There’s
a big difference between Dracula movies and vampire movies. Dracula is always a
vampire, but not every vampire is Dracula. That’s a bit of an understatement.
Ever since Nosferatu was made in the silent era, people have been perennially
fascinated with bringing Bram Stoker’s historic and histrionic novel to
cinematic life, with wildly varying results.
The
story is now a part of the larger pop culture zeitgeist. Jonathan Harker, Mina,
his fiancée, Quincy the Texan, and Van Helsing are the original monster hunters
and their exploits are not unfamiliar to us, thanks to movies, TV, comics,
radio, stage plays, and of course, the novel itself. Written in the form of
epistolary correspondence from person to person, the novel is accused of being
overly romantic, and is most famously analyzed as Stoker’s reaction to the
influx of immigrants to Great Britain at the time and a cautionary tale of the
dangers of these dark, mysterious, swarthy men ravaging the fair maidens of
England.
Xenophobia
and Jingoism aside, the novel is a great read, and the movies are...well, a
mixed bag. I don’t think of them as scary; not anymore. I know the story too
well. So, I’m basing this list on how well the story gets across in the movie
as an adaptation from the novel. That puts all of these movies on a relatively level
playing field. Comparing them this way really highlights the author and
director’s intent in an objective way that is easy to compare. Mind you, none
of them get it totally right, but maybe if we mashed them all up together, we’d
get a Frankenstein version of Dracula that would hit every note.
5.
Dracula (1931)
For
many, this is the gold standard. Bela Lugosi, reprising his role that won him
acclaim on the stage, became is most identifiable character, so much so that he
is the de facto face of Dracula for Universal Studios to this day. His stilted
accent, the most famous lines, and even his almost affected mannerisms remain
staples of the character in nearly every incarnation.
No
effort was made to give the story any sense of history. Instead, this Dracula
is set in the 20th century. And in the interest of time, characters are combine
or dropped entirely. As adaptations go, it’s pretty loosey goosey, but what it
has going for it is the gravitas of being the first real source of inspiration
for all of the other Dracula films. The special effects are pretty rudimentary,
and so Todd Browning wisely decided to lean heavily on Lugosi instead.
One
of the best scenes in the movie is when Van Helsing and Harker are observing
Mina and in walks Dracula, a wolf amongst all of the sheep. It’s here that they
repositioned the gag about vampires not showing up in mirrors, and it works
well. The Dracula/Van Helsing early meeting would show up again and again in
other movies, but we never get to see it in the book. For upping the tension in
an already tense moment, you can’t get much better than having your villain pop
into your living room.
4.
Dracula (1979)
This
lavish adaptation starring Frank Langella as Dracula and Sir Lawrence Olivier
as Van Helsing has a lot going for it; a musical score by John Williams, a
screenplay co-written by W.D. Richter, and some really gorgeous visuals that
fill up the screen. But this Dracula is very self-aware and presents a kind of
post-modern commentary on what had become at the time a number of hoary old
clichés. This is a little ironic to me, because the screenplay is much less an
adaptation of Stoker’s novel and much more yet another version of the stage
play that created all of those hoary old clichés in the first place. Just listening
to Van Helsing and Dracula banter, and hearing Langella’s quip-like reply to
Van Helsing’s offer of wine, is a real strong indicator that they are doing it
different than before, and on purpose.
Langella,
his collar open wide at the throat and his perfectly coiffured hair, looks more
like David Copperfield than a turn-of-the-century aristocratic nobleman. Whilst
keeping up the pretense that Dracula is a historical epic, Langella looks more
like he wandered in from some Deney Terrio disco movie. The movie is much more
emphatically romantic rather than scary, even though there are some startling
special effects shots that still hold up.
I
like this Dracula precisely because it’s a reaction to the stereotype. If you
watch all of the sequels that Lugosi and Lee made, you can get a little numb to
the idea. This version of Dracula was supposed to be the antidote to that
repetition.
3.
The Horror of Dracula (1958)
Now
we’re getting somewhere. Christopher Lee played Dracula more times than any
other actor. I’m not really sure that he added overmuch to the role, especially
after that fifth or sixth turn, but one thing is certain: he nailed the
character right out of the gate with his first effort, The Horror of Dracula.
Hammer
Studios were a legendary and storied studio of the 1950s, easily as influential
as Universal was in the 1930s and 1940s. They used color, blood, and sex to
capture the teen-aged dollars of the day, with great success. And really, if
you’re going to do Dracula any justice, it needs all three to really work. In all honesty, it seems that there’s one or
two scenes in every single Hammer film that drag on interminably, so some
heaving bosoms and garish crimson blood are just the thing to wake you up after
all of the talking.
