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The world's most famous vampire, Dracula was conceived as the title character in Bram Stoker's 1897 novella. The character was a composite of various elements, the vampire being an ancient figure in Eurasian folklore. Probably the most popular incarnation of the vampire in culture during the 19th century was Lord Ruthven from John William Polidori's 1819 short story, "The Vampyre." Two of Stoker's key influences were Emily Gerard's 1885 essay "Transylvania Superstitions" and an 1820 book by William Wilkinson called "An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia." In Wilkinson's book there was a short section about a 15th century Wallachian voivode named Dracula who crossed the Danube River and fought against the Turks. The excerpt contains little information about this Dracula (e.g., there is no reference to his name being Vlad and nothing about his impalements and other atrocities). In fact, Wilkinson confuses Vlad Dracula and his father (Vlad Dracul). But Wilkinson does add a footnote indicating that "'Dracula" in the Wallachian language means "devil." Stoker copied this into his Notes for Dracula, which suggests that this was probably why he chose the name.

Liking the ring of the name, Stoker replaced his villain's previous name, "Count Wampyr", with this. Although Stoker makes an oblique reference to the connection between his Dracula and the historic Vlad III, it is generally perceived that Stoker knew nothing about Vlad III beyond Wilkinson's passing mention. Vlad's more popular nickname was Vlad the Impaler, referring to his favorite atrocity: impaling enemies through their torsos on giant stakes in the ground, frequently by the hundreds. In Stoker's book, Dracula identifies himself as a Székely, which is an Hungarian-speaking and rooted peoples. This is opposed to Vlad III, who was a native Vlach (the native Romanian race). Despite Castle Dracula's Romanian location, Stoker (as well as most playwrights and filmmakers) was no doubt indifferent to this ethnic distinction.

The character of Dracula in Stoker's book is generally agreed to be largely based on Stoker's friend, Sir Henry Irving, a famous theatre actor and director. Not only does the book's description of Count Dracula closely resemble Irving physically, but Irving had a Dracula-like personality that could vary from possessing off-putting charm and civility to imperious, violent and cruel. Ironically, Irving turned down the chance to be the first stage actor to play Dracula.

Stoker's story is told entirely in letters and journals written by the protagonists. The tale begins with Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor, journeying by train and carriage from England to dark, desolate Castle Dracula (situated in the Carpathian Mountains on the border of Transylvania & Moldavia). The purpose of his mission is to provide legal support for Dracula for a real estate transaction. At first seduced by Dracula's cordial manners, Harker soon discovers that he has become a prisoner in the castle and sees disquieting facets of Dracula's nocturnal life. Harker falls under the spell of three wanton female vampires, the Brides of Dracula. He is saved at the last second by the Count, however, who ostensibly wants to keep Harker alive to learn about England. One day, Harker barely escapes from the castle with his life.

Days after, the Russian ship Demeter, crashes on the shores of Whitby, England, during a fierce tempest. All of the crew are missing, and only one body, that of the captain, is found tied up to the ship's helm. The captain's log recounts the gradual disappearance of the entire crew apparently owing to a malevolent presence on board the ship. An animal described as a "large dog" is seen on the ship and leaping ashore. The ship's cargo is described as "silver sand" mixed with boxes of earth from Transylvania, which end up in the abandoned warehouse Dracula makes his home. Soon Dracula is menacing Harker's devoted fiancée, Mina Murray, and her friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy receives three marriage proposals in one day, from Sir Arthur Holmwood; an American cowboy, Quincey Morris; and an asylum psychiatrist, Dr. John Seward. Seward's patient Renfield, an insane man who means to consume insects, spiders, birds, and other creatures in order to absorb their "life force", has a mysterious connection to Dracula.

