A lot of people at the IMDB seem to rate some films PURELY on how faithful they are to the book-- or not. Which is not really fair, as a lot of GREAT movies have been made that were loosley based on TERRIBLE books. But of course, the reverse is ALSO true (and we must never forget it-- heehee).
DRACULA has been "lucky" in a way, as so many adaptations have been made, which have each been SO different from each other, and most of them, SO interesting in their own way! It's fun to watch, sometimes the ones that veer farthest from the book are the most fun (Hammer's 1958
DRACULA with Lee & Cushing immeidately comes to mind).
That said, in truth, I feel there are really only TWO adaptations that really, genuinely try to follow the book-- and they're both named "
COUNT DRACULA". The first is thr 1970 version with Lee, Lom & Kinski. Technically, it's a TERRIBLY-made movie... and yet, from all I've seen and read, it it, nontheless, Jess Franco's undisputed MASTERPIECE. (heh) I mean, he REALLY TRIED on this one!! It's just a shame he still dind't have a decent budget, and that he couldn't bring himself to fire that AWFUL camerman who's apparently shot every single one of his atrocities-- I mean movies-- over the years.
I make fun, but I really do LIKE the film-- in spitre of its shortcomings. Lee looks EXACTLY as Dracula should, the story-- for the most part-- tries to follow the book-- Herbert Lom is pretty authentic to the novel-- and it's even got a decent Harker for a change. They do make a few notable deviations. Oddly enough, Dracula & Val Helsing to NOT cross paths anywhere in the book-- AT ALL-- until the end. But that doesn't make for good drama. (A friend of mine suggested that Bram Stoker, like many famous authors, had not quite gotten the hang of writing when he hit it big with his FIRST NOVEL.) Also, they BURN Dracula at the end. Which looks terrific. Oddly enough, right around the same time, Chris Lee went down IN FLAMES after being struck by LIGHTNING (that's gotta hurt!) in
SCARS OF DRACULA, a film that was actually written and intended for SOME OTHER ACTOR... until the distributor refused to put up the money UNLESS Lee was in it. I'm guessing that explains the pasty white make-up, and the fact that he got MORE DIALOGUE in
SCARS... than all his other Hammer
DRAC films put together.
Now, what you need to do, is watch the 1977 BBC version with Louis Jourdan & Frank Finlay. WOW!!!!! Jess Franco's feels like a "Reader's Digest" version of this... whiole this feels the same for the novel itself. This one ALSO deviates a bit. Once again, Drac & Van Helsing have a verbal confrontation NOT in the novel, presumably because, ever since the stage play with Bela Lugosi, everyone doing the story feels there SHOULD be one! Also, Van Helsing is a BIT nicer-- and less culpable-- than he was in the book. By that I mean, in the novel, he's SO secretive, he doesn't want to let anyone know what's going on until he's SURE, that it leads directly to LUCY'S DEATH. NO S***. If he-- and Jon Pertwee's Doctor-- had TOLD people around him what was going on, things would never have gotten so bad.
Would you believe, I've seen the Lugosi film DOZENS of times by now, and this last time (about 2 weeks ago), it finally struck me, that with the MAJOR compression of the story for the stage version, all the time they spend trying to save Mina in the last 3rd, that actually came from the part of the novel where they're trying to save LUCY. By the time Mina is victimized in the novel, all involved already know about Dracula, and have been hunting him down. He goes after HER almost as a way of "sticking" it to them, to say,
"You DARE come after me? THIS is what you're gonna get."By comparison, the Fernando Fernandez comic-book version (painted in full color), has him go after Mina because he fell in love with Lucy, so attacking Mina was a form of "revenge".
And by comparison, again, the whole "reincarnation of lost love" angle in the Coppola version, had been used in several films before-- including
THE MUMMY (1932),
THE MUMMY'S GHOST,
HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, Dan Curtis'
DRACULA, and
BLACULA (with William Marshall), but had nothiong to do with the book. In the book, Dracula is PURE EVIL!!! When I read the novel, I realized, the ONLY actor who ever "did" the guy in the book, was Christopher Lee.
You know, one version I'm missing, but which I saw twice in theatres (which should tel you how much I liked it) is Mel Brooks'
DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT. It's a loving tribute to Lugosi's film, but also pays tribute to Terrence Fisher, Francis Ford Coppola, and EVEN John Badham! Oh yeah-- and I'm SURE Mel based his Van Helsing on Frank Finlay. (With a little bit of Jack Klugman thrown in.
"I STILL got it!")
I never seem to get tired talking about Dracula.
