Dracula: The 3 Best Movies with a Vampire, Ranked by Audience

The horror film The Last Voyage of Demetrius has just hit our darkrooms. Adapted from a chapter of the famous novel “DraculaPublished by Bram Stoker in 1897, André Ovredal’s feature film tells the story of the crossing of the Demetrius, aboard a merchant ship that very cautiously sailed from the Carpathians to London with a cargo of unidentified wooden crates.

Strange events on the ship soon threaten the crew, who will have to try, during this disastrous crossing, to escape the strange presence that hunts them mercilessly at night. The shipwreck, a veritable ghost ship anchored on the coast of England, is nothing more than the shadow of Demetrius, on which there is no longer a living soul.

Directed by Corey Hawkins, Aisling Francios, David Dastmalchian and Liam Cunningham, the film presents a Dracula that is far from the romantic hero of certain films.

The desire of a Norwegian filmmaker who wanted to make the famous vampire truly disgusting. “We don’t follow Dracula as a character, as the sophisticated aristocrat that he really is. On this trip, he’s desperate and has to kill his crew to survive. It’s kind of a survival story on his part. I think that’s an important aspect of the story.“

After his first film appearance in 1921 in the Hungarian film Drakula Halala by Karol Laitai.dracula” Presented in different ways, more than thirty actors have portrayed the famous count who thirsts for human blood, including: Gary Oldman, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, John Carradine, Peter Fonda, Frank Langella, Christopher Lee, Leslie Nielsen, Luke Evans or even Jonathan Rhys – Meyers.

We invite you here to discover the 3 best Dracula movies according to AlloCiné audience ratings.

1 – Dracula, Pages from the Virgin’s Diary (2003) – 4.2/5 stars

With an average rating of 4.2/5 stars for 55 ratings, it’s Dracula, Pages from the Diary of a Maiden by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, tops the list of best Dracula movies according to internet users AlloCiné. .

Released in our cinemas in December 2003 and awarded the Grand Prize at the Sitges Fantastic Film Festival (Spain), the film is an adaptation of Marc Godin’s choreographed ballet based on Bram Stokerwith music by Gustav Mahler. Canadian television asked Guy Maddin to make a movie based on this ballet.

Knowing the risks of such a project that combines choreography and cinema, the director chose not to make a simple recording of the show, but to make it less obscure than it was in its stage version. In doing so, he added pantomime as well as intertitles to let the audience know that if they were momentarily lost, a card would soon arrive to get them back on track.

A “poetic, illuminated, richly choreographed piece” for one and “a beautiful tribute to early 20th century silent cinema” for others.

2 – DRACULA (1992) – 4.1/5 stars

More famously, it is Francis Ford Coppola’s famous Dracula, which is ranked second with an average rating of 4.1/5 stars for 23,482 ratings.

Gary Oldman portrays a vampire and delivers an incredible performance that remains in the memory 30 years after the film’s release. The film begins in 1492, Prince Vlad Dracul, returning from a battle with Turkish forces, discovers that his fiancée has committed suicide. Maddened by pain, he defies God and becomes Count Dracula, a vampire by trade. Four hundred years later, wanting to leave Transylvania to settle in England, he called Jonathan Harker, notary’s clerk and fiancé of the beautiful Mina Murray. The young girl is similar to Elizabeth, the Earl’s love interest…

The film also stars Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves, Anthony Hopkins, Sadie Frost and Monica Bellucci, in 1993 the film won 3 Oscars: Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Best Sound Editing.

With this film, Francis Ford Coppola and screenwriter James Hart introduced the theme of eternal love with the character of Mina (Winona Ryder), who is clearly described as the reincarnation of Dracula’s lost wife, while she does not appear in Bram Stoker’s novel. The two men also contain the secret identity of Dracula Vlad Tepes, known as Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Bram Stoker to create his character.

Internet users seem to agree on Gary Oldman’s interpretation: “The brilliant Gary Oldman manages to imbue his character with a crazy charm that gives the audience incredible charm.” vampire”…

But also on Francis Ford Coppola’s staging: “The knowledge and ingenuity of the filmmaker allows here an unprecedented romantic illustration of the famous Transylvanian myth, tragic, baroque and erotic at the same time. One of the most beautiful stories. Love and death have never been realized.”, “Coppola’s masterpiece, every In any case, in my opinion… Sufficiently sulphurous, sufficiently unwholesome, and most of all wonderfully graphic.”

3 – NOSFERATU THE VAMPIRE (1922) – 4/5 stars

Nosferatu le vampire, released in 1922 by German expressionist filmmaker Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau, ranks third with an average of 4 stars out of 5,322 ratings.

The film, which was released in theaters last October to celebrate the 100th anniversary, takes place in 1838. Thomas Hatter, an estate agent’s clerk, leaves his wife Ellen at Count Orlok’s mansion in the Carpathians. There he discovers that the Count is a Nosferatu vampire (played by Max Schreck). He left his castle in a coffin filled with earth and after a voyage on a sailboat, during which he destroyed the terrified crew (his related The Last Voyage of Demetrius), Nosferatu will get his new home, located across the street from Hatter and Ellen’s house…

This unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s famous novel is almost gone. If the plot is very similar to Stoker’s works, the screenwriter changed the names of the characters and changed some elements. But the liberties taken by the director and screenwriter angered the writer’s widow, Florence Stoker. He took legal action, demanding the destruction of the negative and all copies. But Nosferatu was finally saved thanks to the Defense Committee.

This classic horror film, which has inspired many directors, has a political and social dimension. Nosferatu, a vampire made after the First World War, is believed by some to have predicted future horrors of the Nazis, and to others, on the contrary, is in some ways an anti-Semitic work. Thus, upon the film’s release, a critical debate erupted.

Most of the Internet users praised the quality of this stealth adaptation: “amazing visual beauty, rare poetry”, “mythical masterpiece”, “the greatest horror film of all time”. For some, however, this silent film has aged poorly: “It’s a masterpiece from another era,” “If technically Nosferatu has some good things (…) time defies it and hardly makes it appealing these days.”