MAN SCREAMS
Dracula.
The very name is synonymous with terror.
You feel you know that there's menace coming
and he's never going to die.
The creation of Irish author Bram Stoker, this iconic tale
of a medieval vampire stalking the streets of London has scared
and inspired millions around the world for over 120 years.
Dracula is the first time that evil gets to be attractive,
and evil gets his name on the cover.
Since its first publication in 1897, Bram Stoker's novel has never been out of print.
It's partly an adventure story involving good, strong men.
They take on the forces of the undead.
I've been dying to meet you.
WOMAN GASPS
SCREAMS: NO!
I'll be travelling the world in search of the vampire's origins
and speaking to some of the people who have, over the years, given Dracula fresh blood.
I just wanted the surprise of seeing him as Dracula.
And, boy, did I get a surprise.
Dracula is not only an icon of horror, but of our culture.
A stake through the heart.
You see, sometimes the legends are right.
Dracula is so iconic, he's got his own emoji.
Appropriately enough, he just won't stay dead.
But what is it about the character that has so permeated the popular imagination?
Why does Dracula keep on rising from the grave?
I am Dracula.
Cut, lovely. Right...
As myself and Steven Moffat present our new version of the story,
I want to discover what is at the heart of the legend
in all his guises from book, to stage, to film.
This is the story of Dracula's creation and his immortal afterlife.
There's some versions one's seen, and pictures certainly I've seen,
you're just sucked in.
Why do we keep on returning to the Count?
To what extent has public taste changed our perception of the vampire?
And what is the secret of his hypnotic hold over us all?
This is my search for Dracula.
Bram Stoker's novel begins with an English solicitor,
Jonathan Harker, heading across Europe for an appointment
with his mysterious client, Count Dracula.
Like Harker, I'm travelling east, but to Oravsky in Slovakia.
When I was a child, I was obsessed with horror films.
They were on TV on a Friday night after the sports report
or on occasional Saturday night double bills.
A black and white Universal chiller followed by the Eastmancolor glories of a Hammer movie.
I couldn't get enough of them. And actors like Vincent Price,
Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee were my heroes.
And although I ate, slept, and drank zombies,
werewolves and Frankensteins, I always had a soft spot for Dracula.
We used to have a big, red, velvet curtain tucked away in the ottoman,
and I would get it out, pretend it was my cloak, and restage
Christopher Lee's death agonies from Dracula Has Risen From The Grave.
HE CHOKES
Jutting like a fang above the village of Oravsky looms Castle Orava.
We've chosen this as the location for our new version of Dracula.
But its ancient walls have played host to the undead Count before.
This location holds a special place in the hearts of Dracula fans.
It was here in 1921 that FW Murnau made Nosferatu,
a symphony of terror.
It was probably the first Dracula adaptation, albeit an unofficial one,
and introduced the world to the unforgettable Max Schreck
as Count Orlok, a grotesque bald-headed taloned nightmare
whose image became indelibly associated with the vampire.
The look of Nosferatu was the fevered brainchild
of Albin Grau, a very strange man, who oversaw the film's entire design
from sets to makeup.
DOOR CREAKS
Nosferatu is packed with genuine occult imagery and even calligraphy.
Everything about this film is wonderfully weird.
This rodent-fanged monstrosity is one of the most familiar
representations of Dracula on screen,
and its talons have extended far beyond its origins.
Count Orlok's shocking visage has lost none of its impact
and has been resurrected with startling effect ever since.
But how was actor Max Schreck transformed into the gruesome Count Orlok nearly 100 years ago?
And there is nothing...
I'm joining prosthetics team Dave and Lou Elsey, who created the look for our Dracula,
to find out why this image has left such a lasting impression.
This make-up, for some reason, it's just perfection.
You know, it's...
You can tell it's perfection because people can't get over it.
They can't... People are still doing it today.
Nosferatu is just a terrifying, nightmare creature. He's...
There's nothing human about him at all.
You know, and the make-up is very broad as well.
And it's very theatrical - it's like something that you would do for a stage play.
That's it.
Yeah.
Suddenly, the weekend's, er...
Although clearly meant to be Bram Stoker's Count,
Max Schreck's walking corpse bears little resemblance
to the sophisticated, suave aristocrat that we today identify as Dracula.
But the film did introduce some aspects of vampire lore which became fixed.
Although his powers are slightly weakened by its rays, in the novel,
Dracula is perfectly capable of walking around in daylight.
It was Nosferatu and its famous climax which created the idea
that the vampire could be destroyed by sunlight.
Nosferatu is quite rightly regarded today as one of the classics of silent cinema.
But it only survived by the skin of its strangely sharp teeth.
An entirely illegitimate production, it was ordered to be destroyed by Bram Stoker's widow, Florence,
after she sued the producers over breach of copyright.
