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.
