Stoker’s Dracula in

Film Adaptations

Mohammed Abdulrahman Al-Hasoon

Student Number: 19131306935

Course: Adaptation Studies ELL570

Lecturer: Dr. Olgahan Bakşi Yalçın

 It is imperative for us to know the source text and its background prior to the study of
any film adaptations of it. Before writing Dracula, Bram Stoker was always interested in
vampires due to their mystery and their relationship with science and medicine. He was
also interested in the folklore of Eastern Europe. It is also rumored that Bram Stoker was
gay. Perhaps he wanted to express his feelings when writing the novel as vampires’
actions are somehow similar to the sexual activities and they represent the power of
sexuality. The direct blood-sucking from the neck of Harker that Count Dracula yearns for
in the novel, his asking from him to stay in his castle, and keeping him for himself are all
but obvious indications to homosexual themes in the novel. Stoker did well in his novel
when choosing the characteristics of the vampires in that regard. According to folklore,
they have long teeth on the sides that help them bite the victim and the do it directly from
the neck where the veins transporting blood to the head exist. However, he added some of
these characteristics from modern sources at that time and not from the eastern folklore,
like the ability to turn into a wolf or bat and having hairy palms. We see these features
clearly in Francis Coppola’s 1992 film but they are not present in Nosferatu. Of course,
the technology was not there as in 1992 as well as the budget. Dracula is described in the
novel as a creepy tall guy with thick eye-brows and pale white skin. In Nosferatu, we see
the exact same characteristics in Count Orlok. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, we see Dracula
undergoes a lot of changes in shape and he appears young and elegant in a lot of scenes
during the film, which is probably because of the romantic theme that is dominating the
film. Vampires in general are mostly active at night, with limited power during the day. In
Nosferatu, Dracula literally dies by only getting exposed to direct sunlight. According to
traditions, vampires also have the ability to read minds having control over other humans.
We see that clearly in the novel and Coppola’s film when Dracula being able to know the
locations of the protagonists hunting him down through the mind of Mina. He also sends
wind in order to obstruct their sailing ship in the sea. In the folklore, vampires could be
repelled by garlic and any Christian symbols such as the cross. Van Helsing uses garlic in
the novel and in the film to protect Lucy from the power of Dracula and uses the cross
many times to seek protection from Dracula’s brides as well as other forms of vampires.
In this paper, we are going to examine these differences and similarities of the novel and
both films in detail and we will weigh which adaptation has more fidelity.
 In 1992, the director Francis Coppola adapted Bram Stoker’s Dracula into a movie and
wanted it to as faithful as possible to the novel. Coppola kept the same setting of the novel
during most of the movie. He gave the characters the same names and characteristics. He
also followed the chorological order of the plot and its development in the novel.
However, Coppola added a backstory to Count Dracula linking him directly to Vlad the
Impaler. The movie begins as Vlad preparing to go and fight against the Ottoman Turks
with his beloved wife begging him to stay. He While he is on the battlefield, his wife,
Elezabetha receives a fake letter sent by the Turks telling her that her husband died in the
battle. She freaks out and throws herself from the top of the castle killing herself. When
Dracula returns to his castle, he finds his wife lying dead and the priests tell him that she
died committing the sin of suicide. He feels like being betrayed and not rewarded by God
as he renounces his religion only to become a cursed vampire who lives on the blood of
others. This action adds romance to the film which the novel misses. The movie moves on
pretty accurately with the novel; however, we notice a lot of sexuality in the film, a thing
probably Stoker wanted to add in the novel but decided not due to the restrictions at the
time of writing the novel in the 19th century.

In the film, we get to see Dracula looking at a portrait of Mina, Harker’s fiancée when
Harker visits him in the castle. This triggers a feeling of nostalgia for Dracula, giving him
a feeling like he knows this woman. This sets up the whole point of the movie, that Mina
is Elezabetha incarnated and Dracula finally gets to meet her again. We also have this see
where Dracula in his youthful appearance roaming the streets of London starting to chase
Mina. Mina starts to have feelings for him and eventually they spend some time watching
the newly-invented motion pictures. Perhaps Coppola wanted to thank Edison for this life-
changing invention, a thing that Stoker admired during his life. Throughout the film, we
see Mina hesitant between Dracula and Harker even after marrying the later. Then she is
convinced to be with him when she willingly drinks blood from his chest. Towards the
end of the movie, when Dracula is stabbed, Mina rushes towards him, has a last
conversation with him and kisses him before cutting his head off, a thing which is not in
the novel. This of course cement the romantic theme in the movie which changed the
story from gothic horror to a romantic gothic. Coppola’s movie is considered the most
loyal Dracula adaptation. The amazing use of costumes and the breath-taking motion
effects really contributed to the fact that the movie was a masterpiece.