Thankfully, a few prints survived so we can still enjoy Nosferatu today
in all its weird glory.
As many were to discover over the subsequent years,
the Count proved very difficult to kill.
But where did this imperishable icon come from?
Whose morbid imagination actually conceived Dracula?
Born, raised, and educated in Dublin, Abraham "Bram" Stoker
began his career in the Irish Civil Service.
But it was his passionate interest in the dramatic arts that led
to unpaid work as a theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail.
In December 1876, following a performance of Hamlet he attended,
Stoker began a 28-year association with the most dominant,
in every sense of the word, personality of his life -
the legendary actor Sir Henry Irving.
Bram Stoker was invited by Henry Irving to come over as his business manager and assistant.
And dropping everything in Dublin, that's exactly what he does.
He moves over and works for Irving for 28 years.
Stoker hero-worshipped Irving, Irving exploited that.
And Irving would say, "Bram, Bram, I say, come here!"
You know, he utterly depended on his servitor to do things for him.
One of his obituaries says, "I have never known in my life
"the absorption of one man in another man's life as much
"as Stoker was absorbed in Irving's life."
There was something almost umbilical about their relationship.
I think Dracula is partly based on Irving's performances.
Irving loved big supernatural parts where he could really...
You know, with a strong slice of jambon attached.
But there are other theories as to the Count's origin.
It was later claimed that it was a nightmare endured by Stoker
after a meal of dressed crab that first inspired his creation.
A ghastly vision that included three female vampire brides descending on their victim
and their Satanic master intoning...
I believe it to have been the nightmare
that kick-started the whole of Dracula,
where you have the three vampire brides coming up
and he doesn't know whether he's asleep or not,
and it's interrupted by the Count. The Count comes in and says,
"This man belongs to me. I want him."
And Stoker writes that down in March 1890.
He writes it down again in 1892.
He writes it down again and again and again.
And everything else changes in Dracula,
but the one thing that remains consistent is,
"This man belongs to me. I want him."
What do you think Dracula is about?
It's partly about dominance and dependence, sexual relationships.
It's partly an adventure story involving good, strong men,
the forces of light.
Using folklore, religion and science,
they take on the forces of the undead.
But it's turned into myth, so you can pour into it what you like.
Stoker had already written several books,
frantically scrambled together during his punishing work hours,
and spent six years making notes for his next.
This book would be of an altogether different order.
Whilst vampires had existed in folklore for centuries,
it was Stoker who pulled these references together
to create an immortal myth.
In 2018, the London Library's director of development,
Philip Spedding, concluded a treasure hunt
that sheds a fascinating light on the wider inspirations
behind Stoker's novel.
In these dusty volumes lie the facts and figures,
the myths and legends, which gave birth to Dracula.
How did this treasure hunt of yours begin?
I was intrigued by how Bram Stoker might have used the library.
We knew he had joined the library in 1890
and we know that that's when he started his research on Dracula.
And I went into the shelves and the first book I pulled out was this,
The Book Of Were-Wolves by a man called Sabine Baring-Gould.
I started to go through this book and compare it to the notes
that Stoker had taken and saw there was a remarkable correlation
between some of the marks in this book
and some of the notes that Stoker had taken.
And in the end, it turned out we had almost all the books
that Stoker said that he had been interested in
when undertaking his research.
Round About The Carpathians by Andrew Cross, 1878,
borrowed by Stoker.
In here, um...
..Cross is talking about a journey through Hungarian towns
and says the houses are mostly of one storey, standing each one alone
with the gable end blank and windowless towards the road.
And then if you look at the story of Dracula,
when Harker is going towards Castle Dracula,
he describes the villages he is going through
with a blank gable end towards the road.
So there's an exact line that Stoker picked up from a book
and put into the final novel. And then, of course,
there's one other book that Stoker looked at.
Now, his record suggests that he borrowed this in Whitby,
but this is the book,
An Account Of The Principalities Of Wallachia And Moldavia, 1820.
And in his notes, he talks about seeing the word Dracula
in this book, and our copy, entertainingly,
has the page on which the word Dracula appears,
the corner has been turned down, tantalisingly.
But what you really want, of course,
is a big sort of three exclamation marks,
maybe a smiley face. Yes. Yes.
"Must use this in my novel. This is marvellous stuff."
Smiley face with fangs. Yes. Yes, yes.
So that's the first part of the paper trail,
the trail that leads to Dracula.
But the next stop in our treasure hunt is,
somewhat unexpectedly,
Philadelphia.
My travels have brought me here to the Rosenbach Museum
and Library in Philadelphia, USA, which since 1970,
has been the home to a collection
which provides a fascinating insight into Bram Stoker's working methods.
Housed here is a precious first edition
of the completed novel from 1897.
