Count Dracula
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- This article is about the fictional character who appears in Bram Stoker's novel. For later adaptations see Dracula in popular culture.
“Count Dracula” redirects here. For other uses, see Dracula (disambiguation).
Count Dracula is a famous fictional vampire, who appears in Bram Stoker's Gothic horror novel Dracula.
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[edit] Profile
Count Dracula is a centuries-old vampire and Transylvanian nobleman, claiming to be a Szekler with descent from Attila the Hun, who inhabits a crumbling castle in the Carpathian Mountains, near the Borgo Pass. Beneath a veneer of aristocratic charm, the count possesses a dark and evil soul. He can assume the form of an animal, control the weather, and he is stronger than twenty men. His powers are limited, however—for instance, he cannot enter a victim’s home unless invited, cannot cross water unless carried, and is much less powerful in daylight (though he is not completely powerless in the sun nor does it harm him, as in later adaptations).
His appearance has been described thus:
[Dracula's] 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.
– Jonathan Harker's Journal, Dracula, Chapter 2
In his youth, before he became a vampire, he studied the black arts at the academy of Scholomance in the Carpathian Mountains, overlooking the town of Sibiu (also known as Hermannstadt) and became proficient in alchemy and magic (Dracula Chapter 18 and Chapter 23).
Later he took up the military profession. According to Van Helsing:
He must indeed have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turks...If it be so, then was he no common man: for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest'.
– Dracula, Chapter 8
Due to his proficiency in the black arts Dracula, after he died, became a vampire and lived for several centuries in his castle in the Carpathian Mountains, with his three Brides of Dracula for company. In the nineteenth century, however, he acted on a long thought out plan for world domination, and chose to infiltrate the capital of the world's greatest Empire: London, to begin his reign of terror, and to infect the population with vampirism in order to gain undead recruits for his cause. In this design he was however foiled by a Dutch doctor called Van Helsing, who gathered together a group of men and women, who had previously been victims to the Count's vampirism, to combat him. This group of heroes eventually tracked the Count back to his Transylvanian homeland. Despite the popular image of Dracula having a stake driven through his heart within his castle, this did not happen in the book. Instead his head was severed by Jonathan Harker's knife and his heart pierced by Quincey Morris's en route to Castle Dracula.
[edit] In films
- 1922, Max Schreck played a similar character named Count Orlok in the first novel adaptation named Nosferatu.
- 1931, Bela Lugosi plays Dracula in Dracula. He only reprised this role in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
- 1931, Carlos Villarías plays Dracula in the Spanish version of the film.
- 1944 and 1945, John Carradine plays Dracula in both House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula.
- 1958, Christopher Lee as Dracula in the film Horror of Dracula. Lee reprised this role another 10 times.
- 1966, John Carradine again plays Dracula in Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.
- 1973, Jack Palance had the lead in Dracula, a made-for-TV movie directed by Dan Curtis.
- 1977, the BBC produced Count Dracula with Louis Jourdan in the titular role.
- 1979, Frank Langella as the Count in Dracula.
- 1979, Klaus Kinski plays Count Dracula in the film Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, the remake of the 1922 film.
- 1979, George Hamilton as Count Vladimir Dracula in Love at First Bite.
- 1992, Dracula is played by Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
- 1995, Leslie Nielsen plays the Count in the comedy Dracula: Dead and Loving It, which spoofed various Dracula films.
- 2000, Gerard Butler plays Dracula in Dracula 2000, where Dracula's origins take on a more religious explanation.
- 2004, Richard Roxburgh plays Count Dracula in the critically panned Van Helsing, starring Hugh Jackman as Gabriel Van Helsing
- 2006 Marc Warren plays the title character in the newest television adaptation of Dracula.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
Clive Leatherdale (1985) Dracula: the Novel and the Legend. Desert Island Books.
| Iconic Horror Characters in Cinema | |
|---|---|
| Classic: | Creature from the Black Lagoon | Count Dracula | The Fly | Frankenstein's monster | The Invisible Man | The Mummy | Count Orlok | The Phantom | The Wolf Man |
| Modern: | The Alien | Norman Bates | Chucky | Ghostface | Freddy Krueger | Leatherface | The Living Dead | Hannibal Lecter | Regan MacNeil | Michael Myers | Pinhead | Kayako Saeki | Damien Thorn | Jason Voorhees | Sadako Yamamura |
Categories: Articles to be expanded since March 2007 | All articles to be expanded | Fictional vampires | Dracula characters | Film characters | Public domain characters | Fictional Romanians | Fictional counts and countesses | Fictional immortals | Fictional shapeshifters | Marvel Comics supervillains
