I am something of a Dracula completist, as I've posted previously. I am intensely intrigued by the writing process that generated the original book, and I've read numerous annotated versions, biographies of Stoker, and analyses of the book. That's in part because I find the horror genre to be a particularly effective form of writing in terms of generating an effect from the reader. I scared the hell out of myself throughout law school by reading H.P. Lovecraft short stories before going to sleep, and to this day the ten feet between my bed and the bathroom in the house I lived in remains the most frightening place on Earth to me at night. But I couldn't stop because I was fascinated by how this dorky Rhode Island guy could write something so incredibly terrifying. (Part of it, actually, was that he couldn't - he left much undescribed, which is one of the kesy to true horror - the reader's mind fills in the blanks with someone worse - for that reader - that the author could have dreamed up). For example, a literal writer might describe a dead body as having this that or the other (rats, bugs, etc.) moving on it, and that's not terrifying at all. Disgusting, yes, but not terrifying. Lovecraft, on the other hand, might simply describe the horror at seeing the body "moving", and you're left with imagining something even worse than the literal description.
But I'm digressing. It's probably more because I realize that Stoker - largely unknowingly, I believe - created this magnificent piece of literary work using various techniques and researching various subjects. The writing process is what really intrigues me about the book, not the subject matter. Well, sort of. I am not interested in vampires per se, but the characteristics of a vampire certainly provide a great twist to a character. It provides a canvas for experiences and attitudes that goes far beyond what a mortal would have. That makes characters like Rice's Lestat or Louis, or Yarbro's Saint-Germain interesting - they can experience things humans cannot, and that can make interesting reading. (Of course a good writer could pull that off without the cheat of giving a character centuries of experience as an undead, but that's beyond the scope of this post).
But back to Dracula. I don't follow every contemporary spin on vampires (I understand there are a few) but I do try to stay up on retellings of the original tale, and that's where this one comes in. I recently read Dracula: The Undead, a sequel by someone working with a Stoker descendant, and this falls into the exact same genre - a retelling of the actual story from the perspective of Mina Harker, except that lo and behold it turns out she was in love with Dracula, and he really was not a bad guy. The book is actually very, very close to the 1992 Coppola movie Bram Stoker's Dracula in this respect. The book is a deliberate counterpoint to the book, telling the "true" story that can be written alongside the book's narrative but which shows the good guys to be idiots and Dracula to be the hero. Okay, it's an interesting approach and it's nice someone did it, but the book itself is at times a bodice-ripping Harlequin romance, and you know, that's just not all that exciting to a male reader. I give the author technical points, and I always respect a writer that so obviously has respect for the source material, as I do, but I am still embarrassed I read the thing. Still, it is a nice take on the original, with points also for originality - Dracula is a Tepes, but not Vlad.
I still wish someone would accept the challenge of writing or filming Dracula where the title character is not young and handsome, and the women are not in love with him - they are just helpless because of his powers. The Dracula of the book is mildly repellent at best, with horrific breath and deliberately written-in details that would have suggested abhorrence to readers (hairy palms being one such signal). Masterpiece Theater's Dracula a few years back got this very well by initially portraying Dracula as an animated corpse before falling for the heartthrob vampire transformation in the second act (although I am not complaining about any movie that includes an oversexed Sophia Myles writihing on the floor of a crypt - life has too many such wonderful moments) and while he might be portrayed with some sympathy or pity simply because of the life he has to lead, I would appreciate it if writers would avoid the temptation to make him a romantically sympathetic character. I just don't see the basis for that in the book, and I think it's too easy an out.
I wonder to what extent this comes from my first experience to vampire literature - the TV production of Stephen King's Salem's Lot (1979-ish ?) where the vampire was ugly, scary, unexpressive and unrepentantly evil. He killed because that's what he did, and there was no other thought or emotion than that. Nobody was sexually attracted to him, and the sole reaction anyone had was to scream their head off and try to get away. The plot was advanced by his owner/procurer, and he did not or could not talk himself. Now that's a vampire. I miss that elegant simplicity in the challenge of inducing horror in the readers. Can you, the writer, take a character this simple and make your readers too scared to get up and go to the bathroom? Stephen King, and Bram Stoker could. And H.P. Lovecraft could as well, although his creatures were infinitely scarier. I distinctly remember that in comparison I'd gladly face a vampire because death and an eternity as an Undead was not all that scary compared to what Lovecraft was writing about. How he made death and an eternity of damnation sould like a preferable option I don't know, but he did it - it was just part of his genius. And that's why I keep reading anything to do with Dracula. How did Stoker do it?