I prefer Dracula. IWTV romanticized the vampire too much for my tastes, and while as a single film it does work, the effect that it has had on how people view vampires is an effect that, I'll be honest, annoys me a little. But I do like the film as it stands on it's own. I always find it quite interesting, however, that people find the "sequel" to be more enjoyable, as the character of Lestat had been completely changed, and it has nothing to do with the actor.
It doesn't help that, along with this change, it seems that the most important thing in most people's minds when watching the character is his looks. In my opinion, if it is a performance that a blind man or woman could not appreciate, not being able to see his looks, then it says something about the quality of the rest of the performance.
Dracula harkens back to the vampires of lore, of Eastern Europe, a place that still believes in the vampire in the same way that it has for a very long time; the birthplace of the vampire as we know it. In the 12th Century, William of Newburgh wrote several stories of the undead, and these stories stemmed from Eastern lore. Stories of creatures such as the Nachzehrer and the Strigoi, or even the Vrykolakas, fueled him. While his efforts didn't really help much on their own, other stories slowly crept from the East into the West, told in whispers in cities such as Paris and London, such as the tale of the Serbian man Peter Plogojowitz. People claimed that after his death, he tried to attack them. In other areas of Serbia, many plagues and epidemics of vampirism were even documented by a Johannes Fluckinger. His accounts were spread all over Eastern Europe, and toward the end of the 18th century, many poems about vampires were written. In the 19th century, these helped inspire writers like John Polidori and James Malcolm Rymer to tell tales of vampires, and the latter of which wrote "Varney the Vampire" which is the first story in which a vampire had fangs. Varney, along with Polidori's Lord Ruthven, helped inspire Dracula.
Why did I tell you all this? Because Dracula is not only A vampire, but he is THE vampire. His story is a metaphor and symbol of the vampire's journey from the East to the West, and as such, I find it to be a far more fascinating and important work than IWTV. However, I do suppose that one could argue that while Dracula shows how vampires traveled from East to West, IWTV shows what has happened to the vampire since the vampire got there. But if you ask me, the journey is more important than the destination, just as the question of a magic trick is more important than the answer.
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