Google celebrates Bram Stoker's 165th birthday

[Earth 2 Chris]

https://www.google.com

What a great graphic, capturing the literary Dracula and the cast of characters from the book. Love the little things. Mina has the wafer burn on her forehead, Van Helsing holding garlic flowers over Lucy, etc.

I wish SOMEONE would make a truly faithful adaptation of the novel. Coopala came close, but added all that Vlad the Impaler reincarnated love story stuff, which completely violated the characters of both the fictional and REAL Draculas.

Chris

[madmarva]

I noticed the google logo today, too, and liked it very much. Dracula is one of my favorite novels.

The BBC produced a movie in the late 70s that was serialized on PBS and it is the the closest adaption of the novel that I've seen. It's available as an all regions DVD. It was scary to me as a kid, today it's still good if you appreciate the novel but not very scary and paced pretty slow by modern standards.

I like Coopala's Dracula a great deal, but the additions he made take it far afield from the novel in my opinion, though it gets a lot of it right. I also still like the Frank Langella version from 79 or 80, but like Coopala's the director and screen writer made it a romance for Dracula, while in Stoker's novel love is not on the count's mind at all.

Count Dracula with Christopher Lee from the 70s is closer than most of the films to the book.

Oh, if you ever watch Arachnophobia, it's plot is very much an adaption of Dracula with the spider(s) in lieu of the vampire.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Is the BBC version the one with Louis Jordan? I haven't seen that one yet. I need to check it out.

The romantic angle in Coopala's movie seemed to be cribbed from the Dan Curtis/Jack Palance version, or perhaps from Karloff's The Mummy.

I like Coopala's Dracula for accurately portraying the other characters, and their roles in the book, for the most part. Holmwood, Seward and Quincy are very close to their literary counterparts, and in most films they are either eliminated or greatly changed.

I saw the Langella version for the first time in years a while back, and I was pleasantly surprised with it. It's an updated version of the stage play, but it's well done.

I passed on Lee's Count Dracula at Wal-Mart a few years back during a vampire movie promotion, and I've never seen it out again. Dagnabbit.

Chris

[madmarva]

That's the one. I believe I bought it on Amazon. I've not seen Count Dracula since the 1980s on TV.