While this film's scriptwriters took some liberties when translating
Bram Stoker's original
novel to the silver screen (mostly to do with a few of the characters' names/their relationship to one another), this is easily one of my favourite interpretations.
Frank Langella's portrayal of The Prince of Darkness is equal parts sophisticated-suave and terrifyingly bloody, and whenever I think of his eternal bride Mina (dubbed "Lucy" in this version) I instantly picture
Kate Nelligan's elegant innocence. The direction, musical score, acting, sets, and costuming are all superb but, rather than focus on any of that, I wanted to try something different and look at the actual, geographical locations where
Dracula was filmed. To do so, I used Google Earth to get aerial screenshots of the
locations listed on IMDB. This is made doubly interesting—at least to me—because I am visiting parts of the UK next month and will be somewhat near where the movie came into creation all those decades ago.
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| Doom and gloom. |
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| Where Mina stumbles upon Dracula after his initial journey on the Demeter. |
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| The shipwreck of the Demeter. |
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| What used to be King Arthur's Castle Hotel (now known as Camelot Castle) in Tintagel. |
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| The mental hospital/Seward family home. |
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| Used as the exterior of Carfax Abbey (Dracula's castle). |
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| The village through which Dracula and Lucy race to board their getaway ship. |
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