Luke Evans) to be. It's an origin story, marketed as a more historically grounded version of Vlad the Impaler’s brutal reign. Set in fifteenth-century Transylvania during the invasion of the Ottoman Empire, the film attempts to capitalize on the success of hyper-violent historical action films like 300 (2006). However, this film also wants Dracula to be a cursed supernatural entity who rejects religion to save his country (see that anxiety about brown people invading Europe again?). It also wants him to be a superhero. And a romantic lead. And a father. In a ninety-two minute runtime.

To be fair, Evans, riding high from his high-profile role in The Hobbit trilogy, is doing his best with what he is given. He certainly looks like a good fit for the character on paper. He knows how to film a good action sequence, and he looks good with his shirt off. But because this film struggles so much with its main character's identity, it forgets the most important part of any vampire film: vibes! Sure, this Dracula can turn into a colony of bats on a whim, but beyond that, he is not creepy or seductive. When he takes out an entire army of Turks with his bare hands, it's a weightless superhero fight, not the psychological terror of a creature of the night. The vampire that turns Vlad, played wonderfully by Charles Dance, is much more imposing than he, which feels wrong for someone whose moniker is The Impaler.

What is truly funny about this is that the same material is covered much better in the first ten minutes of Coppola's film, which just goes to show that not everything needs a dedicated origin film. Turns out, I'd rather watch Vlad make an altar bleed with his blasphemy than watch bats fly around for an hour and a half.

Of course, I've left out so many wonderful and not-so-wonderful adaptations here. This project just whetted my thirst for more Dracula in film and TV, so fear not: Dracula will again rise next year in another list.

In the meantime, I have two suggested pairings for a Dracula-themed movie night this SpookyJawn. If in the mood for some classic vampire horror, try a Lugosi and Lee double feature. If the eldritch is the thing, try Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Just remember to lock your windows.