Tonight's Aesthetic: Dracula, as played by John Carradine
Carradine first donned the cloak to play the Count for Universal's House of Frankenstein in 1944, then again the following year for its sequel, House of Dracula. Although Bela Lugosi is the most famous Dracula actor (Dractor?) in Universal canon—if not all of cinema—he'd already been replaced by Lon Chaney, Jr. in 1943's Son of Dracula.
Carradine next appeared as Dracula in 1956 for Matinee Theatre's production of the stage play, and this is possibly the most page-accurate portrayal of the title character.
"Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere...His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor." —Jonathan Harker's Journal, Dracula, Chapter II
The face of a man who has just seen the script.
It would be another decade before Carradine returned to the role, this time in Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (part of a double-bill with Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter in 1966). To be fair, Stoker's original novel has Quincey P. Morris, a rootin', tootin', point-n-shootin' American cowboy (and the presence of a cowboy in a Victorian vampire novel is about as jarring and unexpected as that car chase at the end of Burroughs' original Tarzan novel), but that alone isn't enough to save this film from being a bad idea from the word go.
Carradine himself said of it: "My worst film? That's easy, a thing called Billy the Kid Versus Dracula…It was a bad film. I don't even remember it. I was absolutely numb!" And "I have worked in a dozen of the greatest, and I have worked in a dozen of the worst. I only regret Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. Otherwise, I regret nothing."
If "Dracula vs. cowboys" was a misstep, what would qualify as leaping off a cliff? How about "Drac' and Disco"?
Carradine's final appearance (AFAIK) as Dracula came at the tail end of the disco boom, in 1979 with Nocturna, often subtitled Granddaughter of Dracula for promotional reasons. To cover the taxes on his castle, Dracula converts it into a hotel managed by his granddaughter Nocturna, who falls in love with disco culture and runs off to America as he tries to reclaim control over her. This film gives us Dracula at his most pathetic. Feckless and fangless, this was absolutely the role to call it quits.
"Right now, I'm going to take a sample of your blood!"
Honorable mention goes to Al Adamson's Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969), featuring both Carradine and the character of Dracula (although he has inexplicably changed his name to Charles Townsend), although Carradine plays George the butler instead. Adamson also wanted Carradine as Dracula for Dracula vs. Frankenstein, filmed that same year, but couldn't afford him... but that's a story for another day!
