THE BITE STUFF

DRACULA has been terrifying readers ever since Bram Stoker first created the ultimate vampire. As Bela Lugosi’s screen turn as the bloodsucker celebrates its 90th birthday, Total Film examines the appeal of one of horror’s most enduring icons.

- JAMES MOTTRAM

When Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was published in 1897, the critics were intrigued, if a little taken aback by the mordantly powerful nature of this sinister tale of a vampiric count. “It is, however, an artistic mistake to fill a whole volume with horrors,” noted the Manchester Guardian. “A touch of the mysterious, the terrible, or the supernatural is infinitely more effective and credible.”

‘Less is more’ may well be a good maxim for writers, but a “whole volume of horrors” never did Stoker’s novel of Gothic terror any harm. For a book that has never been out of print since it first hit shelves, it seems apt that a story about the undead should remain eternal, sparking appeal for each new generation. Second only to the character of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula has been re-animated for the screen more than 200 times.

Told in epistolary form, Stoker’s tale of Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman who feasts on the blood of others and meets his demise in the English seaside town of Whitby, hit a nerve. “Stoker’s myth is powerful because it allows evil to remain mysterious,” wrote critic A.N. Wilson. And yet it’s so much more than that: a book that, in late 19th-century England, touched on fears of immigration, sexual promiscuity and moral degeneration.