Something is inevitably lost whenever a story is translated from one medium to another, but something can also be gained when storytellers focus on different aspects of the original narrative that might complement the new format. If there’s one story that filmmakers have been retelling for almost as long as the medium of film has existed, it has to be Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Second only to the numerous adventures of Sherlock Holmes when it comes to the sheer number of cinematic adaptations, Dracula has been influencing Hollywood from the very beginning. However, as die-hard fans of the original novel have surely noticed by now, we’ve never actually seen a truly faithful adaptation of the book, have we? Sure, the main plot and characters are usually present, but there’s always something missing from these movies that keeps them from feeling exactly like the book – and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
The other day, I was browsing social media when I came across a post where fans of Bram Stoker’s novel were poking fun at a (most likely AI-generated) Penguin Books advertisement erroneously claiming that, in the original book, Dracula actually pursued Mina Harker because he believed her to be the reincarnation of his long-lost love. Taken at face value, this seemed like a classic case of an intern having watched a bad adaptation and assuming that it followed the book. However, as several commenters pointed out, this tragic side of Dracula has become so deeply ingrained in popular culture that you can’t really blame people for not being aware that certain tropes commonly associated with the character were made up by filmmakers wanting to streamline a 400+ page story.
This isn’t anything new, as these drastic changes to the novel have been going on since the silent era. While it’s rumored that the very first screen version of Dracula was a lost Russian film from 1920, the first two confirmed adaptations of the novel were already quite different from the source material. Also released in the early 1920s and considered to be lost media, the Hungarian Drakula halála lives on through a tie-in novel and publicity images suggesting that this was a psychological thriller only tangentially related to Stoker’s original vision.
1922’s Nosferatu, on the other hand, was intentionally altered in order to avoid paying Stoker’s widow for the rights to his story, a plan that ultimately failed as a lawsuit led to the destruction of most European copies of the film. Though this version of the tale feels more like a dark German fairy tale than anything else, I personally feel that F.W. Murnau’s vision of a demonic harbinger of the plague is spiritually more in line with the novel’s intentions than most other adaptations – especially since Orlok is far more bestial than your usual overly romanticized incarnations of the Count.
Of course, the most influential version of the story would be released a decade later in the form of Tod Browning’s Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. In much the same way that Del Toro’s recent Frankenstein is based more on Bernie Wrightson’s infamous comics and illustrations than Mary Shelley’s original writing, the most iconic Dracula adaptation of them all was itself based on an existing adaptation. You see, the 1931 film was actually inspired by a stage play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, with this truncated version of the story transforming the villainous Count into more of a proper character than a looming monster so that he could more convincingly interact with the other actors and add further drama to the experience.
The play omits several important plot points from the novel and is generally less scary because of that, but it’s easy to understand why Browning and Universal would choose to go with this version of the tale. The book’s epistolary format would be all but impossible to adapt to the screen before the age of found footage storytelling, and the constraints of a traditional screenplay also meant that episodic incidents such as the fate of the S.S. Demeter or even the newspaper clippings about a ghostly child killer (who turns out to be an undead Lucy Westenra) would have to be cut due to pacing concerns.
While Bela Lugosi’s iconic performance as the title character remains one of the most memorable villains in all of Hollywood, this aristocratic depiction of Dracula as a seductive nobleman completely altered the public perception of Stoker’s original idea of a folksy boogeyman come to life. Since filmmakers tend to emulate their own favorite films when tackling new projects, it’s only natural that subsequent adaptations would continue to depict Dracula this way. And that’s not even mentioning how easy it is to make evil look sexy when studios cast folks like Lugosi, Gary Oldman, and even Christopher Lee as gothic villains.
Over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate the tragic romance elements of these adaptations as a natural reflection of how human beings are often attracted to the very same things that frighten us, but I’d still argue that humanizing Count Dracula is usually a mistake. The further the character gets from inhuman monster, the more storytellers have to confront the inherent (if likely unintentional) xenophobia and uncomfortable racial undertones present in this story about an exotic immigrant infiltrating “polite” society and preying on English women – though the existence of Dracula’s previous collection of brides implies that Mina Harker is just the latest in a long line of unhealthy infatuations.
Of course, Dracula isn’t the only character altered by these adaptations, as many of the novel’s less horrific elements tend to be sacrificed for the sake of genre simplicity. The novel devotes a lot of time to developing the emotional bonds formed by our extended cast of heroes, with the power of genuine love and friendship ultimately allowing them to overpower evil in a finale more akin to an optimistic Fantasy story than a traditional horror book. That’s why adaptations often omit characters like the gunslinging Quincy Morris, and directors rarely focus on the romantic subplots that don’t involve the Count.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been attempts at translating the novel’s unique blend of Fantasy and Terror to another medium without altering the foundation of the story entirely. BBC’s 1977 Dracula miniseries stuck very close to the source material in everything but their characterization of the Count, and even Coppola’s 1992 adaptation at least tried to get surface-level details right despite converting the main plot into an epic romance where Gary Oldman is obviously the real leading man. However, if you ask me, Bill Skarsgård’s ghoulish incarnation of Orlok from Robert Eggers’ recent Nosferatu remake is probably the closest we’ll get to a book-accurate Dracula for the foreseeable future.
Stories naturally evolve through adaptations, and the ensuing changes aren’t inherently good or bad. In fact, I think it’s important to differentiate a “bad adaptation” from a “bad movie”, as there are plenty of great horror pictures that blatantly disregard their literary source material in order to provide us with a better theatrical experience (such as Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining). That being said, it’s important to question how and why these changes occur, and in the case of Dracula, I believe it’s possible to revisit this story in a manner closer to what Stoker originally envisioned, so long as filmmakers are willing to step away from the nostalgic shadow of previous adaptations.
Until then, however, horror fans can always revisit the original novel if they ever find themselves in the mood for a more traditional vampiric epic.
