Discusses film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula over the years.
This paper examines the movies based on Bram Stoker’s classic novel, “Dracula”. It looks at films such as Max Schreck’s Count Orloff (1922), Lugosi’s “Dracula” (1931), and Christopher Lee’s unforgettable performances with Hammer Studios during the 50s and 60s. The paper examines male and female actors in several of the movies.
F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), presents a great challenge to male sexual authority. In this first film adaption of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire Orlock (Max Schreck) illustrates an inhuman sexuality which is both repellent and powerfully seductive. Stevenson’s conclusion that the ironic thing about vampire sexuality is that for all its overt peculiarity, it is in many ways like human sexuality (142), seems applicable considering that although Orlock’s sexual presence is radically different from that of the young real estate agent Hutter (Gustav van Wangenheim), their sexual desires are both directed by their wish to possess Ellen (Greta Schroeder), Hutter as a husband, Orlock as a lover, but both as a master.