Theme: Count Dracula

Count Dracula is the most famous of all Vampires. Dracula was the creation of Bram Stoker in the eponymous novel Dracula (1897), which laid down to essence of what we regard as vampire lore. Dracula lived in Transylvania and journeyed to Victorian England where he proceeded to prey upon women, drinking their blood and rendering proper Victorian maidens as wanton and seductive.

The first screen incarnation of Dracula was in the Turkish Drakula (1921), the one that caught attention in the unauthorised German adaptation Nosferatu (1922) where he was depicted as a crepuscular, rat-like being called Count Orlock.

The most famous Dracula was Bela Lugosi in Universal’s Dracula (1931) which created the iconic figure of Dracula with dinner-suit, cape and thick East European accent. This version of Dracula is the one that has stuck in the audience’s imagination and been much copied and parodied despite hundreds of other screen interpretations of the character since.

Christopher Lee also became Dracula in the long-running series from Hammer Films beginning with Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958), bringing out a far more savage and animalistic portrayal. There have been numerous other adaptations of the Stoker novel since with hundreds of actors filling the role.

That is not to mention the vast number of sequels, modernisations, parodies, comedies, animated versions, children’s tellings, erotic/pornographic interpretations and works that transplant Dracula to everywhere from a Western setting to on board a spaceship, plus various of Dracula’s sons and daughters.

Stoker borrowed the name of Dracula from a title (meaning Son of the Dragon) that was given to the historic Wallachian tyrant Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler. There have been a number of works that tie the fictional and historic Dracula together as the same person.

Part and parcel with Dracula comes his nemesis Professor Van Helsing, a Monster Hunter who comes outfitted with a body of occult knowledge. Van Helsing has been a popular character in screen incarnations and we have seen various sons, daughters and descendants of, modernisations and comedy interpretations of the character, even several Dracula-less entries where Van Helsing was the standalone hero.