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Who is the best Dracula?

  • Bela Lugosi

    Votes: 7 17.5%
  • Christopher Lee

    Votes: 19 47.5%
  • Frank Langella

    Votes: 3 7.5%
  • Jack Palance

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Louis Jordain

    Votes: 1 2.5%
  • Gary Oldman

    Votes: 3 7.5%
  • David Niven

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Udo Kier

    Votes: 1 2.5%
  • George Hamilton

    Votes: 1 2.5%
  • Somebody not on this list

    Votes: 5 12.5%

  • Total voters
    40
Patrick Duffy.

well, he did play a vampire, and quite badly I might add.
 
Rutger Hauer played a vampire as well. One that looked as though he'd supped on one too many nubile wenches, going by the expanded waistline.
 
Helen said:
Rutger Hauer played a vampire as well. One that looked as though he'd supped on one too many nubile wenches, going by the expanded waistline.

He was the vampire in the original Buffy movie starring Kirsty Swanson.
*sigh*
Thems were the days.
 
My point was to, erm, point out that there were a goodly number of Dracula's running around out there, and the actor that we think most of when we mention "Dracula" would be interesting. (I've heard it said that Dracula & Sherlock Holmes are two characters who have reverberated throught culture in more ways than justabout any other character).

I think it's interesting that Christopher Lee's fangster is #1 with Fortean fans. I bet an average man-on-the-street interview would show that Bela is still the man most identified with Dracula (at least in America).

Frank Langella didn't get vote 1, whiuch is interesting because his version was pretty hedy stuff in the 70's. Not my favorite at all, but still, i figured there would be somebody who saw it at the right time and that he repersents Dracula for them.

William Marshall was an EXCELLENT Blacula, though, and a good actor in just about anything.
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
William Marshall was an EXCELLENT Blacula, though, and a good actor in just about anything.

Damn straight.


But the fact remains that Blacula is an incredibly funny film.
 
Louis Jourdan was the most erotic, IMHO, which Jack Palance was the most savage. As much as Lee played Dracula, he's always Lord Summerisle to me. But then, I'm a moderately reconstructed old pagan.

Gimme that old time religion!
 
Helen said:
Rutger Hauer played a vampire as well. One that looked as though he'd supped on one too many nubile wenches, going by the expanded waistline.
Damn right! If you're condemned to an eternity of living death, make the best of it :).

I voted Oldman, for somehow combining vulnerability and almost self-loathing at times with the savagery. Dracula's not meant to be very happy, deep down. Betrayed by God, y'see.

Doesn't make for a good day.

BTW, I'm not saying it's the best film - Hopkins foaming at the mouth, Keanu's accent, and Richard E Grant just acting (in anything) conspire against that, but I think Oldman did brilliantly :). As did Tom Waits, best Renfield I've ever seen.
 
Hmmmmm, quality Renfield. And an interesting re-interpretation of Lucy.

I rather liked Tony Hopkins as Van Helsing. The character in the book in clearly almost as mental as dracula and he played him that way. I also liked him copping a feel while trying to fight off Mina.

Cujo
 
I agree with you Stu, Gary Oldman really brought out both sides of the character of Dracula. I grew up with the Christopher Lee version but he's now consigned to my childhood.....
 
Kinski with a hat tip to Schreck. It's hard to have sympathy for the devil but Kinski portrayal is so emotive and his death scene to terrifying, monstrous and so full of pain!

Tom Waits for Renfield tho'
 
What about whatisface in Van Helsing? :D Richard Roxburgh?

Mmmm.......Hugh Jackman..... :D
 
I'd have to toe the party line and agree that it has to be Christopher Lee - I still think of Dracula when I see him interviewed!

Close second though would be Frank Langella - I saw his Dracula as a slightly updated Bela Lugosi, an air of detachment and quiet confidence. Been a long time since I saw it, though.
 
Not strictly Dracula (though he was really and has been mentioned several times on this thread so..) but after watching Nosferatu for the first time recently it has to be Max Schreck. He is now THE vampire for me against whom all other vampires have been judged..and found wanting. :)
 
Max Schreck gets my vote. Someone says "Dracula" to me and I think immediately of Christoper Lee, but Max Schreck is always peeking around the corner and far scarier IMHO.
 
Quick question for ya'll:

I certainly hoped that this Francis Ford Coppola film would have started a resurgence of horror films, but it was not to be. Sure, they did a credible job with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a few years later, but that was the last gasp of this series.

My question to you, horror fans, is: What would have been the next film in the series? I seem to remember at the time that FFCoppola was planning on producing a full series of updated horror classics in the 90's. The Frankenstein film was the first spin-off, but what else was planned that (presummedly) got scrapped after the failure of Frankenstein? I know that the recent Van Helsing film had it's start as a sequel to FFC's Drac, but I don't think that Coppola would have been involved.

A fan site:

http://www.freewebs.com/lost_oceans/index.html
 
A lavish Poe film would have been nice.

A lavish Lovecraft film would be too much to hope for. The Shadow Over Innsmouth or At the Mountains of Madness... Not so sure about a filmatic transition for The Dunwich Horror, although the black and white attempt was watchable...

Draculas: Hmm, tricky. I adore the Coppola version it's marvellously theatric, but if you say 'Dracula' to me, then Lee's head is simply in my mind before I start thinking of alternatives.

It's the stature, I think--and his movement.

The non-dialogue parts are better IMO.
 
I certainly hoped that this Francis Ford Coppola film would have started a resurgence of horror films, but it was not to be. Sure, they did a credible job with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a few years later, but that was the last gasp of this series.

My question to you, horror fans, is: What would have been the next film in the series?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - as identified by Stephen King in Danse Macabre, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and Mr. Hyde represent the three enduring horror archetypes - respectively, the vampire, the thing without a name, and the werewolf.

