After this spring’s Renfield, you might’ve thought we’d hit our quota of unlikely Dracula reimaginings for the year, but just to prove us wrong, The Last Voyage of the Demeter has entered cinemas this August to offer up yet another attempt from Hollywood to inject fresh blood into cinema’s most portrayed personality bar none. You think there are a lot of Marvel films? Dracula has appeared in well over 300 movies across filmmaking history.
Obviously, at some point, the well begins to run dry, so many a Dracula movie has taken some, let’s say, creative liberties with the source material. The Last Voyage of the Demeter, for example, is finding itself the butt of the joke on social media after its nautical premise is inspiring reams of “Dracula on a boat” memes. In its defense, however, this concept has been extrapolated from a single chapter in Bram Stoker’s original novel, so it’s not as crazy as certain other half-forgotten Drac-flavored films that are out there.
Find that hard to believe? Then allow me to shed some sunlight on the situation…
Dracula and Son (1976)
Just like vampires are allergic to garlic, a glance at Christopher Lee‘s filmography — as overstuffed as Dracula himself after a particularly filling feast of virginal blood — indicates that the great British thespian had an allergy to saying no when he was offered any kind of movie role. For every Lord of the Rings and The Wicker Man on his resume, there’s also a Dark Shadows or a Dracula and Son, which has the distinction of being Lee’s final time playing the Count. Totally unconnected to the Hammer franchise that made Lee’s name, this French horror-comedy is a bizarre father/son buddy movie in which Drac, who is for some reason a big-shot film star in this version, falls for the same woman as his estranged son. You know, maybe there’s a reason Lee never played Dracula again after this.
Love at First Bite (1979)
Coming three years after Dracula and Son, we have an even more unexpected outing for the big D on the big screen. I mean, once you’ve had him in a father/son bonding comedy, I guess the only logical step is to make him the lead in a rom-com. Yes, less than 90 years on from terrifying Victorians, the bloodsucking aristocrat was reduced to a love-lorn loser forced to move to New York City after being ousted from his native Transylvania by the newfound Communist regime, whereupon he struggles to win the heart of a flaky fashion model. The strangest part of Love at First Bite, though, is that Drac — cinema’s palest man — is played by the perpetually tanned TV personality George Hamilton.
Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned (1980)
Dominic Purcell’s woeful reimagining of Dracula in the awful Blade: Trinity — known as Drake, because apparently that seemed like a cool idea in the early 2000s — deserves some recognition, but Marvel’s most demented take on Bram Stoker’s creation has to be Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned, not just one of the worst Marvel productions of all time but one of the worst anime movies ever made to boot. The plot, such as it is, sees Dracula land in trouble with his boss Satan after stealing the Devil’s bride-to-be — we’ve all been there, right? Coming from Toei Animation, the masterminds behind Transformers, it’s impossible to tell who Sovereign is aimed for as the juvenile storytelling suggests it’s for kids, but the extreme gore and sexual imagery say otherwise. If there’s a movie that makes Morbius look like The Dark Knight, it’s this one.
Dracula 2000 (2000)
What’s so demented about Dracula 2000? This is the movie that tells us Dracula was once Judas Iscariot.
I wouldn’t typically give away a movie’s ending like that, but just trust me, I am doing you a favor as now you get to know the truly gonzo final twist of Dracula 2000 without having to sit through the previous 90 minutes. For much of its runtime, this millennial twist on the Count’s story is just as you would expect, a deliriously dumb attempt to add some sexy teen appeal to the tale that’s more brain-dead than undead. And then, right at the end, it drops a surprisingly biblical bombshell that might just be secretly genius as it explains Drac’s various weaknesses (his fear of the cross, his aversion to silver, etc.). It’s still not enough to make it worth wasting 100 minutes of your life, though.
Dracula 3000 (2004)
How do you make a Dracula movie even more off-the-wall than Dracula 2000? You take him into space! Yes, long before Fast & Furious burned through so many sequels that it was forced to fling Vin Diesel into the outer atmosphere, the Prince of Darkness got the same treatment in this made-for-TV movie that, despite its almost identical title, has nothing to do with Dracula 2000 (which actually spawned its own trilogy, because of course it did). Instead, Dracula 3000 is basically “What if Dracula but Alien?” as the fanged fiend is resurrected aboard a spaceship one thousand years in the future. Despite an attempt to call back to the character’s literary routes — the various crewmembers have names from the book — 3000 is easily the strangest interpretation of the vamp we’ve yet had. Because in space, no one can hear you suck.