Bram Stoker's Dracula Meets Hollywood

Bram Stoker's Dracula Meets Hollywood

For more than 100 years, Bram Stoker’s Victorian novel, Dracula, has remained one of the most successful and revered novels ever published. Since its release in 1897, no other literary publication has been the subject of cinematic reproduction as much as Dracula. Dracula has involuntarily become the most media friendly personality of the 20th century. When a novel, such as Dracula, is transformed into a cinematic version, the end product is usually mediocre and provides non-existing justice to the pain staking work endured by the author.

Due to production costs and financial restrictions, the director and screenplay writer can never fully reproduce an entire literary work into a screen version. With the complications of time restriction in major motion pictures, a full-length novel is compacted into a two-hour film. This commonly leads to the interference in the sequence of events, alternation of plots and themes, and the elimination of important characters or events. But the one true adversary of novel-based films is Hollywood fabrication. Producers, directors, and playwrights add or eliminate events and characters that might or might not pertain to the storyline for the sake of visual appeal, therefore defacing the author’s work.

The above explanations have not paralyzed the countless attempts made by directors to bring the legendary Dracula to the big screen. Some cinematic reproductions of the novel have been more successful and critically acclaimed than others. According to Stuart, “ From 1897 to 1993 there have been at least 600 vampire movies. Dracula has been portrayed on film at least 130 times” (Stuart 217). But three versions of the genre have emerged as the most d...

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Filmography

Browning, T. (Director), & Fort, G. (Screenplay). (1931). Dracula [Motion Picture].

United States: Universal Studios

Murnau, F.W. (Director). (1922). Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens [Motion

Picture] Germany: Prana Films

Coppola, Francis F. (Director), & Hart, James V. (Screenplay). (1992). Bram Stoker’s

Dracula [Motion Picture]. United States: Columbia Pictures