Lucy begins to waste away suspiciously. Her suitors fret, and Seward calls in his old teacher, Professor Abraham Van Helsing from Amsterdam. Van Helsing immediately determines the vampiric cause of Lucy's condition but refuses to disclose it. Van Helsing tries multiple blood transfusions, but they are clearly losing ground. On a night when Van Helsing is gone, a "wolf" enters the Westenra estate, killing Lucy's mother by shock and attacking Lucy, who dies from blood loss. Lucy is buried, but soon afterward the newspapers report a "beautiful lady" stalking children in the night. Van Helsing, knowing that this means Lucy has become a vampire, confides in Seward, Arthur, and Morris. The suitors and Van Helsing track her down, and stake her heart and behead her. Jonathan Harker arrives home from Budapest (where Mina joined and married him after his escape), also joining the coalition of hunting Dracula.

After Dracula learns of Van Helsing and the others' plot against him, he takes revenge by biting Mina. Dracula also feeds Mina his blood, creating a spiritual bond between them to control her. Sensing Dracula's obsession with Mina, Reinfeld, in an attack of conscience, plees with the young woman to flee from his master. In retribution, Dracula seeps into Reinfeld's cell as green mist and breaks Reinfeld's neck. When Dracula leaves England to get away from his pursuers, he uses his bond with Mina to stay ahead of the coalition. However, it is this connection that Van Hesling starts to use (through hypnosis) to track Dracula's movements. Dracula and his gyspy slaves flee back to his Transylvania homeland. The coalition of heroes manages to track down Dracula's caravan just before sundown at the entrance to Castle Dracula. Quincy is injured in the ensuing fight. In last moments of daylight, Dracula bursts out of his box but his throat is immediately slit by Harker and the dying Quincy stabs him in the heart with a Bowie knife. Dracula crumbles to dust, his spell is lifted and Mina is freed from the marks. After mourning over Quincy's death, Harker and Mina live happily ever after.

Stoker, through Harker, describes Dracula as follows: "his face was a strong - a very strong - aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor." As the book progresses and Dracula consumes more people, his appearance grows younger.

Stoker's Dracula is tall and thin, but has the strength of 20 men and can scale down a wall like a lizard. He is able to shapeshift into various animals, including rats, bats and a wolf, as well as into fog or mist. He is a hypnotist who is capable of controlling both animals and humans. Despite his interactions with Harker and Van Helsing's partial familarity with him, Dracula is a shadowy and unknowable figure to the protagonists throughout the book. He turns female victims into vampires by gradually draining them to death and making them drink his blood in return; whereas male victims are either outright killed or possibly devoured. Stoker's Dracula is repulsed by crosses, garlics and "Host" (communion wafers) and is weaker in daylight. He is very passionate about his warrior heritage, proclaiming his pride to Harker on how the Székely are infused with the blood of multiple heroes. Stoker's Dracula does express an interest in the history of the British Empire, speaking admirably of its people. He has a somewhat primal and predatory world view; he pities ordinary humans for their revulsion to their darker impulses.

The first screen incarnation of Stoker's character was F.W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' (1922). The characters' names were changed in in the international release of this film and no credit is given to Stoker (leading Stoker's widow to sue Murnau), but the basis is undeniable. The Dracula figure was renamed Count Orlok and played by Max Schreck. In this version Knock (i.e. Reinfeld, Alexander Granach) orders Hutter (i.e. Harker, Gustav von Wangenheim) from his home in Wisbourg, Germany to go to Transylvania and, as in the novel, Hutter is menaced by Orlok before narrowly escaping with his life. Orlok takes a schooner, where he is shown, with his entourage of rats, terrorizing and killing the crew, Orlok takes up residence in an empty warehouse in Wisbourg. Believing that the crew died of plague, the locals of Wisbourg become terrified that the plague is spreading. Orlok begins to feed on Hutter's fiance Helen (i.e. Mina, Greta Schröder) just as Hutter makes his way home. Orlok is still considered by many the most frightening screen vampire with his bald, bulbous head, disgusting, rat-like face, hunched posture and long, claw-like fingers. Like Stoker's Dracula, Orlok can barely contain his animalistic thrist behind the civility so often later ascribed to Dracula. 'Nosferatu' is considered the source of the aspect of vampire legend that vampires die if exposed to sunlight, as the resourceful Ellen thus destroys the villain while sacrificing her own life to Orlok's thrist. Stoker's Dracula loses some power to daylight, but it is by no means fatal.

