World Dracula Day

It's World Dracula Day! On this day, in 1897, Bram Stoker's epistolary novel about the Transylvanian count and vampire first went on sale in London. In print ever since, it has gone through countless editions, and has been adapted numerous times on film and in print.

Have you read it? What did you think? Do you have any favorite film adaptations? I hear there is a new one this year.

I think the book is wildly overrated, but I've liked many of the film adaptations. Some of the adaptations I've enjoyed:

Nosferatu--Murnau's and Herzog's are both great.
Dracula, 1931--It's a classic for a reason.
Bram Stoker's Dracula--Wildly different than the book, but it's damned stylish.
Oh, and Christopher Lee made a great Dracula, even if some of the movies left something to be desired.

>1 AbigailAdams26:

Not a film. The play, with the Edward Gorey sets and costumes.

I liked it and felt the ending was really dramatic and tense. Also Redfield was especially creepy and disturbing. Tom Waits did such a great job with that character in the 1992 film.

It was very disturbing to visit Whitby and find the gift shop full of Dracula, with barely a mention of the Synod of Whitby. The ruins are impressive, even if they are much later than St Hilda.

>5 MarthaJeanne: Whitby used to be such a nice place before it was taken over by vampire-hype a decade or two ago.

The only positive thing I can think of that came out of Stoker’s silliness is the little giggle it always gave me whenever a management consultant was going on about “stakeholders”…

I haven't read the novel yet but this year I'm planning to read Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Film and the Legend.

I haven't read the book but I have enjoyed many different movies.

I first read Dracula in my teens, again in my early twenties, and again last year in my mid-fifties. I enjoyed it each time. One thing that particularly struck me last time I read it was just how modern the world in it was. All the latest developments, typewriter, phonographs, shorthand, telegrams are brought into play to defeat an ancient evil.

Currently making my way through the Four Corners recreation of the original yellow-and-red first edition.