Lee’s
Dracula revels in his power, taking full advantage of creative make up to
change him from a member of the aristocracy to a bloodthirsty monster. And
opposing him, in conversation and combat, is Peter Cushing as Van Helsing; it’s
note perfect, and they would do this dance over and over again in various
sequels. As far as accurate, well, the castles are better, and London more
fully realized, but it’s still light on the book and heavy on the play and the
Universal movie, which had entered into the popular culture lexicon by this
time.
2.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1974)
This
TV movie version of the story is also known as “Dan Curtis’ Dracula” and with
good reason; at the time this movie was made, Dan Curtis was the guy behind a
little soap opera you may have heard of called Dark Shadows. He directed this version, using a script
provided by Richard Matheson at the top of his game and, unbelievably, Jack
Palance in the role of Dracula.
You
can tell, almost right away, that it was directed by a soap opera guy. Every
meaningful glance is preceded by a zoom in to a tight close-up, and a musical
sting, just in case you missed the swoop in. So, yes, there’s romance galore in
this version as well. But there’s also some stuff from the books that makes it
into the screenplay for the first time in a Dracula film. Matheson has to
condense the story (they all do), but he managed to get a lot into a tight
screenplay, starting with setting the movie in the 1890s. I also like that the
standard meeting between Van Helsing and Dracula is absent once he gets to
London. Now they are just chasing the vampire, just like in the book. Of
course, Matheson was just coming off of a massive success writing The Night
Stalker, so everyone’s vampiric bona fides were in order.
You
might think Jack Palance an odd choice for Dracula, but wait until you see him.
He’s an imposing physical presence almost at once, and his saturnine features
are more like Lugosi’s than you might expect. His strength is considerable, and
he frequently crashes through doors instead of turning into mist or a bat, and
that only adds to his ferocity. There are even a couple of genuinely chilling
moments when Dracula reveals himself to Jonathan Harker. Matheson provides a
clever tie-in at the end of the film to the historical Dracula, as a nod to
Stoker’s influence, and because, well, he’s Richard Matheson and that’s what he
does. If you haven’t seen this version and you’re a Dracula fan, go check it
out, as it does not disappoint.
1.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Well,
nearly. This one is certainly the closest to the book version of Dracula, and
yet, it’s also the furthest away. It’s probably the most successful Dracula
movie in recent times, largely thanks to an all-star cast that includes Anthony
Hopkins as Van Helsing, Gary Oldman as Vlad the Impaler, Tom Waites as
Renfield, Winona Ryder as Mina, and lest we forget, the director of this epic
was none other than Francis Ford Coppella.
This
Dracula is wildly entertaining and draws its vampiric shenanigans from nearly
every other Dracula movie that preceded it. There’ Nosferatu-like shadow play,
bright red blood and bodices in the Hammer tradition, and method acting out the
wazoo as Oldman rocks a Hungarian accent that never becomes a parody of Lugosi,
but is obviously meant to connect this movie to its roots.
What
does it get right? Well, for starters, we get Quincy the Texan and the rest of
the gang, a first for something like this. He’s even got his bowie knife. The
production values are of the highest caliber, and the whole movie feels like a
lavish historical period piece, which it certainly is. That’s unfortunately
where everything starts to go awry.
Remember
how I talked earlier about the interpretation of Dracula being a polemic
railing against foreign men ravishing White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Women? Well,
that’s the road this version of Dracula takes, only instead of sublimating
those fears, they laid a thin veneer of sex down over the entire movie. Lucy
and Mina are initially seen giggling over the naughty woodcuts in The Arabian
Nights. Harker (underplayed by Keanu Reeves) is seduced by Dracula’s brides
rather than fed upon. Lucy isn’t taken by Dracula so much as she’s mated with
Dracula—in wolf form, no less. Dracula
seems to excite the women to a noticeable frenzy before feeding on them.
Coppola’s point being that the Victorians may have been hung up on things like
sex, but they were also inundated with it. This is a facile and immature
handling of the material, and I find it more distracting than helpful.
Some
of the imagery is inspired and violent, but again, not very scary. I think
Coppola’s stunt casting, mostly in form of Reeves and Tom Waites, gets in the
way of just telling the story. And while we have connections to the historical
Dracula, which is nice, the emphasis lies on Dracula reclaiming his
reincarnated bride in the form of Mina. Despite all of the above problems,
Oldman’s Dracula is intense, conflicted, and terrifying as well as charming and
urbane. Easily the most complex portrayal of the character to date.
