“Denn die Todten reiten schnell.”
- Bram Stoker, Dracula.
Stoker is no more, and the gothic scene has long since parted with Dracula and moved on to its descendants, too many at that. However, there is no negating Dracula’s popularity, especially the novel’s long-standing tryst with the screen. From Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation of the novel to Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, a remake of the 1922 film of the same name, it does seem that this “love never dies.”
Draculaesque and the many iterations of the Count
Nosferatu, starring Bill Skarsgård, Lili-Rose Depp, and Nicholas Hoult in the lead roles, is the latest addition to the list of Dracula adaptations on screen. The gothic horror which treads the grim route is a remake of Murnau’s 1922 film, which failed to secure rights to Bram Stoker’s novel and tried to evade copyright violation by altering details and names, including changing Count Dracula to Count Orlok. Murnau’s silent-era classic has also been praised as the prototype of the genre itself.
Going by the yardsticks of popularity, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula comes out on top, with Gary Oldman’s face lending itself to one of the most popular renditions of the Count. “See me, See me now” has a cult status in popular culture, much like the movie itself. Both Nosferatu and Dracula also frequent discussions on cinema that adopts the German expressionist style.
The 1979 film, Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht, is evidently different from the other versions of the film despite being a retelling of the 1922 film. Isabelle Adjani and Klaus Kinski star in this foreboding and moody remake, with Kinski emerging as the most unsettling Dracula of all.
Risking this article turning into a list of all films named Nosferatu, there is one final addition. Shadow of the Vampire takes you through a fictionalised setting, the making of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu with an actual vampire hired for the role, unbeknown to the crew.
Even though Murnau helmed the first unofficial adaptation (which landed him in major trouble with Stoker’s widow), the first official adaptation came in 1931. In 1930, Universal Studios bagged the rights to both the play and the novel, and Bela Lugosi became the face of this cult classic. Thanks to this film, "Swan Lake" rose to be synonymous with Dracula. It is also interesting to note that even though the court ruled in favour of Florence Balcombe (Stoker’s wife) and ordered all copies of the 1922 Nosferatu to be destroyed, the film survived and rose to unforeseen popularity.
How could one not mention Christopher Lee’s Dracula from Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)? One among the many popular productions from the Gothic horror and fantasy roll of Hammer Productions (or Hammer Horror as it is popularly known), it also emerged as their highest-grossing film. Hammer also had a series of films centered on the Count and Doctor Van Helsing.
Count Dracula (1977), a television adaptation produced by the BBC, is also one of the more faithful adaptations of the original text.
However, with all being said there are only so many ways in which one can re-imagine and remake until the process becomes ad nauseum. Works like Billy the Kid vs Dracula bear the name, but very little essence of Stoker’s classic. Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) also ruffled a few feathers despite being popular.
But Hotel Transylvania emerged unscathed by this criticism by viewing the Count through an interesting lens. Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) re-imagines Bram Stoker’s vampire in the ballet way. Maddin’s movie, starring Zhang Wei-Qiang as the titular character, also explores the xenophobic reactions of other characters to Dracula.
Dracula also made appearances on television with the Netflix series of the same name being his most recent outing. The mini-series conceived by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat was received well by lovers of the vampire. Dracula: The Series was yet another television show that ran for almost a year, with two children and the vampire-hunting uncle attempting to take down the modern reincarnation of Dracula.
Statistics from 2015 pits two men against each other for the most number of on-screen adaptations. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stands second with 299 appearances and the vampire, Count Dracula towers over him with 538. With Nosferatu having a good theatrical run, it is time for all the lovers of Stoker’s fiction to revisit their favourite Dracula and say, “I don’t drink……wine.”
