I just finished reading the good ol' original Dracula actually and it's amazing how Vampires went from that to glittery pretty-boys for teenage girls.
Two most dramatic scenes in the book are by far Jonathan Harker's early section of the book in which he's in Dracula's castle. Fantastic part, extremely evocative even today with horrifying concepts and scenario which have since become staples of the horror genre such as the ride through the shadowy forest and Dracula's three seductive and equally evil... brides? It's never made clear who they might have been.
And then there's the journal of the doomed ship's captain who unknowingly carted Dracula to England. How the ship was shrouded in mists and one by one his crew would fall silent and disappear, how there were sightings of a strange, tall man across the ship and finally the captains last terrible moments in which as the lone survivor he straps himself to the steering wheel of the ship with rosary tied around his wrists to try and ward the 'demon' off and prevent it from taking the wheel itself. The ships crash onto the english beaches during a terrible storm and the discovery of the local-townspeople later on when they board only to find the crew vanished and a dead captain strapped to the wheel and having been dead for days, leading to the question how did the ship get to England at all? (Dracula of course!)
Those two scenes are what define vampires for me really. This sort of primeval terror stalking at the very edges of reality, powerful and terrible when they must be and yet also silent, reclusive.
Van Hellsing thought of them as children almost, evil beings of vast power and yet so very limited in thought and intellect because of their condition. Dracula being the exception because he'd 'survived' long enough that slowly, very slowly, he'd been growing more clever and leaving behind the blind bloodlust of most other vampires to such a point he'd begun to experiment and eventually even seek out and explore new hunting grounds, England, and that's what made him so deadly among the vampire kind. He was becoming smarter!
I like that idea. Meanwhile I dislike pretty much every new 'vampire' stereotype out there. Eug!
I'll stick to Dracula, thank you very much! He may be a classic, but he's still the best!