But most excitingly, I've been given permission
to explore the handwritten research notes and workings
which together show the novel coming to life in Stoker's mind.
Well, here we are.
It's a privilege and a thrill to be here
amongst these sacred relics, as it were.
These scribbled fragments, which begin in 1890
and stretch, I think, over a six-year period,
represent the unused characters, blind alleys and eureka moments
which together constitute Dracula.
So on this page, which is dated March 14th 1890,
Stoker has divided his proposed novel into four books.
The first one is Book One, headed Styria,
which is the original location.
And then it's been crossed out, as you can see here,
and replaced with Transylvania.
Transylvania to London.
And this section contains reference to lawyer's letters,
wolves,
arrive at the castle,
loneliness,
the kiss,
and in quotes.
"This man belongs to me,"
which appears to have been one of Stoker's first thoughts about this,
possibly from that nightmare.
This is where Stoker delineates the rules of the beast.
And here on the first page,
we have, "No looking glass in Count's house.
"Never can see him reflected in one.
"No shadow?"
"Lights arranged to give no shadow.
"Never eats nor drinks."
He certainly went with that one.
"Enormous strength. See in the dark.
"Power of getting small or large."
That's intriguing.
This is a delightful detail.
"Painters cannot paint him.
"Their likenesses always look like someone else."
I think that's a beautiful idea.
It's a shame that's not followed up, actually,
and there is a wonderful section later where
an unused idea that the Count can't be photographed
or kodaked, to actually coin a verb,
because of the same reason - that he is not really properly corporeal.
But most fantastically, Count Wampyr, as he is called,
this is the moment, it seems, where Stoker has the revelation,
seemingly inspired by the book he took out of the Whitby library
to call him Dracula.
And here we can see... You can almost see the working process
of Stoker's mind here.
He writes down the top left - "Dracula".
Top right - "Dracula".
And then in the top left hand corner,
definitively and underlined - "Count Dracula."
Maybe this is the moment where it actually happened.
I mean, obviously, he had no conception
it was going to be a name that lived throughout history.
So here it is, the culmination of seven years of musing and scribbling
and stewing and thinking.
This is the first edition of Dracula,
bound in this very distinctive fin de siecle yellow cloth,
which must have given it a certain frisson
to people of the late-19th century
who associated anything yellow with things slightly...
..outre and diabolical and naughty,
which, indeed, is what this very weird book actually is.
Amazing to actually see it here.
And, of course, Stoker had no idea
of the legacy which this novel was going to have.
And the absolutely imperishable brand
which the name of Dracula was going to become.
The book was finally published on May 26th, 1897,
and quickly gained critical success.
Much was made of Stoker's clever trick
of bringing a medieval monster into modern London.
But Stoker had been keen to extend the reach of his story,
and eight days prior to the novel's release,
the Count had already taken on another form.
On the morning of May 18th, 1897,
the first theatrical performance of Dracula, Or The Undead,
took place at London's Lyceum Theatre
to a paying audience of just two people.
Performed by the Lyceum's Company of actors, minus Sir Henry Irving,
the reading had been arranged specifically by Stoker
to protect the dramatic rights to his new novel.
He had hastily cut and pasted together a script
from the galley proofs of the book.
The result was not a success.
Dracula, Or The Undead.
Prologue.
Scene one, outside Castle Dracula.
Hi. Hi. Where are you off to?
Gone already.
Well, this is a pretty nice state of things.
After a drive through solid darkness
with an unknown man whose face I've not seen,
and who has in his hand the strength of 20 men
and who could drive back a pack of wolves by holding up his hand...
It took four interminable hours.
Henry Irving had only one devastating comment.
"Dreadful."
It was to be the only official stage version of Dracula
during Bram Stoker's lifetime.
In 1924, 12 years after Stoker's death
and two years after the first screening of Nosferatu,
impresario Hamilton Deane secured the theatrical rights to the story.
His much reimagined stage adaptation
would come to define the image of Count Dracula.
Deane had one major problem with adapting it...
..and that was Dracula himself.
What do you do with a character who's off stage the whole time?
He had to be completely...
..we'd use the word "revamped", you know, as the kind of character
that you could bring into polite society,
you could entertain in a drawing room.
And it meant dumping most of the book, you know,
which has this great geographical sweep and scope.
But of course, the character of Dracula was completely transformed.
He was now a suave, sinister, ingratiating character
who burrowed his way into your life and wouldn't let go.
So, really, the popular image of Dracula is much more from the play
than from the novel.
Oh, absolutely. You can ask anybody, "What...
"Who is Dracula? What does Dracula look like?
"How does Dracula talk? How does Dracula dress?"
It's all from the stage play.
The popularity of the play caught the eye of American producers
and a revised version successfully ran on Broadway.
