Karly

Every obsession has an origin story, and mine begins with an irresponsible uncle, his equally irresponsible girlfriend, and a childhood viewing of Dracula, far too young, completely unsupervised, and instantly transfixed. I didn’t know what I was watching, not really, but I knew I liked it. I liked the shadows. I liked the drama. I liked the blood. I was convinced they were eating Lucy in the mausoleum scene and at the time, I didn’t know enough to question it. I was horrified, but I was also enchanted, completely caught between revulsion and awe, and there was no going back.

It didn’t stop there. A little while later, I found myself on a perfectly ordinary playdate at a friend’s house, until her mum, who had a crush on Hugh Jackman, decided we should watch Van Helsing. Which somehow made it appropriate for two very underage girls to witness a leather-clad monster hunter tear through an army of CGI vampires while spouting one-liners in a voice so gravelly it barely counted as language. Everyone else was focused on Hugh, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Dracula. Camp. Over-the-top. Mesmerising. A little ridiculous, and yet completely magnetic. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to.

That double feature, one classic, one chaotic, was enough to light the match. What followed was a lifelong fascination not just with vampires, but with Dracula specifically. Not the legend, not the vampire type, but the character. The Count. The man in the shadows. The one who talks just a little too slowly, and looks just a little too intently. I became obsessed with the way he moved through different versions of himself, adapting to each decade, each director, each cultural fear. He was never quite the same, but never unrecognisable either. He could be rewritten, repackaged, revived, and still, unmistakably, he was Dracula.

So here is a very personal and very biased breakdown of the Draculas that shaped me. The ones I remember most. The ones I keep going back to. The ones that taught me how villains are crafted and how monsters become myths, not because they live forever, but because we keep inviting them in.

The Historical One: Vlad the Impaler

Every legend starts somewhere, and in Dracula’s case, it starts with a prince. Vlad III of Wallachia, known more famously as Vlad the Impaler, ruled in the 15th century and was known for defending his territory with an intensity that would later make him infamous. His preferred punishment method (impalement) terrified invading armies and helped build the foundation for a figure who would later be framed as something more than a man. Bram Stoker never directly stated that he based his Dracula on Vlad, but he borrowed the name, and the aura, and that was enough. The Eastern European mystique. The old-world cruelty. The blood-soaked nobility. It all became part of the texture.

This isn’t the Dracula I first fell in love with, not really, but his shadow lingers across every version. He is the historical whisper in the myth, the origin we gesture toward when we want to explain what cannot be explained. He reminds us that sometimes, monsters are just men who lived long enough to be rewritten.

The Literary One: Stoker’s Dracula (1897)

The novel itself is one of those texts that rewards rereading. On the surface, it’s a horror story told in letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, and telegrams, a collage of voices that lets you piece together the story as it unfolds. Dracula himself rarely gets centre stage. He appears in glimpses. His presence is felt more often than it is described. And when he does speak, his English is overly formal, too perfect, too deliberate. It’s stiff in a way that doesn’t sound old-fashioned so much as wrong, as if he’s learned the language phonetically, or through repetition, or under duress.

This Dracula is not seductive. He is not theatrical. He is not the romantic figure that later versions would imagine him to be. Instead, he is an invader. Not just of homes, or bodies, or borders, but of language itself. He unsettles speech. He disrupts narrative structure. He shifts the tone of every scene he enters, not because he says much, but because his presence distorts everything around it. Other characters begin to speak differently when he is near. Their syntax breaks. Their rhythm stumbles. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

Stoker didn’t write a smooth-talking villain. He wrote a narrative contagion, a monster who infects not through bite or blood, but through the way his silence makes everyone else lose their grip on language. And that, more than the fangs or the folklore, is what makes the novel so unnerving.

The Romantic One: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

And then there’s Gary Oldman.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is lush and stylised and deeply theatrical, and it gives us a Count who is less a villain and more a fallen god. A warrior turned widower. A man so overcome by grief he curses heaven itself and becomes something unholy in the process. Oldman’s Dracula is operatic, drenched in emotion, dressed like an oil painting. He doesn’t just want blood, he wants love. He wants recognition. He wants someone to see him and not flinch.

When he speaks, it’s not as a predator but as a poet. Slow. Soft. Seductive, but in a way that feels deeply intentional. He is not charming. He is haunting. Every sentence feels carved. When he says, “I have crossed oceans of time to find you,” it doesn’t sound like a line. It sounds like history. You believe him. You want to be found. Even if it kills you.

This is the version I go back to most. Because this Dracula does not want to conquer. He wants to be understood. And for a moment, you think maybe that’s possible.

The Chaotic One: Van Helsing (2004)

I watched it during that fated playdate and pretended I was just there for the popcorn, but I wasn’t. I was watching, wide-eyed, trying not to look too invested. But I was. Because this Dracula was nothing like the others.

He was loud. Wild. Dramatic in the most literal sense. Every line was shouted, snarled, or moaned. He hissed. He leapt. He wore enough leather to make a 2000s fashion blog blush. His accent changed scene to scene. His children were giant winged horrors. His castle was a CGI dreamscape. It was nonsense. And I was obsessed.

This Dracula was not scary. He wasn’t seductive. But he was theatrical. He committed. He performed with the energy of someone who had once played Javert in a school production of Les Misérables and never quite came down from the high. He is not my favourite. But I’ll always have a soft spot for him. Because he was fun. Because he made me laugh. Because he made me curious. And, if I remember correctly, he had a monster, Frankenstein, maybe? Time for a rewatch, I guess.

And maybe because deep down, he reminded me that monsters are allowed to be absurd sometimes.

The Quiet One: Penny Dreadful (Season 3)

If Van Helsing gave us chaos, Penny Dreadful gave us stillness.

Christian Camargo’s Dracula barely moves. He barely raises his voice. He waits. He watches. He listens. And that is what makes him terrifying. He doesn’t have to seduce. He doesn’t have to threaten. He is the kind of monster who lets you walk right into his trap and thank him for it.

What makes this version so unsettling is not what he says, but how carefully he says it. His speech is controlled, deliberate, and restrained. He doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t rush. He allows silence to settle between each line, and somehow, that silence feels louder than anything else. He is not dramatic. He is certain.

And it works. Because this Dracula isn’t trying to be loved or feared. He is trying to win. And he knows how to wait.

Why Dracula Endures

Dracula is not just a character. He is a myth in motion. A mirror we hold up to our fears, our fascinations, our fantasies. He has been imagined as a foreigner, a nobleman, a predator, a romantic, a recluse. He has been tragic and ridiculous, elegant and grotesque. And through it all, he has remained recognisable, not because of how he looks, but because of how he speaks.

He survives through language. Sometimes he whispers. Sometimes he commands. Sometimes he says nothing at all. But whatever form he takes, he shapes the story. He alters the atmosphere. He controls the tone. He is never just present. He is narrative.

I didn’t understand any of this when I was a child, sitting cross-legged in front of a TV I wasn’t supposed to be watching, falling in love with a villain I wasn’t meant to admire. I just knew that when Dracula entered the scene, everything changed. The pacing shifted. The tension sharpened. The characters forgot how to breathe. And I leaned in.

One uncle. One playdate. Two wildly different adaptations. And a lifetime of fascination with the way monsters linger long after they’re gone.

PS: Tomorrow (October 21st) is my birthday, and I’m turning a scaryish age, fit for the month, so happy early birthday to me!