Love and Romance is the only major difference between the novel of Dracula and the
Bram Stoker’s Dracula film. Francis Coppola shifts the whole genre of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula from a mere gothic horror to a romantic gothic right from the beginning of the
movie. His movie starts with a back story of Dracula losing his beloved wife back in the
medieval ages, which sets the rhythm for the whole movie as a passionate and erotic love
story between Dracula and Elezabetha, or the incarnation version of her, Mina. He is
portrayed as a faithful servant of Christianity, standing in the face of the Ottoman
offensive who then renounces God and destroys the Cross only because of losing his
beloved wife. He feels cheated and not rewarded for his fierce efforts in defending his
religion. Coppola’s movie is actually the first one giving Dracula a soul, emotions, and
even a soul mate. This theme of love really attracted many viewers for the movie, unlike
the previous adaptations. Coppola also adds the scene where Dracula sees Mina in a
portrait belonging to Harker, which never happened in the novel. He falls in love with the
picture immediately as his memory went back hundreds of times thinking of the death of
his wife Elezabetha. In Coppola’s movie, Dracula is a complicated creature with a mixture
of personalities being in one body. He is a seducer for Lucy and a passionate lover for
Mina. Unlike other adaptations, Coppola shows the human and good looking version of
Dracula when he arrives at London, and despite her love and waiting for Harker, she
seems to admire Dracula and the movie make them spend the afternoon watching the
newly-invented motion pictures, which is like a date that couples go on in cinemas in
modern times. This ignition of love gains more heat after Mina marries Harker. Coppola’s
film adds a kind of conflict of feelings in Mina’s heart as she feels bad for Dracula, then
she sends him a letter telling him that she’s sorry for not being his partner which turns
Dracula into a complete monster that is willing to devour everything, which is kind of a
similar rage to the one when he first saw Elezabetha lying dead between his hands. Also
close to the end, Dracula visits Mina while she’s asleep. In the movie, she realizes what
appears to be a love for centuries towards Dracula, which confirms the incarnation of
Elizabetha. In the movie, Mina wants to be with Dracula and she willingly drinks blood
from his own chest despite being the killer of her friend Lucy. This passionate scene by
Coppola is a big difference from the simple attack of Dracula on Mina in the novel. In the
novel Dracula attacks Mina and sucks her blood as well as forcing her to suck his blood
from his chest wound. She regrets this action and tells others that she was not in control of
her own. In the movie, she does the same but at her own will and she does not show any
signs of regret. Blood represents emotions in literature and in we see in the film that life is
being sucked by Dracula from Mina as she oozes in lust and passion is a definitely clear
sign of her love and devotion to Dracula that Coppola added. This scene makes the movie
gathers complex feelings of love, guilt, lust, faith, and horror. We also see love scenes
towards the end of the film. After Quincy stabs Dracula in his heart, Coppola adds a scene
where Mina says good-bye to Dracula while he is dying in her own arms at the castle,
similar to the beginning of the movie where the opposite happens with Elezabetha. This
doesn’t prevent Mina from stabbing Dracula in his heart and beheading him, perhaps only
to set him free from the curse he’s under for centuries, especially when she looks at the
painting on the ceiling showing the prince and his beloved wife. In the novel, however,
the Dracula legend perishes as soon as he is stabbed, with no farewell given from any
character.

In the novel, we have two female protagonists, Lucy and Mina, both are targets for
Dracula. However, he successfully lures Lucy into his will way too easily. Lucy is
portrayed as a lustful and naughty character therefore she becomes a monster herself who
lost her purity to an outsider because she went against the realm of Victorian England and
therefore, she must be killed. The other version of women, Mina, survives the aggression
of the outsider due to her purity and obedience to the men in charge. Stoker wants to show
us the perspective of female sexuality from a male point of view in that era. We also have
the three brides of Dracula who may refer to the tolerance towards men when having more
than one partner, lover, mistresses, or even sex slaves. These three madwomen and
monsters are beheaded just like the mythical Medusa by Van Helsing, a male that is
seeking to halt the intruder Dracula in the name of society and religion. Stoker couldn’t go
deep in details when it comes to sexuality, a thing he probably wanted by couldn’t due to
the times he lived it. However, Francis Coppola, feeling he owes Stoker for the story, adds
a lot of erotic scenes full of kissing and sucking in a way that the viewer feels like that is
how really Stoker wanted the novel to be. Lucy with her red hair and always-present red
lipstick represent her personality as red represents blood (she turns into a vampire),
passion, love, and lust. We also see her dressing transparent red at night when she’s
making love with the monster which again represents her character. We also have the
three brides of Dracula who were very well selected as all of them have the look of
eastern or Mediterranean women which kind of connects with the history of Dracula.