Crucially, this new vision of Dracula,
complete with stand-up collar, white tie and cape,
was embodied by the little known Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi.
He was considered to be...
..perfect for the role of Dracula
And Horace Liveright, the producer
and John Balderston, who adapted Deane's play for Broadway,
all saw this strange magnetic quality about him,
and it had to do with the fact that he didn't speak English very well.
AS LUGOSI: That very deliberate manner of speaking.
There is a scene where Dracula disappears down through a trap door,
and then the... A vampire trap. Yes, it was called a vampire trap,
and the other actors were left holding his empty cape
and a flash bomb went off.
And to accomplish this, the cape had to have a collar
that could almost completely hide his head.
In fact, it was a little hood on a frame
that represented the top of his head
because the actor was actually going down through a trap door...
..at this climactic moment.
So it serves no real function other than that.
But it became a signature feature of vampire costuming.
I love that. It's like a sort of little fossil
which has now lost all its original meaning,
but it has to be... Somehow it's part of the look.
Two years after the successful Broadway play,
Universal Pictures produced the first official version
of Dracula on film, with sound.
But it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Bela Lugosi
would repeat his Broadway performance on the big screen.
Many other actors, including Conrad Veidt and Paul Muni,
were considered as far more of a box office draw
than the unknown Hungarian.
DOOR CREAKS
Bela Lugosi had been lobbying for it
and lobbying for it and making it known
that he would work for very small money, in Hollywood terms,
to have the part.
And in the end, he made such an indelible impression...
..with that part.
The strange voice, the magnetic presence.
He had one of the most intense stares
that anybody ever had on-screen.
I am Dracula.
I bid you welcome.
Universal's film was a smash hit
and its legacy is undeniable,
but it's hard to see from this distance why it made such an impact.
The pace is funereal,
the direction leaden,
Lugosi is hard to take seriously.
It's one of the great what ifs of cinema history.
If only somebody else with real drive and vision
had been shooting Dracula on those spectacular sets.
Well, as a matter of fact, they were.
In the early days of the talkies,
hearing actors speaking in their natural voices
was a profitable novelty.
As a result, and to serve overseas markets,
many studios began simultaneously producing foreign language versions
of the same films.
In the Spanish language version of Dracula,
Carlos Villarias wore the cape
and reputedly even the same toupee as Bela Lugosi
and the film used the same sets and costumes
as its English counterpart.
Working like vampires through the night, the second team succeeded
in creating a strikingly different version.
Soy Dracula.
Although some of the long shots were of Bela Lugosi himself,
taken from unused rushes,
the Spanish Dracula is a wonderful work in its own right.
Stylish, creepy and bold, it's that rare thing,
not just a "what if?" but a "there it is."
And my opinion - infinitely superior to the Lugosi version.
Compare this scene, where the vampire brides attempt to feed
on their unwilling victim.
In the Lugosi film, a slow, stately entrance
seen from behind and foiled by a stagey Dracula.
In the Spanish version, a lustrous, alarming close-up
and the brides move in for their feast.
Despite the film's appeal,
there was to be no direct sequel for Bela Lugosi's Count.
Gloria Holden appeared as Dracula's daughter,
a curious film now best remembered
for its startlingly frank lesbian seduction scene.
And Lon Chaney Jr, as a rather solid vampire,
brought a certain doughy menace
to the steamy, deep south-set Son Of Dracula.
John Carradine then made two brief appearances as Dracula,
complete with jaunty top hat.
Bela Lugosi was a far more versatile actor
than he's ever given credit for.
He's absolutely wonderful, for instance,
in Son Of Frankenstein as the broken-necked Igor.
But it was Dracula who forever stalked him.
His last appearance in the familiar white tie and tails
was in Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein,
a fate that not even the Prince Of Darkness himself could survive.
Although I absolutely love it.
Forever typecast, Lugosi returned as the vampire,
but his new version of the Count
was now sharing the screen with the Wolfman, Frankenstein's monster
and the Invisible Man,
like some Gothic Avengers Assemble.
After this, the Count languished somewhat, barring such curios
as this 1953 Turkish adaptation, Dracula In Istanbul.
The film is most notable today for introducing, for the first time,
the fangs we have come to associate with those of the vampire.
By the late-1950s, in the shadow of the atom bomb,
Gothic horror was somewhat in abeyance,
but thanks to the efforts of one small British film studio
here near Windsor,
Count Dracula was about to return home
and stage a magnificent resurrection.
Established in 1951, Bray Studios became the home of Hammer Films.
World-famous for their Gothic chillers,
they redefined the horror genre for a new generation.
Although closed for a short period,
65 years on, Bray Studios is alive again,
and by a wonderful coincidence,
is playing home to the studio filming of our new Dracula series.
It was here in 1958 that Christopher Lee made the first of seven
Hammer appearances in the role,
giving his Dracula an unforgettable entrance.
