I watched both Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula this weekend. I'm getting the Lugosi one next.
I think the silent film made Nosferatu creepier, whereas the newer one with Gary Oldman was more graphic and "sexier."
I liked Gary Oldman in this role, btw. Why doesn't he get more attention as an actor? Sirius Black in Harry Potter; James Gordon in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, etc.?
Both of these Draculas did not fit my image of him from the book. I'm wondering if I've been too influenced by the Bela Lugosi version by now--or Al Lewis's "Grandpa" in The Munsters! 
Am I the only one who noticed that he had a MUSTACHE in the book? I had to go back and find that again to see if I remembered that right, and it's there!
ConnieK wrote:I watched both Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula this weekend. I'm getting the Lugosi one next.
I think the silent film made Nosferatu creepier, whereas the newer one with Gary Oldman was more graphic and "sexier."
I liked Gary Oldman in this role, btw. Why doesn't he get more attention as an actor? Sirius Black in Harry Potter; James Gordon in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, etc.?
Both of these Draculas did not fit my image of him from the book. I'm wondering if I've been too influenced by the Bela Lugosi version by now--or Al Lewis's "Grandpa" in The Munsters!
Am I the only one who noticed that he had a MUSTACHE in the book? I had to go back and find that again to see if I remembered that right, and it's there!
Dracula with a mustache?!! I don't recall any movie where he had one.
DCGuy wrote:
ConnieK wrote:I watched both Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula this weekend. I'm getting the Lugosi one next.
I think the silent film made Nosferatu creepier, whereas the newer one with Gary Oldman was more graphic and "sexier."
I liked Gary Oldman in this role, btw. Why doesn't he get more attention as an actor? Sirius Black in Harry Potter; James Gordon in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, etc.?
Both of these Draculas did not fit my image of him from the book. I'm wondering if I've been too influenced by the Bela Lugosi version by now--or Al Lewis's "Grandpa" in The Munsters!
Am I the only one who noticed that he had a MUSTACHE in the book? I had to go back and find that again to see if I remembered that right, and it's there!
Dracula with a mustache?!! I don't recall any movie where he had one.
None of them do that I know of (how would they show the fangs clearly if they did?). Ha. But it's right there, in the book. Page numbers are from the B&N Classics edition; emphasis is mine:
"The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years" (22-23).
ConnieK wrote:dulcinea3 wrote:
I only saw the Oldman version once, but I just couldn't get past that outrageous hairdo!
I know! What's up with that hair? What were they thinking?
It makes him into such a cartoonish figure that I have a difficult time with the idea that it could be a serious adaptation of the novel. Of course, they parodied it in the Mel Brooks film Dracula: Dead and Loving It, for which it was perfect!
dulcinea3 wrote: It makes him into such a cartoonish figure that I have a difficult time with the idea that it could be a serious adaptation of the novel. Of course, they parodied it in the Mel Brooks film Dracula: Dead and Loving It, for which it was perfect!
I can appreciate how the goofiness of the hair would be a little distracting. I was a little bothered by it at first as well, but then I started noticing a few things. The helmet that Vlad the Impaler wore had beast-like ears, and as Dracula in his beastly form, he had large ears, I looked at the two puffs of hair atop the elder count's head as being reminiscent of his armor, and symbolic for the beast within.
Maybe these are tied together, maybe not. But it did help me to come to terms with the bodacious hair of the old count.
That made me think.... Was the beastly armor foreshadowing the beast Vlad the Impaler would become, was it beastly because it somehow fit the beast that he already had within him, or did his monstrous form as a vampire derive from the appearance of his blood-soaked armor??
dulcinea3 wrote:
ConnieK wrote:Finally re-watched the Bela Lugosi version after a long time. It doesn't follow the book at all! Funny how that image of Dracula is the one that has carried over to TV and so many other places. Of the 3 I watched recently, Lugosi's is the most "count-like" and least fantastic-looking.
Do you think his appearance being so less monster-like contributes to the image lasting and showing up elsewhere? Even Sesame Street's "Count" is more like Lugosi's version.
Interesting.
Maybe because the Lugosi version was the first major successful film, and because Lugosi himself got so tied up in the character for the rest of his life that he was actually buried in his Dracula costume and cape.
Perhaps Lugosi expected to rise from the dead like his character? 
DCGuy wrote:
dulcinea3 wrote:
ConnieK wrote:Finally re-watched the Bela Lugosi version after a long time. It doesn't follow the book at all! Funny how that image of Dracula is the one that has carried over to TV and so many other places. Of the 3 I watched recently, Lugosi's is the most "count-like" and least fantastic-looking.
Do you think his appearance being so less monster-like contributes to the image lasting and showing up elsewhere? Even Sesame Street's "Count" is more like Lugosi's version.
Interesting.
Maybe because the Lugosi version was the first major successful film, and because Lugosi himself got so tied up in the character for the rest of his life that he was actually buried in his Dracula costume and cape.
Perhaps Lugosi expected to rise from the dead like his character?
I don't think we've nailed it yet. There has to be a reason. Maybe the timing of the Lugosi film--being seen by a wider audience for the first time, as you allude to, dulci?
They have a wax figure of Bela Lugosi as Dracula in Madame Tussaud's. I just saw it recently--the eyes are all "glowy" in the wax figure/lighting of it, too! Ha!
