It is unlikely that Stoker knew that he was creating one of the most famous monsters of all time when he was penning his vampire novel. However, the themes that he chose to drive his sensational narrative were the most popular themes of his day. Gothic novels, military enactments, and domestic melodramas dominated Victorian popular culture. Despite his ancient origins, Count Dracula was definitely a vampire of his time. Stoker knew what made a narrative a bestseller in print and a breakout hit on the stage. He wrote his novel with this in mind. The source of Dracula’s cultural staying power can be summed in two simple, three-letter words—war and sex. The source of Dracula’s immortality is also easy to identify. He lives on not through supernatural means, but through countless retellings.
Unlike most sensational bestselling novels published in the nineteenth century, Dracula did not have immediate success on the popular stage. Changes in copyright laws at the end of the century were both a blessing and a curse in this regard. On the one hand, Stoker was able to protect his work from dramatic plagiarism by quickly piecing together a dramatic reading staged at the Lyceum (where he worked as theater manager) in order to preserve the rights to dramatic adaptations of the novel. However, much to Stoker’s chagrin, no notable adaptations of his novel were produced during his lifetime. The result was that Count Dracula did not become an immediate pop-culture phenomenon in the same way that Frankenstein and Jekyll/Hyde found popular success.
This initial roadblock did not prove to be a major obstacle. A basic search on the Internet Movie Database (Www. imdb. com) will show that Count Dracula has made a credited appearance in more than two hundred films to date.12 These appearances began less than 10 years after Stoker’s death in 1912, when two unauthorized film adaptations were produced. Dracula’s first dramatic appearance came in 1921 in the Hungarian horror movie Death of Drakula (aka Dracula’s Death), written and directed by Karoly Lajthay. The plot and character names were significantly changed from Stoker’s novel, with the exception of the lead villain. The second film based on Stoker’s novel was the German film Nosferatu (1922), written and directed by F. W. Murnau, and starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok. Like Death of Drakula, the names of all the characters in this film were changed in order to avoid plagiarism claims; however, the plot is easily recognizable as Stoker’s. Although this silent film is not always associated with the Dracula legend today, it is widely considered to be one of the most important horror movies ever made.
The Dracula legend in visual culture as we know it today began with Dracula (1930), directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. The film script was based on a play adapted by Hamilton Deane and John Balderston in 1924 with the approval of Stoker’s widow, Florence. Although the play had been staged on Broadway in 1927, it was the 1930 film that allowed Count Dracula to really take center stage. The 1930 Dracula was the first in a series of notable adaptations produced by Universal Studios.13
Universal also capitalized on the success of the 1930 film with five Dracula sequels and spinoffs: Dracula’s Daughter (1936), Son of Dracula (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), a comedy that, like the 1944 film listed here, features many of the classic monsters in Universal’s horror sequence. Of course, only the first film in the series is based on Stoker’s novel; however, the vampire that appears in all is no doubt the one that he let loose on the world in 1897.
The next series of notable film adaptations began in 1958 with Dracula, directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula. The 1958 film was the first in a series produced by the British studio Hammer Film Productions. Collectively known as “the Hammer films,” there are a total of nine: Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1969), Scars of Dracula (1970), Dracula AD 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973), and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974).14
The most important film adaptation of the last 30 years is without a doubt Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The film’s all-star cast includes Keanu Reeves as Harker, Winona Ryder as Mina, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Van Helsing, and Gary Oldman as Count Dracula. Of all the notable Dracula films to date, this film pays the most attention to the historical Dracula, although the story is heavily romanticized and extremely liberal in its engagement with history. Vlad Dracula appears momentarily in a basic frame narrative that does little justice to the actual history of the medieval voivode. Nevertheless, it is the most screen time that the Wallachian icon of the Middle Ages has received in, well, ages.
Although film is the primary vehicle for Dracula’s continued fame, he has also made a name for himself in other media. According to comic-book expert Perry Lake, Dracula has appeared in hundreds of comics and graphic novels since the 1960s, with titles published under all of the best-known comic-book publishers, including DC Comics, Marvel, and Dark Horse. The most successful of all of his comic-book incarnations is the 70-issue Tomb of Dracula, published by Marvel between 1972 and 1979 (collected along with some other Dracula comics from the Marvel universe as Tomb of Dracula, Books 1-4 between 2003 and 2005). In the illustrated format, Dracula has battled Frankenstein’s monster in The Frankenstein Dracula War (1995), Zorro in Dracula Versus Zorro (1993), and even Batman in Batman & Dracula: Red Rain (1991). Other notable opponents that have come up against the count in comic books include Blade, the Wolf Man, and the X-Men. In this list of foes, let us not forget Spike from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel television series. A special five-issue dedicated to the 100-year rivalry between Spike and Dracula appeared in 2006 under the Spike series of comics.
Dracula continues to live on in print culture as well, the medium that first brought him immortality. Dracula has been featured in at least a hundred novels published since 1960. Some contemporary writers have even built literary careers by writing novels derived from the Dracula legend. For example, pulp-fiction writer Robert Lory published the following nine novels between 1973 and 1975: Dracula Returns (1973), Hand of Dracula (1973), Dracula’s Brothers (1973), Dracula’s Gold (1973), The Witching of Dracula (1974), Drums of Dracula (1974), Dracula’s Lost World (1975), Dracula’s Disciple (1975), and The Challenge of Dracula (1975). Lory is not alone. Between 1975 and 1992, the prolific American science fiction and fantasy author Fred Saberhagen published 11 Dracula novels: The Dracula Tape (1975), The Holmes-Dracula File (1978), Old Friend of the Family (1979), Thorn (1980), Dominion (1982), A Matter of Taste (1990), A Question of Time (1992), Seance for a Vampire (1994), A Sharpness on the Neck (1996), A Coldness in the Blood (2002), and (with James V. Hart) Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), a novelization of Coppola’s film of the same name. Another contemporary who should be added to this cohort is the historian and novelist Peter Ellis, who published three Dracula novels under the pseudonym Peter Tremayne: Dracula Unborn (1977), The Revenge of Dracula (1978), and Dracula My Love (1980). Tremayne’s trilogy has since been collected and published as one volume, titled Dracula Lives! (1993).
The 1990s also had its fair share of writers inspired by the legend of Dracula, although this time the literary market was dominated by women authors. Jeanne Kalogridis has 30 book titles to her name; however, she is best known for the Diaries of the Family Dracul trilogy: Covenant with the Vampire (1994), Children of the Vampire (1995), and Lord of the Vampires (1996). Kim Newman also had a successful run with the following titles: Anno Dracula (1992), The Bloody Red Baron (1995), and Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959 (aka Dracula Cha Cha Cha; 1998), as well as eight short stories, including “Andy Warhol’s Dracula,” “The Other Side of Midnight,” and “The Dead Travel Fast.” A fourth book in the Anno Dracula series, titled Johnny Alucard, is planned for publication in 2012. Another notable contributor to Count Dracula’s recent presence in fiction is Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, best known for her 25-book Count Saint-Germain series. Despite her widespread success with this vampire series, Yarbro could not resist dipping into the Dracula legend with the Sisters of the Night (aka Brides of Dracula) trilogy, comprising Ke-lene: The Angry Angel (1998), Fenice: Soul of an Angel (1999), and Zhameni: Angel of Death (written, but currently unavailable due to a disagreement with the publisher). Dracula is also the inspiration behind Elizabeth Kostova’s recent bestselling novel The Historian (2005). A film adaptation (see http://the-Historian. net/movie. html) is rumored to be in the works, ensuring that the famous vampire will live on in popular media.
World History