Playwright and actor Hamilton Deane became the first to legally adapt Dracula for the stage. Many aspects of the screen Dracula are traced to Deane's interpretation. Eventually, American writer John Balderston was dispatched by Horace Liveright to adapt Deane's version for a Broadway version of "Dracula". Cast in the title role in New York was a Hungarian expatriate named Bela Lugosi. Universal Studio head Carl Laemmle acquired the rights to the Deane-Balderston adaptation and Carl Laemmle Jr. ultimately took over the project. Originally it was to be directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt, but Laemmle Jr. instead courted famous filmmaking team Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. However, Chaney passed on and thus Lugosi finally won the part in the film.

Tod Browning's 'Dracula' (1931) features the archetypal Count Dracula, though the story is radically changed from Stoker's and Lugosi doesn't physically resemble Stoker's original antagonist. Unlike Stoker's version, Lugosi's Dracula is handsome and outwardly civil, deceiving his victims and enemies with his considerable charm. He contributed many aspects to the classic vampire imagine which are no cliches: the cape, the slicked-back hair, the Eastern European accent. Browning's film closely follows the plays by Deane and Balderston in plot aspects, many of which were re-written from the novel to be more linear and better suited to the stage and arguably give the classic film a stagey feeling. Dracula is seen to transform only into a (rather fake-looking) bat and only uses the power of hypnosis in the film, with other of Stoker's powers restricted by the inability to portray them with special-effects at the time. Reinfeld (Dwight Frye), instead of Harker, makes the ill-fated trip tom Castle Dracula, where he is doomed by the powerful Count and his relatively demure brides. Reinfeld returns with Dracula on the doomed ship voyage and is hospitalized as insane after the police find him on the otherwise empty raving about "rats". Dracula claims his female victims in London while masquerading as a polite European about town. Here, Harker (David Manners) finds himself powerless as the Count is soon seducing and feeding on Mina (Helen Chandler) and Edward Van Sloan's Van Hesling is brought in by Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), who is in Browning's film a middle-aged man (a Van Helsing colleague rather than prodigy) and is Mina's father. Dracula then kidnaps the hypnotized Mina and murders the escaped Reinfeld for betraying his location by throwing him down a large flight of stairs. Van Helsing and Harker pursue them and Van Helsing alone kills Dracula (off-screen) by staking him just after the fiend returns to his coffin. Simultaneously filmed in the evenings with Browning's somewhat static version, a now better-regarded version of the same script was made in Spanish with Carlos Villarias as Count Dracula and directed by George Milford. The Spanish-language crew had the advantage of looking over the other films' daily and worked to top the English-language version. The Spanish version is slower and considered more atmospheric and dream-like than even the Browning version. Overall, the cast is considered stronger, especially the much more sensuous (and scantily-clad) Lupita Tovar in the Mina (now "Eva") part. Villarias is generally considered the weak link in this version, unable to match the intensity of Lugosi in the part. When Browning's film was a success, it not only made Dracula and Lugosi famous, it spurred the first era of the horror film.

