Meet the Dracula fang club
Following the BBC’s successful revamp, MARION McMULLEN looks at the appeal of Bram Stoker’s creation and the actors who have portrayed him
IT’S hard to keep a good vampire down and more than 80 actors have got their teeth into the role of Count Dracula over the years. Writer Bram Stoker first made the blood-drinking Romanian famous in his 1897 novel Dracula and was inspired by the real life 15th century prince
Vlad Tepes. He became infamous as Vlad the Impaler after he skewered 200,000 of his enemies on spikes and dined among their bodies, dipping his bread in their blood.
The vampire inspired by his bloodthirsty ways made his first screen appearance in 1922, in the movie Nosferatu – when he was given the name Count Orlock and played by German actor Max Schreck.
Award-winning Danish actor Claes Bang is the most recent actor to bring Dracula back to life for the BBC mini-series written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the team responsible for Sherlock.
Claes said he realised he had a lot to live up to with so many people playing the count over the years and said of Dracula’s continuing appeal: “Yes, he’s evil, but there’s also so much more to him. He’s charismatic, intelligent, witty and sexy.”
So who else has added to the vampire’s legend over the years?
It is said Hollywood star Bela Lugosi was so mesmerising as Dracula that at one point he was receiving more fan mail than Gone With The Wind’s Clark Cable.
He first played the role on stage and perfected the part in more than 350 Broadway performances before starring in the 1931 movie.
He was even buried in one of his Dracula capes and once said of his famous role: “It’s a living, but it’s also a curse. It’s
Dracula’s curse.”
British actor Sir Christopher Lee played Dracula in 10 Hammer films. He said: “Dracula is a very attractive character. Women find him irresistible. We’d all like to be him.”
His 1958 movie Dracula also starred Peter Cushing as vampire-slayer Van Helsing.
New Yorker
John Carradine once said: “Never do anything you wouldn’t want to be caught dead doing.”
He joined the ranks of the undead to play the Count in The House Of Dracula in 1945. It saw Dracula, the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr) and Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange) all trying to find cures for their conditions. David Niven played it for laughs in 1974 British horror comedy film Vampira. The movie’s publicity promised “If you like Young Frankenstein you’ll love Old Dracula”. Niven’s ageing vampire gets his regular blood infusions by letting tourists loose in his castle on arranged tours... and then feeding on them.
Leslie Nielsen also revealed his fangs in the name of comedy for Mel Brooks’ 1995 film Dracula:
Dead And Loving It.
Mel himself played Dracula’s nemesis, Professor Van Helsing, and his real-life wife Anne Bancroft made an appearance as a gypsy woman.
Vampire spoof Love At First Bite saw tanned actor George Hamilton as the daylightshunning Dracula in 1979.
The plot saw him leave Transylvania behind to move to New York. Veteran make-up artist William Tuttle, who worked on the 1931 Dracula movie, also did the make-up for this 70s comedy.
Stoker’s creation was given a sex appeal boost in the 1979 version of Dracula. Frank Langella played the undead as a romantic and haunted vampire searching for love. He had played the part on Broadway and gave the fake fangs a miss when it came to the film. He explained: “I don’t play him as a hair-raising ghoul. He is a nobleman, an elegant man with a very difficult problem, a man with a unique and distinctive social problem. He has to have blood to live and he is immortal.”
Nosferatu the Vampire in 1979 was written and directed by Werner Herzog and saw actor Klaus Kinski as a horrifying Count Dracula spreading the Black Plague across the country. Klaus spent four hours every day in make-up for the role and had previously played Dracula’s servant Renfield in the 1970 film Count Dracula. Director Francis Ford Coppola’s lavish 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula saw Gary Oldman in the title role with Sir Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, Keanu Reeves as lawyer Jonathan Harker and Winona Ryder as his fiancée Mina. The film won Oscars for make-up, sound and costume design. It was slated by critics but audiences still flocked to see it. The success saved Francis Ford Coppola’s movie company Zoetrope from the threat of bankruptcy.
As the appeal of Dracula shows no signs of dying, we can’t wait for the next bite...
It’s a living, but it’s also a curse ...It’s Dracula’s curse.
Bela Lugosi on becoming synonymous with the famous vampire