Mr Harker, I'm glad that you've arrived safely.
Count Dracula.
I am Dracula and I welcome you to my house.
So here we are, Jonathan.
Bray Studios on the lovely Thames.
I'm meeting up with film historian Jonathan Rigby, who can tell me more
about this marvellous building's gruesome legacy.
It was within these walls that Victor Frankenstein
carried out his horrific experiments,
and the Mummy wreaked havoc,
after making his escape from his Egyptian sarcophagus.
Inside the tomb. It's a very tomb-like atmosphere at the moment.
So what was done in here, Jonathan?
Well, this particular space
was colloquially known as the ballroom stage,
properly known as stage three.
And because of its rectangular formation,
it was where they tended to put their pubs and inns.
So this space was used for the inn in Dracula,
where Cushing's Van Helsing gets a very frosty reception
from the landlord, who, of course, was... George Woodbridge. Who else?
Good day, sir. Good day.
It was in this studio that Peter Cushing made his on-screen debut
as Dracula's implacable enemy, Dr Van Helsing.
May I have a brandy, please? Certainly, sir.
Audiences proved more receptive than these Transylvanian locals,
and Hammer's horror formula became box office gold.
Dracula was made by essentially the same team
that had just made The Curse Of Frankenstein
and The Curse Of Frankenstein had been out for maybe five months or so
when they got round to Dracula and, of course, it had been a huge hit,
so they were on a head of steam.
You know, they were on the crest of a wave. They were infused
with massive confidence, you know - "We're onto something here."
James Carreras, who ran Hammer Films said, you know,
they've got this great formula for horror,
what you do with your monster is,
you make him the handsome guy or the pretty girl
that you might see on the underground any day, you know,
and you think you'd be safe with them, whatever happened
but, you know, when you get home with him, blam!
I think that's what Carreras said,
"Blam! He does terrible, ghastly, awful things."
They made him a rather chilly...
..but very sexy post-war man.
They made him much younger.
Lee was 35 at the time that he first played Dracula.
I think he was very conscious, as were Hammer,
of the fact that they could step up the sexual contact.
The Byronically handsome Lee
completely reinvented the popular perception of Dracula.
Gone were the stagey theatrics of Lugosi,
in their place, a sexy, unstoppable, upright shark,
the terrible lover who died, yet lived.
And all in Hammer's glorious colour.
SCREAMING
Lee was aware that this was a huge opportunity
and that he should grab it with both hands
and he certainly, certainly did.
And, then, in an odd echo of Lugosi, then he's not asked back.
There is a quick sequel, The Brides Of Dracula.
First horror film I ever saw and one of my absolute favourites. Oh, yes.
And Peter Cushing returns, it's a Van Helsing sequel.
In The Brides Of Dracula, Van Helsing's enemy
is the distinct defait, but oddly disturbing, Baron Meinster.
But the absence of Christopher Lee is felt.
I want to find out what it was he brought to the part of Dracula,
and I know just the people who can tell me.
This is Oakley Court.
Now a hotel, once the exterior of Castle Meinster
from The Brides Of Dracula.
What better place to be reunited with some old friends?
CAFE CHATTER
No, that's a cucumber. Now, stop talking about cucumbers.
Tell me about Dracula.
THEY GASP
OK. Everyone talk at once.
OK.
Were you thrilled to be asked to do it? I was thrilled.
I was delighted. So long as we could have fangs,
I'd sometimes leave the studio with the bite marks on my neck.
And a few people in the cast were sort of...
Christopher did say, "This is the most difficult acting
"that you could ever do."
He used to sing. Do you remember he sang? Yes. Oh, yes.
He used to sing under my door...
MIMICS HIS SINGING
And I'd go, "What a lovely sound",
and he'd go, "Oh, my dear, can you hear that?"
I got bored with the opera, cos he was in the dressing room next door,
and was obviously feeling in one of my naughtier moods,
knocked on the door and said, "Do you know any Gilbert and Sullivan?"
And blow me down, he knew the whole thing.
A command of mime
and doing those big, bold things,
it's really amazing. I mean, it's quite...
You know, to actually put yourself out there, to sort of go...
Yes. And without it looking sort of Victorian... Yeah.
..it's really very striking.
And there are moments where he's really animalistic.
It's properly frightening. Oh, yeah.
A girl that you love is mine already,
and through her, you will yet do my bidding.
I liked the glamour of Dracula films.
I think there's something terribly glamorous about Dracula.
And as he was played by Christopher Lee, who I'd fallen in love with,
when I'd been at school and I thought he was...
..and still think he is one of the finest screen faces there is,
and I've tried to work it out, Mark, and I think it's this,
that people who still last into the future looking darn good,
it's their eyebrows.
