1897 Bram Stoker’s novel, which along with Frankenstein has inspired more movies than any other work of 19th-century fiction, is narrated as a series of breathless, as-it-happens, journal entries from Jonathan Harker’s first arrival in Transylvania (3 May) to the vampire-count’s decapitation, six months later, on 6 November.
Using Mina Harker’s partially-vampirised, radar-like ability to track the ‘King Vampire’, Dr Van Helsing leads the hunt. Dracula is finally cornered trying to escape, at nightfall, his coffin being carried away in a cart by his faithful band of gypsies, guarded by a pack of wolves, subservient to his will. He must be destroyed before night falls and he regains his awful powers. The last act is described in Mina’s journal entry:
I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well.
As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart.
It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.
The American, Quincey Morris, is killed in the fray. Jonathan and Mina (purified from her vampire taint) live happily ever after. Dracula (never was the term ‘undead’ more appropriate) would rise again to suck blood in innumerable sequels. Oddly, Bram Stoker never wrote one.