Things That Happen In Every Dracula Movie

First published in 1897, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" rung in the new century with its intelligent, gruesome, and sensual reimagining of the vampire mythos. Poetically, Stoker's text and the advent of cinema took place within years of each other, with the Lumière brothers' displaying the Cinématographe a mere two years before "Dracula" hit shelves. Plenty of gothic creations shuffled and slinked across the big screen before the Count's frightful cinematic reign began. But, if you count F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent film "Nosferatu" (and we do), then Dracula is easily one of horror's longest-serving subjects. 

While plenty of films tweak, cut, and twist Stoker's text, most movies follow the source material more or less faithfully. "Dracula" tells the timeless tale of an undead, bloodsucking Eastern European aristocrat who travels to England to prey on young women. Luckily a gaggle of heroic lads, led by the infamous Dr. Van Helsing, are on the case and keen to dispatch of the suave leech before he can bleed London dry. While each cinematic interpretation of Stoker's text seeks to bring something new to the table, there are some elements you can always count on that make "Dracula" feel like "Dracula." Read on for our look at the themes, images, plot beats, and characters who always make an appearance in any respectable "Dracula" movie.

Jonathan Harker isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier; that's part of the character's charm. One of the best indicators of the glossy-eyed solicitor's innocence is his very specific visual impairment: Harker is apparently unable to see red flags. Indeed, Harker is presented with a boatload of bad omens as he journeys to Count Dracula's castle. And because his head is full of cotton balls and love letters to his young bride-to-be, Harker takes note of the ominous portents of his doom and presses forward like a good, dutiful businessman. 

In 1922's "Nosferatu," the young solicitor dismisses local warnings that a monster prowls the grounds of Dracula's estate. Similar hand waving takes place in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake (people disappear without a trace you say? No coach will travel to that part of the country? Must be a silly local superstition!). In Tod Browning's 1931 version of the tale, the young solicitor doesn't think twice when the frantic locals place a crucifix around his neck "for protection." And in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film, Keanu Reeves' Harker deserves extra "head empty" credit for seeing that his carriage pick-up spot was marked by a crucified wolf and all but shrugging.

Horror, arguably more than any other film genre, is especially amenable to metaphor. It is a corner of film keenly interested in symbols, allusions, dream logic, and psychoanalytic interpretations. When you're wheeling and dealing in the realm of magic and monsters, the restrictive confines of reality become a lot easier to play around with. Dracula may be a supernatural creature. But his fangs aren't the only thing that makes him a formidable foe. Indeed, Dracula's wealth is a key part of what makes him so dangerous. He buys an estate in London through totally legal means. He bears all the outward signs of old high society and his "moneyed elite eccentricities" make him that much easier to dismiss. 

Whereas the aristocracy bleeds the lower classes dry metaphorically, Dracula literally sucks the lifeblood out of mere mortals. Any self-respecting "Dracula" film understands that its titular villain's elevated status is a key part of what makes the character work. He is literally a Count, after all. Can you think of the last time you saw a working-class Count Dracula? Of course, you can't. From the marble-filled castle estate in "Dracula" (1958) to the Count's four meters wide (at least!) fireplace in 1970's "Count Dracula," one thing you can count on is the Count being high status and positively loaded.

In the world of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," if you're not a virginal bride-to-be or a dutiful wife/mother, then you're a corrupted, fallen woman. At the beginning of the tale, both Mina and her best pal Lucy fall firmly into the latter category. They are committed to the men in their lives and are, for all intents and purposes, totally upstanding Victorian ladies. Until Dracula enters the picture, that is. After the blood-hungry Count seduces poor Lucy, the young Miss Westenra falls critically ill, ultimately succumbing to her tragic condition of "not having any blood left in her." In Stoker's text, Lucy's illness brings a gaggle of important characters together (including one Dr. Van Helsing), who steadily grow wise to the reality of the supernatural threat after the previously joyful young woman returns from the dead as a vampiric vixen. 

Lucy being "turned" is an all-important piece of both the narrative and thematic puzzles of "Dracula." The tragic "fallen woman" can be spied (under a different name) in 1922's "Nosferatu," where she is reimagined as the sister of a British shipbuilder. Interestingly, a couple of "Dracula" films choose to swap Lucy and Mina's names around (1979's "Nosferatu" and "Dracula"), though the core of the characters remains the same. More traditional interpretations of the character's vampiric fate can be found in 1958's "Dracula," 2002's "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary," and 1970's "Count Dracula."