A Jekyll & Hyde film directed by Chris Cunningham would be as disturbing as hell.
 
Fenris~ said:
However Willem Dafoe played a very good Count Orlov in Shadow of the Vampire. The makeup was so good it was difficult to tell it was him.
As a fan of Nosferatu I was not disappointed at all.

Agreed. SotV is my all-time favorite vampire flick. However, my favorite Dracula flick is the 1992/ Oldman version. Yet, I cast my vote for Bela. So hard to choose!
 
Don't forget that Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein were followed up by Columbia and Tristar (the production companies behind those two) with a Wolf Man film in Wolf (with Jack Nicholson) and a Jekyll and Hyde film in Mary Reilly (with Julia Roberts and her comedy accent).

We had to wait for Scream for the real horror comeback, though.
 
Had to go for Oldman. I mean, I figure Lee's a better Dracula, but when you say "Dracula" I think of Oldman and his uncanny South African accent. "Aahh... Thi Children of thi noyt, wot sweyt myawsic they moyke...".
Almost as if someone had made some horrible typo on his script and he beieved that the Carpathian Mountains were in Transvaal...
 
On the subject of the Count, there's a new BBC adaptation of Dracula on at Christmastime. Unfortunately it looks like a "re-imagining" of the story, but you never know, they might find something worthwhile to do with it.
 
ElishevaBarsabe said:
Max Schreck gets my vote. Someone says "Dracula" to me and I think immediately of Christoper Lee, but Max Schreck is always peeking around the corner and far scarier IMHO.
Shadow of the Vampire was on BBC2, on Sunday night. Have to admit, it gets better every time I watch it. I don't know who's the bigger monster, Willem Dafoe as Max Shreck, or John Malkovich as F.W. Murnau, the director.

The original film, Nosferatu, from 1922, is pretty good too.

You can download a copy from the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/nosferatu
 
I wasn't impressed with tonight's interpretation of Dracula. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/08_august/10/dracula.shtml

WARNING, SPOILER


Right, it's a few years since I last read the book, but...

From the BBC press release: "“Stewart Harcourt’s adaptation is a visceral, sexy and bold retelling of Bram Stoker’s classic chiller which will blow the cobwebs off traditional period drama..."

No, it wasn't and it didn't.

Tonight's film felt like someone had read through Bram Stoker's novel, but couldn't shake the idea of, "Yes, but why did he come to England?" Like they had to write a back story. Missing the point completely.

Far, far too much of the film was taken up with concocting this story about Arthur Holmwood's congenital syphilis, and there's this person he's heard of (how? where?) who can rid his blood of the disease, so Holmwood buys properties for him and brings him to England. The rest of the film felt extremely rushed and missed out too much on the meat of the story.

The business with the Brotherhood of the Undead was frankly cock and bull.

Visceral? No, it wasn't.

Sexy? Do me a favour. I still rate Christopher Lee as the best Dracula - charming, suave, superficially attractive, but with that solid underlying core of evil and violence. I give Gary Oldman a nod too.

This Dracula (no offence meant) looked like common-or-garden Goth nerd with few social skills. Not enough glamour and not enough evil.

And Jonathan Harker's moment of glory in the book - his utterly mindblowing encounter with the female vampires - was omitted completely! I cannot believe it!

Van Helsing was initially presented as a nutter with a penchant for Blair Witch-style hanging twig art, not a clean-shaven doctor and man of both faith and science (come back Peter Cushing, all is forgiven).

Dr Seward's asylum and Renfield omitted. I liked those bits in the book. They ring true, somehow, in an artistic and poetic sense, adding to the atmosphere of the narrative.

I've run out of things to say now. I suspect I'm going to read the original Dracula again.

Oh, and did I say - they dropped Jonathan Harker's moment of glory in the book - his utterly mindblowing encounter with the female vampires!! Aargh!
 
Hot_Cross_Nun said:
From the BBC press release: "“Stewart Harcourt’s adaptation is a visceral, sexy and bold retelling of Bram Stoker’s classic chiller which will blow the cobwebs off traditional period drama..."
My theory is that: nowadays the BBC come up with that kind of sentence, then try and build a series around it. Rather than the other way round.
 
Therre's nothing wrong with trying out a new way of telling an old story, but last night's Dracula was strictly routine, attempting a modern spin on Victorian literature and ending up with a lot of nothing in particular. The supposed bloodlust was positively anaemic, and I also would have liked to see the vampire brides and someone hamming it up as Renfield.

How do you pronounce the lovely Sophia Myles' name, anyway? Is it Soph-eye-ah or Soph-ee-ah?
 
While I remember, there was a much more entertaining clip show on BBC Four straight after, all about vampires. One bloke commanded attention from a 1970s documentary, he slept in a coffin, sipped blood from a thermos flask and claimed to have been a vampire from age ten. But he didn't give his name! I wonder how he's doing now?
 
Coincidentally I'd just re-read Dracula a few days before this was on TV so it was all quite fresh in my mind. It was AWFUL. It was nothing like the book, which I could forgive if they'd come up with some intelligent new interpretation of the legend but they didn't. They just seemed to want to shoehorn as many new stories into the film as possible. Perhaps they were hoping someone would think it was orginal? I don't know. I know that absolutely none of it made any kind of sense, either within itself or in the context of the book.

The Dracula character was ridiculous - he talked like Papa Lazarou as the old Dracula and gurned and pouted his mis-shapen face off as the young version. A million miles from the evil but charming character Bram Stoker invented.

Sexy it certainly wasn't. And that final shot? Of Dracula magically returned as an old man in the light of day? What was that all about? I thought "surprise" endings like that died out in the seventies. I laughed out loud.
 
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