SHOCK selects 12 stellar film incarnations of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel of Gothic horror and sexual sublimation, DRACULA, is probably the single most influential and important text in horror. Certainly, without it, we’d have been robbed of an entire sub-genre of entertainment. Sure, Stoker didn’t invent the idea of the vampire; the monster was alive and well in folklore and in the Irish writer’s time, in the pages of the Penny Dreadful’s and on the stage of the Grand Guignol. But it was with DRACULA, that Stoker put a face to the fiend, turning the vampire into an ancient aristocrat, a Devil-weaned fiend in fine clothing who moves among us, seducing, violating, charming and devouring whomever he pleases. A Svengali from the abyss who can just as easily civilly discuss history and humanity as he can tear your throat out and bathe in your spurting blood, later dragging you back from the grave to serve him in undeath.
The story of DRACULA has long served cinema, perhaps more than any other text, even more than its Gothic coin flip-side companion, Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN, and there have been dozens of incarnations of the vampire Count, some good, some not good.
Some great.
In this list, SHOCK selects 12 of what we consider the cream of the crypt. See if you agree with our choices and feel free to add some of your own in the comments section below…
DRACULA
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Bela Lugosi (DRACULA, 1931)
With his piercing eyes, slick, European charm and thick Hungarian accent, Lugosi defined the very idea of the cinematic Dracula. Tod Browning's film was an adaptation of Hamilton Deane's popular stage play and the Dracula seen here was far removed from Stoker's vision. No fangs at all and any bloodsucking is left to the imagination. The movie is stiff by today's standards but Lugosi's malevolent vampire is worthy of every accolade he has earned.
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Lon Chaney Jr. (SON OF DRACULA, 1943)
Robert Siodmak's haunting, atmospheric, expressionist masterpiece sees THE WOLF MAN himself star as the heir of Dracula. And while many have criticized his appearance as being too "hang-dog" and "well-fed", Chaney delivers a melancholy, memorable turn. His Dracula disguises himself initially as "Alucard", a now goofy conceit employed by many lesser pictures (THE MONSTER SQUAD, for one); this is also the first Dracula film that explicitly shows the Count turning into a bat.
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John Carradine (HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, 1944)
Gaunt and seemingly starved for blood, Carradine's Count first made his appearance here, in Universal's first melting-pot monster mash and later, in the sequel HOUSE OF DRACULA and much later, in the terrible but inadvertently awesome BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA. If Chaney looked like he'd spent too much time haunting an all you can drink blood buffet, Carradine's Dracula looked like he hadn't eaten in eons, making him a dangerous, hungry and calculating predator.
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Christopher Lee (HORROR OF DRACULA, 1958)
What's left to say about the lamented Lee and his masterful turn as Count Dracula, first in this Hammer masterpiece and later, in 7 more sequels (not too mention the 1970 Jess Franco adaptation of the book)? Simply put, Lee IS Dracula, now and forever, fulfilling the promise of Lugosi and clearly defining what we should and would forever seek in a cinematic Dracula. Lean, athletic, sexual and cruel and eventually, by the time we get to SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, even a blood-sucking Capitalist swine, Lee's vampire cannot be touched. This writer's fave Lee Drac is 1970's mean-spirited SCARS OF DRACULA (pictured here).
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Jack Palance (DRACULA, 1973)
Dan Curtis, he of the groundbreaking horror soap opera and film series DARK SHADOWS, joins forces (as he often would) with writer Richard Matheson for this very faithful adaptation of the book, a telefilm that boasts one of the greatest Dracula portrayals by veteran actor Palance. Palance's Drac is just as tough and urgent as Lee's, but here he's more tortured and, like Curtis' Barnabas Collins, a slave to love. Palance also has a more feral, animal-like "look" making him a terrifying ghoul when the story requires him to be.
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Paul Naschy (COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE, 1973)
Though horror history will forever remember Naschy (real name Jacinto Molina) for his spate of werewolf pictures, his role as the Count in this lush exploitation film cannot be discounted. This is my favorite Naschy film. His Dracula starts off as a cordial, almost shy doctor in a vacant Sanitarium (his presence echoes that of Chaney in SON), who seems to be annoyed by his own vampirism. But when the bloodlust grips him, look out! As the title suggest, Naschy's Dracula just wants to find love and, despite the ample female nudity, the movie is almost feminist, with Dracula respecting his paramour's desire to live independently and making the ultimate sacrifce. A strange, romantic and bloody film with a great central performance.