Universal put out a sequel to Browning's 'Dracula' in 1936: 'Dracula's Daughter'. This film is supposed to take place chronologically immediately after Edward Van Sloan's Van Helsing destroys Dracula and the Count himself is replaced as the supernatural villain by his supposed daughter: Countess Zavelska (Gloria Holden). Unlike her father, the Countess tries to fight her own vampiric nature but is unable to and is ultimately killed by her own Reinfeld-like manservant when she fails to turn him into a vampire to. One 1944 oddity from Columbia Pictures that is worthy of mention is 'The Return of the Vampire', in which rescue workers revive a previously staked vampire during the London Blitz. Bela Lugosi plays the undead Armand Tesla, who is Dracula in all but name. Dracula wouldn't reappear again in name until 'Son of Dracula' (1943), where Lon Chaney Jr. plays the part spelled backwards as "Count Alucard". Chaney Jr. failed to make a strong impression in the role and was replaced by John Carradine in the films 'House of Frankenstein' and 'House of Dracula'. These films matched Dracula against the other favorite Universal monsters: Larry "Wolf Man" Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) and Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange). Though Universal had twisted the adventures of Dracula far away from Stoker's tale, Carradine in the role is considered to have a marked physical resemblance to Stoker's description of the Count. However, Carradine does not even try to do a Romanian accent. Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula once more in 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein' (1948), a classic comedy that's considered the last nail the coffin of the credibility of Universal's horror films. In it Lugosi's Count attempts to put Lou Costello's brain into Strange's monster's body and is ultimately foiled by the bumbling duo, with the help of Chaney Jr.'s conflicted Wolf Man.

In the 1957 'The Blood of Dracula' a wayward teenager (Sandra Harrison) being transformed into a legendary fiend by an ill-willed adult (Louise Lewis), as a part of the cheesy "I Was a Teenage..." series. 'The Return of Dracula' (1958) brought the Count to modern day America. Matinee idol Francis Lederer played Count Dracula, who flees vampire hunters in Transylvania to take up residence in small-town America in the guise of an artist he had previously murdered. The Count begins to feed on the local populace and create more vampires before he is tracked to his lair in an abandoned mine and destroyed.

The third highly-regarded adaptation of the Stoker tale came in Terence Fisher's 'Dracula' (1958), the second and, to many, the best of the many horror films made in England by Hammer Studios. Here the Count is played by the dashing Christopher Lee, who reduced the Old World charms of Lugosi's version and turned the character into a monster full of feral sexual longing and rabid, red-eyed fury. He is matched to an imposing Van Hesling, played by Peter Cushing. The plot is different from any other adaptation because screenwriter Jimmy Sangster was tasked with conceiving a plot that differentiated this version from the classic with Lugosi. In this version, Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) is introduced as an active vampire hunter, rather than unsuspect real-estate agent, who finds his way to Castle Dracula. He dispatches Dracula's single bride (Valerie Gaunt) but is outwitted and killed by the Count. Harker's colleague (in this version) is Cushing's Van Helsing who follows Harker's tracks to the Castle and has to kill Harker as he is now a vampire. Arthur Holmwood (Michael Gough) and his wife Mina (Melissa Stribling) are kept in the dark as Lee's Dracula (without apparently needing to undergo the long ship voyage of Stoker's Dracula) has secretly tracked and down started to feed on Harker's fiancee, Lucy (Carol Marsh). Lucy is turned into a vampire and is staked by Van Helsing. Dracula dupes Mina (with a fake note from Arthur) into meeting him so he can abduct her. Van Helsing and Arthur chase Dracula back to his castle where he and Van Helsing physically battle. Dracula gets the upper hand but, sensing a weakness, Van Helsing exposes him to sunlight. Like Count Orlok, Lee's Dracula dies from sunlight, although instead of fading away, he grotesquely crumbs apart into dust. Lee would return to the Dracula role 10 times, more often than any other actor. After the first few sequels, everyone acknowledged (including Lee himself) that the Lee as Dracula films declined dramatically in quality. In each Hammer film, Lee's Dracula would meet his demise, usually turning into dust after a last minute strike from his enemy, only to be repeatedly be revived by mixing blood with the ashes in the following film. In one Lee as Dracula film, 'Dracula AD 1972' (1972), the Count is brought back to life to gorily enjoy the free love era. In another Lee as Dracula film, one of the few made outside of Hammer, tried to return somewhat to Stoker's tale, Jesus Franco's 'Count Dracula' (1970), and co-starring Herbert Lom as Van Helsing and Klaus Kinski as Renfield. However, it is considered far inferior to Fisher's film. Lee's last turn as Dracula, 'Dracula and Son' (1976), is a French, non-Hammer meta-comedy where Dracula and his neebish son (Bernard Menez) exploit the Count's horror movie fame for celebrity. By the 1960s and 1970s, Dracula had been reduced to a schlocky figure, reworked for Blaxploitation in 'Blacula' (1972) and even popping up on cereal boxes as Count Chocula. Many grade-Z pictures featuring Dracula were made around this time, frequently with the now aged John Carradine returned to playing the Count again. The most fascinating of Carradine's later Dracula pictures may be William Beaudine's 'Billy the Kid versus Dracula' (1966), the title pretty much explaining it all. Carradine was reduced to being Dracula's butler, George, at one point, in 'Blood of Dracula's Castle' (1969). In 1970, Dracula (Zandor Vorkov) made a visit to a modern California beach community in Al Adamson's famously bad 'Dracula vs. Frankenstein' (1970). Andy Warhol made a bite at the story in the campy 'Blood of Dracula' (1974), where Udo Keir's sickly Dracula goes to Italy and gets into dalliances with handsome young men and women.

