Bram Stoker's pen created a monster that still has teeth (2024)

KinoMax Schreck as the vampire in F.W. Murnau's 1922 film "Nosferatu." The Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel was closer to Schreck's portrayal than to the handsome undead of the CW's "The Vampire Diaries" or Edward Cullen in the "Twilight" series.

Mark your calendars, those of you under the mark of the vampire. Some important dates are gliding toward you like a thirsty bat in the night sky.

The CW's "The Vampire Diaries" wraps up its third season at 8 p.m. Thursday, May 10, on WBNX Channel 55. The network's highest-rated show, it's a dead certainty for a fourth season.

The next day, director Tim Burton's antic big-screen reboot of "Dark Shadows" arrives in theaters with Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins. HBO's acclaimed "True Blood" begins its fifth season at 9 p.m. Sunday, June 10. And the next "Twilight" film, "Breaking Dawn -- Part 2," will be released Friday, Nov. 16.

Yes, it's another lively year for the undead. But there's another date vampire fans should be commemorating. This Friday marks the 100th anniversary of Bram Stoker's death.

A tall, burly, redheaded Irishman, Stoker established the vampire as a superstar with the 1897 publication of his classic novel, "Dracula." Stoker and his book about a certain Transylvanian count cut the supernatural path that leads directly to "Twilight," "True Blood," "The Vampire Diaries" and "Dark Shadows."

"There was vampire fiction before Stoker, and maybe other people would have picked up on that, but he truly set off the boom," said Elizabeth E. Fuller, a librarian at Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum & Library, the resting place for Stoker's research notes and outlines for "Dracula."

Drawing on that fiction and centuries of folklore, Stoker penned the most influential vampire story of all time. "Dracula" also is regarded as one of the three seminal horror novels of the 19th century, stalking through our nightmares alongside Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Intriguingly, like Stoker, Shelley and Stevenson said their novels were inspired by nightmares.

Stoker's Count Dracula was a far cry (or scream) from the cover-boy vampires in today's major franchises. His vampire was a monster with sharp teeth -- a cunning predator with flowing white hair, a drooping mustache, pointed ears and really bad breath.

But no matter how you picture this vampire king, there's no denying his enduring power. Stoker came up with a metaphoric figure so imposing, it could embody all of the fears, anxieties, hopes, desires and dark dreams of his era and, more incredibly, generations to come.

"He wrote a remarkable book that gave shape to the modern vampire story," Fuller said. "But he did pick a bad time to die."

The news of Stoker's death at 64 on April 20, 1912, was overshadowed by screaming headlines about the sinking of the Titanic five days earlier. And, 100 years later, the anniversary of his death has been largely forgotten as the centennial of that ocean tragedy is marked with wave after wave of TV specials, newspaper stories and exhibits (including one at the Rosenbach).

Even if you recognize Stoker's name, it's probably only because he wrote "Dracula." He wrote 18 books, the last one published posthumously in 1914. Quick, name another.

That's all right. Almost no one can, although some of the other books, including "The Lair of the White Worm" and "The Jewel of Seven Stars," were made into movies.

Published in 1903, "The Jewel of Seven Stars" tells of an archaeologist's attempts to revive an ancient Egyptian mummy. So Stoker authored landmark vampire and mummy novels.

He wasn't quite a one-hit wonder, but his fame does rest entirely on "Dracula." And that leads to a question that has perplexed critics and biographers since 1912. Mystery author and reviewer Anthony Boucher pounded home the point like a wooden stake: "How did the most successful horror novel in the English (and possibly in any) language come to be written by a man whose first published book was entitled 'The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland'? "

One reason may be that Stoker made a far greater effort with "Dracula," the book where his many interests combined with his many influences to create a perfect literary storm.

"We know he took much more care and time with 'Dracula' than he did with the other books," Fuller said. "He worked on 'Dracula' for seven years, all in the intervals of his day job. He wasn't primarily a writer, after all."

That's right. In his lifetime, Stoker wasn't even best known as an author. He was a familiar face around London as the manager of the Lyceum Theatre, the home theater of England's reigning superstar, Henry Irving.

The first actor to be knighted, Irving died in 1905 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. You would have been laughed out of the Abbey for suggesting that, 100 years later, Irving's name would only be known to theater aficionados while his loyal manager's name would be recognized by millions.

"If it weren't for 'Dracula,' none of us would know who Bram Stoker is," "Dracula" and vampire expert J. Gordon Melton told me for my 2008 book, "The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula." "But Dracula, being a vampire, is immortal, and so perhaps it's fitting that he gave a kind of immortality to Bram Stoker."

If Dracula gave a kind of immortality to Stoker, then the movies were what made Dracula immortal. The first film version of the novel, unauthorized, appeared 10 years after Stoker's death. It was the 1922 silent classic "Nosferatu." It was followed in 1931 by Bela Lugosi's "Dracula," which created the image of the vampire that held sway for decades.

Lugosi was followed by such Dracula actors as John Carradine, Christopher Lee, Jack Palance, Frank Langella and Gary Oldman.

Today the vampire landscape belongs to the heartthrob likes of Edward Cullen, Bill Compton and the Salvatore brothers.

But as we approach the 100th anniversary of Stoker's death, it's a fitting moment to acknowledge there wouldn't be a landscape if it hadn't been mapped out by "Dracula."