![]() ![]() He is no antihero, no handsome, tortured stranger who shares an immortal love with the heroine. He can be identified in Sesame Street’s puppet Count von Count and the cartoon on the cereal box for Count Chocula.īut what draws us to this king of the undead? How has he become such a prolific and contradictory figure of evil and seduction, glamour and horror, pathos and comedy?Īs he appears in Stoker’s text, Dracula is hardly the figure new readers might expect him to be. He is an African prince, the leader of the monster squad, Gary Oldman in a top hat, a nemesis of slayers such as Buffy and Blade, and even (heaven help us) Adam Sandler as a hotel proprietor. But he is also a handsome Hungarian man in a tuxedo and cape. He is a balding, long-fingered, shadowy ghoul. He is a menacing spectre in a foreign castle. He is, as he is called in Bram Stoker’s 1897 text, the King Vampire. They cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world Abraham Van Helsing Dracula stars in more than two hundred films, appears in numerous television shows, has taken to the stage not only in drama but also musicals, ballet, and opera, features in video games and comics, and, of course, appears in many vampire fictions in addition to the original novel that bears his name. There are few names from literature and popular culture that are as well known as that of Dracula. ![]()
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