Gregory Peck - black eyebrows. Christopher Lee - black eyebrows.
Right until the very end. Right up to his 90s, black eyebrows.
I'd just always say that to actors... I'm doomed.
Well, no, just paint them on.
Mine disappear in the summer!
Suddenly draw them in!
They say that eyebrows that meet in the middle
means you've got homicidal tendencies, so...
He was always being rigged up in more heavy robes,
or having his eyes put in.
He carried around the book of Dracula in his pocket.
He was very meticulous.
He treated it, as I'm sure all the other actresses would have said,
terribly seriously.
He was very serious and he wanted us
to take everything very seriously
and with a plastic bat on wires coming in
and bumping into your chest and going out backwards.
Impossible! You laugh. Of course, you laugh,
and then you hear this sonorous voice saying,
"This is true."
And he then started talking about Vlad the Impaler
and all sorts of things that he believed were entirely historic,
and we all had to behave.
It's also true about something, if you're doing farce,
I always remember Ray Cooney saying, "You have to do it seriously."
Absolutely. If you don't do it seriously, it doesn't work.
No, it doesn't. No.
I had to say to Martin Jarvis, who was playing my lover in it,
"Kiss me, kiss me..."
Kiss me, my darling, kiss me.
Oh, God!
I laughed and so did Martin, and Christopher came marching across
and heavily wagged his finger and told us off.
Quite right - smack on the wrist.
Whatever he had to do,
he didn't do it camply or anything.
He did it absolutely with belief,
so it didn't look like overacting,
which it could have looked like
in some other cases.
Does that make sense? Completely, yes.
Whilst Christopher Lee regarded Stoker's original story
as sacrosanct, Hammer's producers were keen to move
in a groovy new direction.
Give yourself up...
At the beginning of the '70s, they produced the charmingly daft
Dracula AD 1972,
in which Stephanie Beacham took on the role of Van Helsing's
hippie granddaughter Jessica.
That's it, that's it!
I mean, we were still saying "man"
and "yeah" and "too cool."
Did you feel Christopher Lee was slightly disenchanted
by this stage of doing so many Draculas?
No, I didn't feel he was at all disenchanted.
I felt he was rather disenchanted by the modern setting.
He grew big and quite, I mean,
enormously theatrical...
..but every inch of him was real,
so there was...
That was impressive and he needed
to be able to swish that cloak.
SCREAMING
But for one bride
meeting Christopher Lee almost proved too much.
No, I didn't want to see him.
I thought it better for me as a young actress...
I'd worked in a few films before now...
I just wanted the surprise of seeing him as Dracula,
and, boy, did I get a surprise.
He suddenly came through the door
and I caught sight of him, I remember,
and there's six foot four of him,
white faced...
..dark, dark eyes...
And then he came forward,
so my reactions, I think,
felt, to me, totally real.
Increasingly disillusioned with how far Hammer Films
were straying from the source material,
Christopher Lee nevertheless proved to embody Dracula
for an entire generation.
Er, Jeremy, what are you wearing? Oh, my pink...
1970's Taste The Blood Of Dracula was partly filmed here
at Tykes Water Bridge in Hertfordshire.
I've brought back one of its stars to ask him how did it feel
to come face-to-face with the Prince of Darkness himself?
I became involved
and thrilled to be part of something
that was already legendary in the sense there had been
two or three or four Hammer Horror Draculas,
apart from all the other tradition of Dracula going back
to Bela Lugosi and so on.
In fact, somebody said to me afterwards,
"So what did you learn about working with Christopher Lee?"
and I'm pretty certain I replied,
"Economy."
If you look at it on the page,
he doesn't have a lot to say.
Every appearance is hugely telling.
Six foot four with this great demeanour.
I think that that's what Christopher was very good at,
filling up with Dracula
and being ready, and his cloak ready,
to just watch and react.
And then the camera would come round on him for his looks.
He was a master actor.
Up until now, Dracula had been mostly terrorising us
from the big screen,
but increasingly he was being invited into our homes.
In 1968, Denholm Elliot gave an underrated performance
as the Count for ITV.
In 1974,
Jack Palance brought a steely menace to the role
in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
In 1977, the BBC made what is perhaps the most faithful adaptation
of Stoker's novel.
Using many locations from the book
for the very first time
and with French actor Louis Jourdan in the lead role.
In the summer of 1890, Bram Stoker visited the small harbour town
of Whitby here on the northeast coast of England.
Before being joined by his wife Florence,
he spent a week here alone visiting the library, chatting to locals
and generally mulling his new story.
This, he thought, might be the perfect place for his vampire
to make landfall in England.
Impressed by its striking scenery and the gaunt ruins
of the Gothic abbey,
Whitby became the backdrop to many of the most
memorable scenes in the novel,
as the Count finally makes his appearance in the new world.