To study the major differences between the novel and the film adaptations, we take a
look at two film adaptations: Nosferatu and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In Nosferatu, we see
a totally different setting and character names in the film because the producers of the film
could not obtain the copyrights to adapt the novel into a film. The name of the film has a
general meaning of “vampire” that did not refer directly to the novel nor its author, the
characters did not have the same names as in the novel, and many adjustments were made
to the plot. In the movie we see Hutter (the film version of Jonathan Harker) is already
married and not engaged. The movie has a shortlist of characters. We observe the absence
of Lucy, Quincy, Dr. Seward and Arthur, who are considered as the main characters in the
novel. Ellen, Hutter’s wife is doing combined actions of Mina and Lucy of the novel in
the film. In the film, Ellen is the partner of Hutter but she also sleepwalks at night affected
by the power of the vampire, an action which is carried out by Lucy in the novel. We also
notice the absence of the three female vampires in the count’s castle. Towards the end of
the movie, Orlok moves along with his dust coffins to a resident next to Hutter’s where he
begins to lure Ellen to his side. He then gets to her room to suck blood from her neck,
then, by getting exposed to the direct sunlight due to the open windows, he vanishes into a
mere smoke and dies. Shortly Ellen dies with him and the movie ends. The movie a
straight forward gothic horror with no multiple plots, themes, or a variety of characters. In
the novel, we have Lucy, a young playful beauty with men wanting to marry her which
really adds some romantic aspect in the setting. We also have Mina uses the typewriter
which is quite a detail Stoker added in the novel which also refers to the recent technology
of that time and the fact that women have entered the sphere of jobs. In the novel, Dracula
is tracked down and chased back towards his castle in Transylvania by the company of
Mina, Harker, Van Helsing, and the three admirers of Lucy, then he gets killed by a stab
in the heart after which they cut his head off. Moreover, Harker’s wife Mina (Nosferatu’s
Ellen) does not recover from the vampire bite and lives. In the film we see the mention of
the deadly plague invading Germany quite often. Perhaps it is referring to the mass death
toll during the First World War or even the later epidemic of Spanish Flu. Both of these
terrible incidents took the life of millions of people across Europe and attracted the
attention of almost all writers or or film-makers during that period.

When it comes to science and technology, we notice that Bram Stoker seemed to have a
lot of interest in science and technology at that time. His brother was a surgeon and
throughout the novel we follow scientific and medical procedures as he added a doctor in
his novel along with his senior mentor Dr. Van Helsing who also has knowledge in
supernaturalism, which was always interesting for Stoker during his life. In the novel we
come to see multiple medical procedures beginning with Lucy’s illness and Van Helsing
trying to know what caused the marks on her neck. He also does blood transfusion to her
in an attempt to save her life. In Francis Coppola’s movie we get to see the same incidents
but with the addition of the scene when Dracula spends time with Mina watching the
motion-pictures, the newest technology of the late 19th century, an invention that Stoker
really admired at that time. It is considered as a tribute from Coppola to the author of the
novel. Both in the novel and in Coppola’s film, Mina uses the typewriter to communicate
with Harker, the pursuers of Dracula use the trains and steamships to travel to
Transylvania. For Nosferatu, we do not see most of those scenes since it is a straight-up
and shortened horror film with no multiple details
 In conclusion, both Dracula adaptations covered the message of the novel in their own
fashion, style, and genre with Francis Coppola’s movie being considered as the most loyal
adaptation of Dracula. Coppola’s movie with the great use of costumes which send
messages to our eyes without any word written nor spoken. They personify various
emotions and give each character a unique look. The addition of romantic theme in the
movie gives a fresh pleasure for those who had already read the novel. In Nosferatu, the
music and build of the characters, Dracula’s in particular, convey the message of horror
and gothic element of the novel. This excitement in watching these movies even after
knowing the novel very well “comes simply from repetition with variation”, as Linda
Hutcheon puts it.
REFERENCES:

CineFix. Oct 17, 2018. Bram Stoker's Dracula - What's the Difference?
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5QM1bpGsT4

Coppola, Francis. “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”. 1992.

Eldridge, Alison. 2012, October, 05. Vampire. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/topic/vampire

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Murnau, Friedrich. “Nosferatu”. 1922.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.