The 1970s also saw two TV movie version that were unprecedented in their faithfulness to Stoker's original: Dan Curtis's "Dracula" (1973), starring Jack Palance; and Philip Saville's "Count Dracula" (1977), starring Louis Jordan. The Curtis version is also of note because it's the first to explicitly connect Dracula to the historic Prince Vlad III, a connection made much more frequently in the future. In 1979, Universal Studio returned to the character in John Badham's 'Dracula'. This version was most faithful to Lugosi's film, with the same plot and Frank Langella in the title role (just coming off starring in a new Broadway production of Balderston's play "Dracula"). This Dracula was an open-shirted heartthrob who wouldn't be out of place on the cover of a romantic novel, being about as far as Dracula could go from the grotesque Count Orlok. Langella was set against an elderly and hammy Laurence Olivier as Van Helsing. Inexplicably, the heroine in Badham's film has adopted the name of Lucy (Kate Nelligan), whereas her ill-fated friend is now Mina Van Helsing (Jan Francis), Abraham's daughter. Reinfeld (Tony Haygarth) also adds a first name, "Milo". The same year as John Badham's 'Dracula', Werner Herzog remade 'Nosferatu' as 'Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht' (1979). The look and plot of Murnau's film are maintained here, but the Stoker names are officially restored. In Herzog's stately-paced film, Klaus Kinski looks just like Orlok, but is actually a lovelorn and even somewhat pitiful figure, infactuated with Isabella Adjani's Lucy Harker. A further change was the seemingly deeper connection between Dracula and Bruno Ganz's Jonathan Harker. Ganz's surprisingly sinister Harker may be carrying on Dracula's vampiric tradition at the end of the film. Also released in 1979, 'Love at First Bite' put a mockingly comedic spin on the Dracula story, with George Hamilton unquestionably playing the most tan Dracula ever. In this comedy, Dracula is expelled from Castle Dracula by the Communist and then bumbles into New York. Hamilton's Count ultimately romantically wins over Cindy Sondheim (Susan Saint James), much to the distress of the goofy Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg (Richard Benjamin), i.e. Van Helsing. The 1980s proved to be a quiet time for Dracula, as he only appears as a supporting character in a pair of minor teen comedies: 'The Monster Squad' (1987) and 'Waxworks' (1988).