The BBC's Count Dracula used the abbey, church
and even the famous 199 steps
to tremendous effect.
Actor Susan Penhaligon memorably played the doomed Lucy Westenra
sleepwalking through Whitby's desolate streets
for a fatal appointment with the Count.
Did you feel sort of a sense of
rightness about actually being here?
Yes, I think I did feel a connection.
It does make the script real.
when you're in the actual place, there's no doubt about it.
It was very, very true to the book.
What he created was the journeys of the characters,
that's what was so good,
particularly Mina and Lucy
and also particularly Lucy,
because I did go from rather a sweet
sort of kind sister
to this growling vampire.
Come to me, Quincey.
Come, my love.
Leave these others...
..and we can rest together for eternity.
No!
This scene,
as Susan faces down Frank Finlay's marvellous Van Helsing
is seared into my brain like a crucifix into a vampire's flesh.
Was Louis Jourdan part of the package
when you were asked to do it,
did you know he was going to be Dracula?
Yes, I did know that he was going to be Dracula and, erm...
..meeting him for the first time was slightly overwhelming for me.
Hollywood star Louis Jourdan was cast as the vampire Count,
bringing with him a touch of the exotic,
just like Bela Lugosi back in 1931.
He was quite Hollywood.
A little bit old Hollywood, a little bit starry.
Very French - Parisian French,
so he had a kind of aloofness about him,
which you can see in his Dracula.
But then, of course, I'm partial.
I have a passion for the English language.
I would wish to speak it faultlessly, perfectly.
But you almost do, Count.
This "almost" is disheartening.
You shall remain here for a while so that I may learn from you
and shatter this "almost" irrevocably.
He's kind of perfect for the part, though, I think.
Perfect for the part. He did take it very seriously, I remember,
of course, as anyone playing Dracula would.
I think he's a very, very canny piece of casting.
You look at it now -
he must have been about 55.
He's a very beautiful man,
but his matinee idol looks are sliding,
and somehow that's kind of perfect for Dracula.
There's something off about him.
It's just a clever idea.
This wonderfully queasy, unsettling Dracula remains one of my favourite
versions to this day.
Its fidelity to the story is never over reverential
but clever and nimble.
The casting of Louis Jourdan and its use of the imposing locations
of the book's original setting make it one of the most memorable
adaptations of Stoker's novel.
Then, two years later, in 1979,
Dracula made, perhaps, his sexiest entrance to date.
Count Dracula...
Good evening.
Starring actor Frank Langella,
a new version of the old play had become an unexpected hit
on Broadway, and Universal Films, once again,
saw its cinematic potential.
Ms Van Helsing...
My saviour.
I trust you're feeling improved?
Oh, yes. Thank you.
The great joy of this film is that that interpretation
is very, very interesting -
that he is an incredibly romantic figure.
Our version was originally a stage play.
Frank Langella, who played Dracula,
had starred in that,
and it was a different version
in as much as it was far more romantic.
I think fans of horror were quite upset
that there wasn't more blood and gore and horror in it.
I was relieved that it wasn't
what I would have termed
a heavy Hammer Horror version.
Frank brought...
..an incredible sexiness.
His performance was a very sensual performance.
He was mesmeric to work with.
I always got the feeling with Frank that his Dracula,
if it hadn't been for the fact that he needed blood to survive
and therefore had to kill his victims,
would probably liked to have fallen in love.
So, it was a very romantic piece.
It was lush, it was Gothic in style,
with this central character
who you had a lot of sympathy for
and were very attracted to.
I need your blood.
I need it.
But he had a dignity about him, an innate dignity about him,
and he was a very serious actor.
I mean, somebody said to me
he was America's leading stage actor at the time.
When he finished the film, I think he says he hangs up the cloak
in his dressing room and he thinks,
"I must never put that on again, otherwise it will define me."
I think he famously said,
"I spent two years of my life playing Dracula
"and it took Hollywood 15 years to forget it."
There's an afterlife, isn't there?
Ironically, for Dracula!
He was probably very sensible to do that, I think.
The thing that really comes through is Frank's hair.
It's so incredibly 1979.
Oh, it's so bouffed! Yes!
So bouffed...
Oh, my God, he's a beautiful man.
Absolutely. Absolutely gorgeous.
Sometimes with some of the versions one's seen
and pictures that certainly I've seen
you think, "Well, why would these women actually bother?"
I think I'd have been off...
But you're just sucked in...
..to Frank.
The 1970s had been the busiest time the Count had ever known.
He now entered one of his occasional rest periods,
returning to his chilly tomb until 1992,
when Gary Oldman took on the role in the sumptuous,
bizarre and somewhat inaccurately titled Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Welcome to my home.
Enter freely of your own will
and leave some of the happiness you bring.
Count Dracula?