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Louis Jourdan (COUNT DRACULA, 1977)
If you haven't seen this chilling and handsomely mounted BBC TV film production, find a way to do so immediately. The elegant Jourdan oozes lethal charm as Dracula, his fine-boned frame suggesting an aristocratic heritage that makes him a magnet for his victims and adds a dimension of entitled evil to his performance. No one has bettered his articulation of Stoker's wordplay on screen and he's matched by Frank Finlay's Van Helsing. Dramatically, their opposition is far more satisfying than Lee and Peter Cushing's is. Curiously, FInlay would later quote his Van Helsing character in Tobe Hooper's space vampire saga LIFEFORCE.
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Frank Langella (DRACULA, 1979)
As has been noted ad nauseum, 1979 was the year of Dracula, with at least 3 major studio pictures centering around the character and plenty more knock-offs as well. This gorgeously produced, John Badham-directed adaptation of the recently revived Broadway mounting of the Deane play was dismissed upon release but now commands a loyal cult following. Langella is Lee's Dracula for the post-Disco era, macho, fluid and big-collared. As he was on stage, the actor is brilliant as Dracula and here, we get close enough to his face and see the nuances of the performance, his brown eyes darting around as he sizes up the women in room he has designs to drink from. Beware the existing DVD release, wherein Badham did his own brand of vampire voodoo, draining his film of color to match the monochrome of the stage design, robbing the beautiful picture of all its rich reds, blues and blacks. Stick with the pan/scan VHS for now...
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Klaus Kinski (NOSFERATU: THE VAMPYRE, 1979)
The only reason we left Max Shreck's performance in Murnau's unauthorized 1922 NOSFERATU off this list is that there, due to Stoker's living widow still holding the rights to the novel, Murnau changed the character's name to Count Orlack. But when Werner Herzog opted to revisit what he deemed the most important film in German history, the novel had long lapsed into public domain and now his vampire could legally take the name Dracula. Herzog's dream-like masterpiece (my favorite vampire movie of all time, if that matters) is driven by Kinski's magnetic performance as the sickly, lonely and disease-ridden Dracula, a vermin-like plague of a creature that only wants to connect, only wants to feel the sense of love and humanity that his curse has denied him. Kinski, one of the greatest actors of any generation, plays Dracula like some sort of alien being, tuned into a frequency only he can hear. Brilliant.
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Michael Nouri (CLIFFHANGERS/CURSE OF DRACULA, 1979)
CLIFFHANGERS was a nifty, short-lived prime time series that squished three serialized stories into a one hour time frame, the most popular being CURSE OF DRACULA starring THE HIDDEN's Michael Nouri as the Count, recently revived and running wild in the modern age. Clearly taking cues from Langella's Dracula, Nouri is just as suave and earthy in the role, a Dracula whose murderous ways are tempered by his appealing physicality. All of the existing episodes of the show were later edited into a feature called WORLD OF DRACULA. It's incredibly hard to find but, if you're a Dracula completist, find it you should. Nouri is excellent.
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Gary Oldman (BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, 1992)
Call it a bloated, atonal, overproduced mess of a blockbuster (which I certainly do), but there's no denying the power of Oldman's performance (or, performances as he has so many incarnations) of Dracula in this ambitious and historically important Francis Ford Coppola film. Completely over the top, Oldman pours every ounce of his craft into realizing the Count at every stage of his existence, from bun-wearing husk to bearded dandy to bat-monster, Goldman drains the ample scenery and leaves the rest of his cast-mates gasping for breath, including Anthony Hopkins' Van Helsing who comes off as crazier than Renfield.
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Luke Evans (DRACULA UNTOLD, 2011)
DRACULA for the GAME OF THRONES scene and there's nothing wrong with that. At all. Some horror fans sneered at this operatic, violent origins tale, one that stretches and amplified the first five minutes of the Coppola film and gives the underrated Evans plenty of space to create a romantic, conflicted hero who succumbs to vampirism to save his people. A fascinating, imaginative and revisionist approach to the well-worn DRACULA tale and Evans is always compelling, whether engaged in grand battle or trying to curb his burgeoning bloodlust. Many hate DRACULA UNTOLD. As you can see, I am not one of them.
