Dracula through the ages

Ash Walker • 22 Sep 2025 Features

Children of the night. What movies they make!

Count Dracula is one of literature’s greatest villains. He’s also pretty much a constant in the world of movies - he was there right at the start, and he’s been with us ever since, as you might expect from an immortal creature of darkness.

With the latest incarnation, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, hitting Sky Cinema, we’re taking a look back at the history of the undead bloodsucker on film - the good, the bad and the just plain weird.

The Dawn of Dracula

Vampires have been a part of mythology and folklore for a long, long time, and they take all kinds of weird and wonderful forms - like the Filipino Manananggal, which has a detachable flying head, or the red, froglike Yara-ma-yha-who from Australia.

But what we think of as a ‘vampire’ today can really be traced back to one man - Bram Stoker, and his 1897 horror novel Dracula. Stoker took inspiration from real-life historic figures like Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory, and mixed them with cherry-picked details from existing Eastern European vampire folklore to create his iconic villain.

As written, Dracula is a nobleman, a charming, seductive presence with diabolical powers and a thirst for human blood, who preys on young women at night. He also follows a lot of the vampire ‘rules’ that we’ve come to expect - he hates garlic, has no reflection and is weakened (although not killed) by sunlight, and he’s eventually finished off by a stake through the heart.

And a decapitation, if we’re being technical.

Stoker’s novel was immensely popular upon release and, arriving at the dawn of cinema, it wasn’t long until it was first adapted onto the silver screen. Although, not officially…

Fangs on Film

In 1922, director FW Murnau released Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, a low-budget silent Expressionist vampire film that bore a striking resemblance to Bram Stoker’s famous novel. The names and places had been changed - the action now took place in Germany, rather than Whitby - but all the good stuff was there: rats, dark castles and a bloodsucking fiend with supernatural powers.

This take on the vampire (Count Orlok, rather than Count Dracula) was much more monstrous in appearance, with long, clawed fingers and ratty teeth, and became instantly iconic and influential - despite Stoker’s widow’s efforts to have the film destroyed for copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, in 1924, Irish playwright Hamilton Deane created the first authorised adaptation of Dracula, this time on stage. After a successful UK tour, the show made the leap to Broadway in 1927 and gained a new star in the title role - a little-known Hungarian thesp called Bela Lugosi.

The show was, once again, a massive hit - people just love vampires - and it wasn’t long before Hollywood came sniffing around. In 1931 Universal released Dracula, directed by Tod Browning and starring Lugosi, transposed from the stage show, to great success, and a legend was born.

Think of what Dracula looks like - or ask any kid to draw him - and you’ll inevitably come up with Bela Lugosi’s version: the slicked-back hair, the eyebrows, the cape. And the accent (“Cheeldren of the night!”) is Lugosi’s Hungarian drawl to a T.

It was a performance so powerful that it forever cemented itself in popular consciousness and, along with James Whale’s Frankenstein - also released by Universal in 1931 - helped to create the horror genre as we know it today.

Unfortunately, it also served to typecast Lugosi, to the point where he never really managed to crawl out from under Dracula’s shadow. In fact, he died in poverty and, legend has it, was actually buried in his iconic costume.

Many sequels followed the success of Dracula, and after a while other studios took a stab at adapting Stoker’s novel, to varying degrees of success. Each version built on the mythos in its own way, but it wasn’t until Hammer’s 1958 version, with Christopher Lee’s dashing, dynamic Count, that audiences saw fangs on screen for the first time, dripping with that signature, bright red Hammer blood.

Finally, Dracula as we know him today had arrived fully formed.

The Dark Ages

Of course, it couldn’t stay gold forever. In Hollywood success breeds sequels, and that’s exactly what happened to Dracula - Universal, Hammer and other studios churned out sequels (Dracula’s Daughter) and spin-offs (The Brides of Dracula) and monster mash-ups (House of Dracula) by the dozen, and interest began to wane.

The classic Universal monsters, which had once terrified audiences, soon became family-friendly, thanks to TV shows like The Munsters (Grandpa Munster is a dead ringer for Bela Lugosi) and Sesame Street, and spoof cartoons like Count Duckula. The ‘70s even brought Bram Stoker’s creation to the world of, um, children’s breakfast cereals, in the form of Count Chocula.

The 1970s also brought some fun attempts to reimagine the story for a modern audience, like Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972 and infamous blaxploitation movie Blacula, but by the ‘90s vampires - and their poster boy Count Dracula - were looking pretty long in the tooth.

That is, until a pair of blockbuster hits resurrected interest in the Prince of Darkness and his bloodsucking ilk.

Back from the Dead

In 1992, Francis Ford Coppola, acclaimed director of The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, turned his attention to the classic novel - one of his childhood favourites - and released Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

With a starry ensemble cast, including the likes of Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins and, unforgettably, Gary Oldman in the title role, plus lurid, dreamlike visuals and a steamy tone, this was something a bit different. It was also a smash hit, raking in a sizeable box office and even winning three Oscars.

Along with another fang-tastic literary adaptation - Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire in 1994 - this new version of Dracula breathed new life into a tired old genre, and kicked off a whole new wave of vampire fever.

Once again there were modern-day updates (Dracula 2000) and interesting spins on an age-old story (Vampire in Brooklyn). Of course, this being the ‘90s, there were also a ton of wry, postmodern spins on vampire mythology, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Shadow of the Vampire, and mash-ups with different genres, like John Carpenter’s western-like Vampires and Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s gonzo crime caper From Dusk Til Dawn.

Believe it or not, the first big-screen Marvel movie was also a vampire story. When Wesley Snipes donned that iconic trenchcoat-and-sword combo in 1998’s Blade, he effectively kicked off the modern superhero boom, all while flinging wooden stakes at bloodsucking beasts.

Now, it’s all come full circle with Robert Eggers’ masterful remake of the original (unofficial) Dracula adaptation, Nosferatu. After another fallow period - thanks, Twilight - the Count and his kin might just be back from the dead once again, and they’re just as scary and seductive as they’ve always been.

Check out Nosferatu (2024), now available on Sky Cinema. Or, for more vampire goodness, have a look at our Top 5 Greatest Vampire Films of All Time.