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Dracula - Most Influential Vampire Still Entertaining

Dracula - Most Influential Vampire Still Entertaining

In 1897, Bram Stoker's "Dracula" was published in Great Britain. It was one of many Gothic horror novels of the day and, although popular, wasn't considered to be meaningful or timeless in any way. Yet, over a century later, the book has never gone out of print. Its title character, Count Dracula, is the quintessential vampire of Western literature and has inspired more movies than any novel. "Dracula" is sufficiently multi-faceted that writers and directors of film have been able to adapt it for their constantly changing times and purposes. In 1922, F.W. Murnau found in "Dracula" his Freudian-expressionist masterpiece "Nosferatu". Nearly a decade later, Dracula was transformed into Bela Lugosi's suave predatory aristocrat in Tod Browning's 1931 film. In John Badham's 1979 film "Dracula", the predator is a liberator of sexually oppressed women. In Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film, "Bram Stoker's Dracula", he is a romantic hero. There have been at least 10 major films based directly on Bram Stoker's novel, and about the same number of plays.

"Dracula" is a literary masterpiece by virtue of its influence and perhaps its ideas, many of which are only half-formed in the novel itself. The prose is not masterful. Bram Stoker wrote "Dracula" as a series of diaries and correspondence which, taken together, tell a remarkable tale of an evil that invades the characters' lives and threatens to prey upon the citizenry of London. Jonathan Harker is a solicitor from Exeter who travels to Transylvania, in Romania, to present a mysterious Count named Dracula with the paperwork involved in his purchase of a home in London. While visiting the Count, Jonathan learns that his host is not quite human and very dangerous, but is left in such an agitated state that he is unsure what was real and what was a nightmare. Hoping to put the ordeal behind him, Jonathan marries his devoted fiancée, Mina, as soon as possible and returns to England and normalcy. Meanwhile, a former pupil of Mina's in London, Lucy Westenra, has just accepted a marriage proposal herself. But a strange illness has overtaken Lucy. She inexplicably loses large amounts of blood, her countenance is gradually changing. It will take her aristocratic fiancée Arthur, her former suitors, psychiatrist Dr. Seward and wealthy Texan Quincey Morris, as well as an esteemed scientist from Amsterdam, Dr. Van Helsing, to save her from...

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