Whether he's a steely-nerved Brit or closer to the eccentric Dutchman of Bram Stoker's text, one thing you can always count on in any self-respecting "Dracula" film is the presence of Professor Abraham Van Helsing. An open-minded polymath and the only character in Stoker's text with prior knowledge of the existence of vampirism, Dr. Van Helsing is initially summoned through his connection to John Seward, his former student, who is attending to the soon-to-be-vampiric Lucy Westenra. Without the presence of Dr. Van Helsing, most "Dracula" movies would be about 30 minutes long, ending abruptly with Dracula laying waste to the whole of England, undisturbed. Thankfully, Van Helsing is wise to the Count's nefarious condition and is able to martial the available allies to perform the appropriate acts to cut the Count's influence off at the root. 

Van Helsing first appeared in 1922's "Nosferatu," where he is renamed Professor Bulwer. Van Helsing appears in both of Universal's 1931 editions of "Dracula," as well as both 1979 "Dracula" films. You can spot Van Helsing in the Royal Winnipeg ballet's adaptation of Stoker's text, and you can even find him in the 1995 spoof "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," where he is portrayed by the film's director, Mel Brooks. Arguably, just as you can't have a Dracula movie without a Count, you can't have one without a Van Helsing. They were made for each other.

There are a number of reasons why you would assume that sleeping in a coffin might be less than ideal. Even if you can get over the claustrophobia, such a stiff and confined space might lead to some serious aches and pains in the morning. But hey, if your goal is to be shielded from all the surrounding sunlight (and to discourage curious folks from exposing you to stray sunbeams), a coffin is definitely the way to go. Is a "Dracula" movie really a "Dracula" movie if the Count doesn't sleep in a coffin? 

Our wide-eyed protagonist stumbles across Count Orlok snoring away in a coffin in 1922's "Nosferatu," and both 1931 Universal Pictures films conclude with our heroes staking Dracula through the heart while he dozes the doze of the dead in the catacombs. In 1958's "The Return of Dracula," the Count ups the ante by sleeping in a coffin in an abandoned mine (no sunlight there!), and we see the vampiric brides also resting in coffins in 1970's "Count Dracula" and the 1971 Czech TV movie "Hrabě Drakula." So scoff all you want, soft-mattress lovers, but clearly, it's not the hardware that's the problem. These vampires are sleeping the sleep of the dead. (Until some heroic ding dong with a steak comes calling, that is.)

Dracula has always had a strong connection with other creatures of the night. In Bram Stoker's original text, vampire expert Van Helsing specifies that the Count can command and transform into "all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf." The infamous vampire's talent for changing into fearsome creatures is a mainstay in his cinematic tenure. The Count tends to transform into the same kinds of animals, the most popular being a wolf (1974's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," 1977's "Count Dracula") and a bat (1977's "Dracula's Dog," 2014's "Dracula Untold," and 1931's English-language "Dracula"). 

The predator motif — and Dracula's mastery over some of nature's most infamous predators — emphasizes the Count's ravenous power. However, not all of the Count's animalistic forms are created equal. Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" features an especially memorable menagerie, including a hairy, snub-nosed man-beast and a big twisting pile of rats in the shape of a person. But as far as the "out there" Dracula transformations go, no film can hold a candle to Dario Argento's "Dracula 3D," which features a scene in which the Count transforms into an enormous praying mantis.

While Bram Stoker's text is more or less opposed to humanizing "Dracula," filmmakers have been hard at work giving the Count a more empathetic reading. A good deal of films — including 1979's "Love At First Bite" and 1992's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" — turn Dracula into a hopeless romantic who sees in Mina Harker a reincarnation of his long-lost love. By casting Chinese-Canadian Zhang Wei-Qiang as the titular Count, Guy Maddin's "Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary" emphasizes the orientalism and xenophobic anxieties of Stoker's text. 

Notably, Christopher Lee made a distinct effort to infuse pathos into his portrayal(s) of the notorious Count. As Lee recalled in a 1990 NPR interview, the actor saw "something in the character which other people hadn't ... that the character is heroic, erotic, and romantic." In an interview reprinted in John L. Flynn's "Cinematic vampires: the living dead on film and television" Lee specified that he "always tried to put an element of sadness, which I've termed the loneliness of evil, into his character. Dracula doesn't want to live, but he's got to! He doesn't want to go on existing as the undead, but he has no choice."