The vampire legends and stories had been around for a long time, but it was Abraham (BRAM) Stoker who took the legends along with a bit of history in the form of Prince Vlad III of Wallachia (Vlad the Impaler) and spun a tale that would never be forgotten.
The character is terrifying, the setting gothic, the other characters memorable (with Van Helsing becoming a powerful icon in his own right).
The movies started in 1922 with Nosferatu and took many popular actors to great heights in horror annuls.
We had Lugosi:
and Lee:
Even Langella:
and Oldman:
No matter what form he took, people had their favorites. Besides movies we had tv, the most current of which features Jonathan Rhys Meyers:
But even with all those, we have more books than we can count. Many featuring Dracula, Mina, Van Helsing or other characters such as Quincey Morris. They are scary, sexy and people never seem to get tired of them.
Then there are other vampires, Way Way too many to even guess at. New books being published all the time. Some terrifying (Salem's Lot), some reluctant (Forever Knight, Barnabas Collins), some Romantic, and some.....Sparkly (sigh). But always more of them, continuing to feed our bloodlust and just plain lust at times. We never seem to get enough of them.
Bram Stoker wrote other stories and most people have never read them. Because the book Dracula was larger than life, and it struck a cord within us that we still love after all this time.
Thank you 'Bram - I for one am glad you did! Happy Birthday.
Terri
Thank you for making me aware of this birthday. I grew up with the b&w movies and they will always be my preference. I loved being scared by the masters.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first year in a while I didn't get my Halloween horror movie fix!
ReplyDeleteTerri