The Original Vampire DRACULA

FUN FACT: More films have been made featuring Dracula than almost any fictional character. Tarzan is about his only competition.(Landis,23)

Novelist Bram Stoker first introduced his novel Dracula in 1897 and it was a great success. The first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula was introduced in 1922 in the German silent film called Nosferatu. This film also became a huge success, yet it was produced without the permission of Stoker and because Stoker had passed away by this point his wife took the issue to the courts. 

Stoker's novel was adapted into a play by Hamilton Deane in England and toured there for three years before it opened in London's West End. People came from all over to see this play and it eventually made it's way to Broadway. Although it became a huge success by the time it made it to Broadway in 1927 the play had been heavily revised by John L. Balderston. The lead was played by a Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi.

Lugosi was asked to play in the lead in Universal's Hollywood adaptation of Dracula and was beyond thrilled. The film version was more so based on the play rather than Stoker's novel. Lugosi also played a Count Dracula look alike in the film Mark of The Vampire (1935). Unfortunately for Lugosi, his career never stepped out of the realm of Dracula and he was typecast as the vamp for the rest of his career. He toured the play after the film and performed over thousands of times. Hundreds of Dracula movies have been made since then, but most notable big budget films were Dracula by John Badham in 1979 and Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992.

The legends of vampires have been reinvented in every vampire film. Just to name a few of John Landis' favorites, Near Dark (1987) produced Kathryn Bigelow, Interview with a Vampire (1994) produced by Neil Jordan, Let the Right one In (2008) produced by Tomas Alfedson, Innocent Blood (1992) produced by John Landis and Daybreakers (2009) produced by Michael and Peter Spierig. 

I haven't had the chance to read the original novel Dracula by Stoker, but I hear that it is just as scary as any Dracula film. The story is told through letters and diaries and is very detailed. John Landis' the author of Monsters in Movies: 100 years of cinematic nightmares suggest that if you every have the time to read it you should. Special thanks goes out to John Landis' for his great research on monsters in movies!