<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;line-height:17px;">The next important adaptation of Stoker's book came in Francis Ford Coppola's 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992). As the title indicates, Coppola's version is much closer to Stoker's book than other big-screen versions, with Billy Campbell's Quincey Morris finally returned to the story. Two primary changes from Stoker occurred in this version: as in the Dan Curtis TV movie, Dracula's past as Vlad III is shown; and an out-and-out love story with Mina was added. In this visually-opulent film, Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder are star-crossed lovers, making Dracula something of a Byronic hero. When his bride and true love (Ryder) is deceived into killing herself, Oldman's Vlad III renounces the God he'd served as a warrior and becomes a vampire, thus turning into Dracula. Dracula's true love is then reincarnated by 1897 as Mina (Ryder). When Harker (Keanu Reeves) visits Castle Dracula, Oldman's Dracula is a wizen, creepy old man dressed in Asian silk and his long hair worn as a set of giant, vertical buns. This hairy-palmed, frightening old Count further schemes to go to England after he sees a photo of Harker's fiance, who is none other than his reincarnated love. Dracula's nude, beautiful brides wantonly seduce Harker before, to Harker's horror, being offered a live baby to feed on by Dracula. After feeding on the crew of the Demeter as Harker is kept prisoner by the brides, Dracula arrives in the midst of the storm and immediately ravishes and feeds on Mina's flirty friend Lucy (Sadie Frost). Then, a younger-looking, more handsome Dracula (still baring a striking resemblance to the historic Vlad III) courts Mina in London. This is perhaps the closest any Dracula has come to the shape-shifting ability of Stoker's book and Oldman's Dracula (beyond his normal forms) is various shown as disguised as a giant masked coach driver, a werewolf-like wolf-man, a regular-looking wolf, a hideous man-sized bat, a form with a wrinkled reptilian face, a plague of rats and a green mist. Just as in Stoker's novel, Anthony Hopkin's half-mad Van Helsing arrives and leads a colition of Lucy's suitors on a hunt after Dracula. When Mina flees to Budapest in order to marry the escaped Harker, Dracula, angry and remorseless, turns into a wolf and kills Lucy. Renfield is played by music star Tom Waits and, just as in Stoker's book, mets his end when he warns Mina and is thus killed by Dracula as a green mist. Despite his killing of her best friend, Mina still loves Dracula and allows him to start to turn her into a vampire. After the vampiric Lucy (who continues the brides tradition of feeding on children) is killed by her former suitors, Mina fears that she will meet the same fate from the men (including Harker, Morris, Richard E. Grant's Dr. Seward and Cary Elwes' Lord Holmwood) and therefore seems to lose her feelings for Harker. After a confrontation between the coalition and Dracula, Van Helsing leads the men to chase Dracula across Europe. When faced with Dracula's brides alone with a possessed-seeming Mina, Van Helsing beheads them. Van Helsing and the other men lead a violent fight against Dracula's gyspy slaves. After this climatic struggle, Dracula is badly wounded by Morris's blade (before Morris himself dies) just as sunset comes. Then, a weeping Mina mercy kills her love-smitten Count by stabbing his heart and beheading him and he returns to his youthful form as Vlad in true death.

<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;line-height:17px;">In 1995, Mel Brooks parodied Dracula in 'Dracula: Dead and Loving It', where Leslie Nielsen plays the Count with references both to the classic Bela Lugosi film and Coppola's more recent adaptation. A trio of the most recent versions of Dracula recast him for videogame times. In 'Dracula 2000' (2000), Gerard Butler's Dracula hunts a house full of young people looking for a descendant of Van Helsing. 'Dracula 2000' claims one of Dracula's former identities was Judas Iscariot, doomed by God for his betrayal of his son. In 'Van Helsing' (2004), Dracula (Richard Roxborough) crosses paths with a young adventurer son of Abraham Van Hesling named Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman), supposedly hidden by his father in the Catholic church to protect him from Dracula until adulthood. Gabriel finally destroys Dracula by turning into a giant werewolf, evidently more powerful than Dracula's giant bat form, and attacking the Count. 'Blade: Trinity' (2004) shows Dracula today going by under the far more inconspicuous name of "Drake" (Dominic Purcell) and engaging in battle with vampire-hunter Blade (Wesley Snipes). When "Drake" turns into a giant dragon-like monster at the end, Blade kills him by shooting him up with a vampire-blood bioweapon. After hundreds of films and even more spin-offs, Dracula has proved himself a character that truly won't die. With the resurgence of vampire popularity thanks to the "Twilight" franchise, "True Blood" and "The Vampire Diaries", the return of Dracula seems eminent.