Dracula, Our First Vampire Love

So I was reading Brian Lowery’s review of ABC’s V in Variety and he keep going on and on about how attractive Morena Baccarin, the lead alien is.  It got me thinking about well dressed seductive evil.  And who is at the top of that list– Lord of the vampires… Dracula.  But there are so many different actors who have put on the fangs.  So who is the best?  Here are my contenders:

Bella Lugosi / Dracula (1931)
The man created the film role and up until Anne Rice came along he’s what most people thought of when you said vampire.  A pale guy with fangs, a cape, a tuxedo and an Eastern European accent.

Christopher Lee / Dracula (1958)
Granted he isn’t the the wordiest of vampires in his five turns in the role, but he looks the part of Old World seduction.  What also helps is Peter Cushing’s spot on performance as Van Helsing.  And the unique house style of Hammer Films, with their cutting edge fx (for the 1960s) and lots of sexy women in nightgowns.  Hammer took horror back from the kindergarten Saturday matinees that gave us Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein.  And if all that weren’t enough thanks to Prince Charles the former Count is now a Knight.

Frank Langella / Dracula (1979)
I had a chance to rewatch this one recently and I can’t get past the hair.  He’s got the cape and the fangs, but this mane of hair on Frank Langella just throws me off.  Langella does benefit from a having a great Van Helsing in Laurence Olivier.  His death sequence at the end was rather anticlimactic.  Hoisted up on the sails of a clipper ship and exposed to the sun, he doesn’t burst into flame.  He just flails about and then drys up like a raisin in the sun.  Its not his fault the movie had a lame ending, I blame the screenwriter.

Gary Oldman / Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Is there such a thing as a bad performance by Gary Oldman?  No.  But he does suffer from the lack of acting chops displayed by Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves in this film.  He does end up facing off against one of the best Van Helsings in the form of Anthony Hopkins.

Richard Roxburgh / Van Helsing (2004)
He doesn’t make the cut.  A very good actor (see Moulin Rouge), he’s upstaged by the overbearing special fx and by his cast members Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale.

I posed the question to Holly Comesoftly and being the cinephile extraordinaire that she is, she came back with a tie between Bela Lugosi and Max Schreck as the best.  Honorable mention went to Louis Jourdan and George Hamilton.  Worst went to Peter Fonda and Patrick Bergin. I know that I’m splitting hairs here but– Max Schreck wasn’t playing Dracula in Nosferatu (1929) although he was playing a vampire count based on the Dracula legend.

As for her honorable mentions, I didn’t know that Jourdan had done a TV version.  And as much as I enjoy Love At First Bite (a top ten on my guilt pleasure films list) I didn’t include George Hamilton since I was thinking more of dramatic portrayals.

Looking at the worsts, I’ve never seen Nadja (1994) and I don’t know that I’d ever buy Peter Fonda in dual roles as both Dracula and Van Helsing.  And I missed Patrick Bergin’s 2000 TV role as the Count.  I think his best work was in Sleeping with the Enemy and Patriot Games.

I agree with Holly on Lugosi, but I’m making Christopher Lee a close second by virtue of tenure in the role throughout the 1960s.  Now if I were to open it up to all vampire roles, then the worst of ALL time would have to be Tom Cruise as Lestat in Interview With the Vampire. And that’s saying something given the cutesy, granola, new age vampires of the Twilight books and movies.  The most engaging of all vampires portrayals right now would be Alexander Skarsgård as Eric Northman on True Blood.