I am Dracula.
Despite being the definition of a curate's egg,
the Coppola Dracula still has legions of fans and casts its own
very particular shadow.
Come in.
Perhaps it goes to show how robust Stoker's character is.
I think it's a fascinating film,
full of, you know, visual, coup de cinema, if you like,
and it was very much Coppola collecting together
all his favourite horror imagery from the history of cinema
and throwing it all at the wall and seeing what would stick,
and a great deal of it does,
but as a purist, I feel, you know...
..the film is perfectly...
..valid as a rather free adaptation of Dracula.
But the fact that it was advertised so relentlessly,
even in its title, as being absolutely faithful to the novel,
is, frankly, absurd.
The Count has worn many faces and is continually reinvented
for a new generation,
ensuring that the immortal vampire always has the last laugh.
And, action...
Over 120 years after Stoker's novel was first published,
production on a new Dracula series is drawing to an end.
I bid you welcome, Mr Harker.
So, what has allowed this story to live on
and be retold countless times?
I am Dracula.
Cut. Lovely. Right, brilliant.
Dracula,
whether this was quite his intent or not, is the first time that evil
gets to be attractive and evil gets its name on the cover,
and evil is, you know...
You're not supposed to be attracted to evil.
You're really not. We're supposed to be repelled by evil
and attracted by good, and this is a fairly straightforward statement
that that is not the case.
Frank Langella is clearly a very attractive man,
and Louis Jourdan, famously, a very handsome man.
Christopher Lee, good looking man...
It's just that thing -
being attracted to what you should not be attracted to.
What do you think our Dracula has brought to the role?
I think his particular gift,
his particular approach, right from the very first edition
to the last episode we filmed,
is an ability to be quite flip, quite lightweight,
but make that sinister,
cos he's never more frightening than when he chooses to smile
and to make an offhand, slightly glib remark.
Can I not recognise her face?
Well, you do look rather...
..drained.
You look young.
And I owe it all to you.
Thanks.
I was very struck through the whole filming process
that the times that I thought...
I was surprised by how scary and disturbing it was,
when he was being at his most sort of urbane.
When he's lightweight and funny in the horrific situation,
what it instantly tells you, in a chilling way,
he's terribly used to this.
Killing someone, destroying someone utterly,
isn't an unusual event for him.
It's something that he's acclimatised to,
and there's something deeply chilling about that.
There's something very frightening
about someone who is unmoved by their own evil.
If you let me live...
..then I...
..I will do everything in my power to stop you.
Quite right.
That's my Johnny.
Welcome to the mountain top.
BONES CRACK
Do you have a standard sort of process in terms of
approaching a part?
I started watching all the old movies just to sort of see
what do they do, and can I steal a bit of something here and there?
I've never done a character that has been...
..where there is so much material out there,
so I just thought it would be great for inspiration.
The one thing that I can sort of try and make something of
is to have that basic need that he has.
He has a basic need for food, like we do,
or sleep or sex or...
I actually don't sort of see him as,
you know, just wanting to destroy everything.
It's just something that happens as a by-product
of what he does.
Johnny, this is interesting.
I've never seen it work with a baby before.
Never.
I think I might keep it on for a while.
I hope this doesn't mean I'm getting sentimental.
Did you know Dracula beforehand?
Obviously, I mean, what everybody sort of knows,
Dracula is so iconic.
He's got his own emoji.
On your phone there's the snowman, Santa Claus and Dracula, I think.
So, the weird thing is that you realise
this is something that children of three,
they know this character,
cos they dress up as him when they go for Halloween or something.
Johnny, you're like me...
I am not like you!
HE SCREAMS
Bram Stoker's iconic work is celebrated to this day
and once a year in his hometown of Dublin
a weekend of cultural festivities is held in his name.
What is it about Dracula that still resonates?
I think Dracula is still so popular
because he's an amazing character.
There's absolutely no-one else like him, back then,
and still even today.
Classic, everlasting.
It doesn't age. No. It's timeless.
There's just something about the aesthetic, the look.
It's so creepy, but there's something human about it
at the same time.
I think he's so popular because he's talking
about our hidden,
maybe dark side, of a human being.
I think in the book he's more like a monster... He is, yeah.
..but when we put him on screen...
People still interpret him as beautiful and suave.
From Gary Oldman that did it,
going back to Christopher Lee -
they were all gorgeous.
120 years after the Count first landed on our shores,
it's clear his hold over us is as strong as ever,
but why?
For me, the key lies in the Count's multiplicity of faces,
worked on by a whole raft of talented people since 1897.
From the novel, to the stage to the screen,
Dracula has been a medieval warrior,
a feral beast, a lounge lizard,
a demon lover.
He's all these things and more,
and by becoming mythic, he's open to endless reinvention.
Dracula - evil's own hero.