Dracula and its Adaptations

Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.) – Bram Stoker, Dracula

I love vampires.

As in, Count von Count, the McDonalds vampire (which, in my head, is called Count Macula, but I can’t find anything online to substantiate that), Count Duckula, and Count Rockula were my icons when I was a toddler.

What did I want to be when I grew up?

A vampire. And I was convinced I’d be incredibly fabulous. The camp is innate, people.

So it really pisses me off that no-one can ever quite get Dracula right.

It’s like Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde – everyone knows the main beats, so the real meat of the story gets twisted or ignored.

I want an adaptation of Dracula that takes it as seriously as the Muppets and Sir Michael Caine took A Christmas Carol. In fact, I now want a Muppets Dracula. Casting ideas at the end of this blog.

Do you really know Dracula?

I only read Dracula in my twenties*, having watched pretty much every adaptation, which were just never quite as good as I wanted them to be.

And guess what?

I loved the book.

My highlight will always be the very strong implication that the Count is so determined to conjure this illusion of a normal, functioning castle to Jonathan Harker that he pretends to be the cab driver. And the cook. And all of the servants, actually.

The pacing of the novel is also great – it’s essentially an epistolary, gathering Jonathan’s diaries, Mina’s letters, Seward’s recordings, and various other documents, casting everyone as an inadvertently unreliable narrator until the full picture becomes clear. Again, we know Count Dracula’s a vampire, but experiencing the group trying to work out what’s going so wrong with Lucy really does inspire dread.

It’s also a true fin de siècle work: we contrast the tumultuous geopolitics and rural superstitions of Eastern Europe with the technological advances of the ‘enlightened’ Anglosphere, in which Dracula himself is deeply interested. And decay. So much decay.

*I did have an abridged graphic version as a child, which actually really captured the essence of the novel

Adapting Dracula – What goes wrong?

Okay, so some adaptations are better than others, and in my opinion, ‘better’ doesn’t necessarily mean more faithful. It just means capturing the spirit or intent of the work. For me, some cardinal sins get committed time and time again to a greater or lesser extent:

·         Removing Mina’s agency/making her fall in love with Dracula/making Lucy out to be an airhead – a real insult to two very well-rounded and significant characters, who just happen to be female

·         Ignoring the modernity at the heart of the novel – yes, it’s Victorian, but the technology and medicine demonstrated in Dracula was genuinely cutting-edge – we’re talking gramophone recordings and blood transfusions

·         Losing the dark humour – there are parts that are very grimly funny: see Dracula’s impersonations, the ‘bloofer lady’, and, arguably the idiocy of Lucy’s mother (yes, the garlic stinks, but deal with it)

·         Combining Lucy’s three love interests into two, or even one – in the original novel, they all have very distinct personalities and strengths that they bring to the mission

·         Making vampires burn in the sunlight. They just don’t. Come on. They may be weakened, but they don’t spontaneously combust.

Personal Thoughts on Various Adaptations

So, I tend to prefer vampire media that isn’t related to Dracula, but as I said, I’ve watched enough adaptations to have *opinions*. Here’s just a few of the most notable ones:

Nosferatu (1922)

I still need to watch the more recent versions, but I will give points to the original for its sheer iconic-ness. Sometimes I creep up the stairs to my own house with the claw shadow. It amuses me. Also, the subtitle in English is ‘A Symphony of Horror’, which just goes hard. Nosferatu does, however, lose points for introducing the idea of vampires combusting in sunlight.

Dracula (1931)

Oh, Bela Lugosi has my heart and the set design is gorgeous, but unfortunately, I grew up watching Mel Brooks’ Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which very lovingly but closely parodies this particular version of Dracula. So I just couldn’t take it seriously.

Dracula (1958)

How can a version of Dracula be so dry? So stagey? With that incredible music and the blood spatter over Dracula’s name at the beginning? Honestly, Sir Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are absolutely the saving grace of this (and many other Hammer Horror films) and the climax with Van Helsing running across the table and dragging the curtains down lives in my mind rent-free.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Is it Bram Stoker’s, though?

It looks beautiful. Gorgeous, sumptuous, all of that saturated colour.

It’s reasonably faithful to the text.

But…

It really gave ammunition to the ‘Dracula being in love with Mina’ crowd and I am not a fan of the whole ‘reincarnated love’ schtick. Dracula isn’t a tortured antihero. He’s an unrepentant, avaricious parasite.

I call it the MTV version of Dracula. Having said that, I appreciate Sir Gary Oldman and Sir Anthony Hopkins going full ham, if only because it counterbalances the interesting casting (and accents) of Keanu and Winona.

Dracula (2020)

It starts so well. Claes Bang is fantastic in the title role and his insidious influence over Jonathan is both well-written and well-played as the Count grows younger and more English the longer Harker stays with him. Sister Agatha’s an interesting take on the Van Helsing role and there are some genuinely menacing moments. Sadly, the first episode is the best. The second, while very off-script, is also really good, but the third? Let’s just not.

Muppets meet Dracula

Well, this inadvertently captured my imagination, and I’m now writing this before the rest of this very serious blog. My casting suggestions as below:

Count Dracula: Sebastian Stan as (ironically) the one human performer; Jonathan Harker: Kermit the Frog; Mina Murray: Miss Piggy; Abraham Van Helsing: Gonzo the Great; Lucy Westenra: Janice; Arthur Holmwood: Scooter; John Seward: Rizzo; Quincy Morris: Sam Eagle; Renfield: Animal.

Sebastian is on record saying he wants to play Dracula. He is Romanian, after all. Can someone make this happen please?

Coldharbour: The Insufferable One

Just a tiny teaser this time:

Stacey led Alex up the stairs and pointed up at a door that was the kind of ajar a shadow could just about creep through.

A shadow with teeth and claws.

A Nosferatu.

Alex had read that Nosferatu had come from an archaic Romanian word meaning “the insufferable one”, one of those facts that Matthew would’ve loved. Unfortunately, Sian was a bit insufferable at the best of times.

 Coldharbour II: The Dead Land comes out on Halloween. Read the first in the series, Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death, now.