Dracula, Probably the most iconic monster in all of horror, Originally published as the main villain of the novel of the same name by British Author, Bram Stoker in the 1890s, based on the Wallachian Prince, Vlad The Impaler. Since then, he has been adapted over and over again throughout pop-culture, in comics, video games, anime, but most iconically in Horror Movies! So today, I wanted to compare the original novel version of Dracula, to three different film iterations of the character, to compare and contrast or similarities and differences, and most importantly, determine which one is the more powerful Dracula.
Dracula (Novel) vs Dracula (Universal)
Starting us off, we are using Dracula from the Universal canon started back in 1931, This is the first film version of Dracula, as well as easily the most Iconic.
Power:
Novel: Dracula is stated to have the strength of 20 men physically, but in terms of destructive capacity he has been able to create blasts of lightning that illuminated the entire night sky, and Created one of the largest storms on record, and maintained it for four days, including during the daytime when he is supposedly significantly weaker than normal. It seems to suggest that he is capable of casually creating hurricanes with his power, and it is also stated at one point that he would be able to survive the force of a volcano, which gives some consistency.
Universal: The universal version of Dracula skills to the universal version of Frankenstein, due to this fight with the Wolfman in ‘Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein’, and the Wolfman having fought evenly with, and damaged Frankenstein in ‘Frankenstein meets The Wolfman’. At the end of “The Bride of Frankenstein”, the Frankenstein monster stood in the middle of the large Frankenstein tower as it was destroyed in an explosion, and collapsed violently on top of him, yet was able to survive without a scratch.
While one could easily argue that the film version of Dracula is physically stronger than the novel version, The Sheer Destructive Capacity the novel version has would be absolutely unheard of in these classic universal movies, particularly because the film does not establish Dracula as being responsible for the storm that befell the cargo ship he arrived on. Destructive capacity is almost always more important than physical strength in verses matchups, and the difference between their physical strength is significantly less than the difference between their destructive capacity at that. This is a major victory for the novel Dracula.
Speed:
Novel: Dracula Has been described as being ‘quick as lightning’, and while I would call this hyperbole because he has no feats that actually prove this, he has multiple times been shown to be so fast the can speed past people, including low level super humans, without their eyes being able to detect him, which would suggest he has supersonic speeds.
Universal: as stated earlier, the universal version of Dracula scales to the universal version of Frankenstein. In ‘Ghost of Frankenstein’ The Frankenstein monster is able to time and move in tandem with a bolt of lightning from the sky. So, Dracula IS actually as fast as lightning here.
Universal Dracula has a pretty sizable speed advantage over the original novel version, he would likely be in excess of 100 times faster and would casually be able to score hits on him and avoid being attacked himself.
Abilities:
Novel: Dracula in the Novel is an extremely skilled warrior who lacks fear. He has many classic vampire abilities including shapeshifting into a bat, wolf or a logia intangible cloud of mist. He is able to Hypnotize people or drain away someone’s strength with his gaze, and project a Fear Aura powerful enough to paralyze people and kill large animals. He can turn intangible at will, teleport around the area, manipulate his size to grow large, or shrink to unnoticeably small, and control weather events, summoning storms, bolts of lightning and fog. With his Telekinesis, Dracula has been able to steer an entire ship, or maintain the structure of his entire castle, even in day time and from far away. He has super senses that let him see in the dark, and Adhesion to climb walls and ceilings, plus his dark powers allow him to control the dead, animals, darkness and the insane.
Universal: Dracula in this canon can also shapeshift into a bat, wolf or cloud of smoke, turn intangible, hypnotize people, scale walls, and use telekinesis. But much of his arsenal is more unique. Dracula can summon blasts of fire, turn invisible, and possesses a High-Mid Regeneration ability that allowed him to quickly come back from a Skeleton. His blood draining ability also can allow him to take full on possession of his victims, even from beyond the grave.
These two share a great deal of powers, some of which will cancel out, yes, but in many of them the Novel Dracula just has higher showings. Comparing their unique abilities, both have some useful powers, like Teleportation and Invisibility, But overall I’d say that the Novel version has better power variety.
Weakness:
Novel: Vampires tend to have a variety of weaknesses and this is no exception. When under direct sunlight, Dracula is severely weakened, not being able to use many of his supernatural powers, and having the power he does have diminished, it is tricky, but possible for normal humans to kill him with knives in this state. Dracula can also be harmed or repelled by Wooden Stakes, Cloves of Garlic, Wild Roses, Running Water and any Holy artifact such as a Crucifix and Holy Water.
Universal: Dracula here has many of the same weaknesses as the novel one, still being weak to holy artifacts and garlic, although is unaffected by flowers or running water. There are only two ways to kill him, The first one being driving a wooden stake through his heart, although this is not a permanent solution, As should the stake ever be removed, he will immediately regenerate back. That being said, his weakness to sunlight is far more damning. If Dracula is exposed to the light of day, his entire body will be permanently reduced to Ash.
Battle:
Despite the sheer Power that the Novel Dracula brings to the table this would by no means be an easy fight. Universal Dracula is much faster than him and would be more than capable of blitzing his way into close range to attack, while avoiding even the Novel Dracula’s Lightning attacks. Both of these two have Hypnosis, but as both establish that you can resist hypnosis with a strong will, and both clearly possess a strong will, I don’t believe either would work on the other. As Intangible beings SHOULD Be able to interact with other intangible beings that likely cancels out too. A lot of their powers wouldn't work on eachother like that, including Possession, Control of the Dead, and the Fear Aura, ntm their shape shifting cancels out. Universal Dracula’s best power for this would be his Invisibility, as he could use it to sneak up on the Novel Dracula and use a Wild Rose on him or something, but even this has its counterplays. With Novel Dracula’s Telekinesis, he could essentially put a telekinetic barrier around himself that the Universal one would just NOT be able to pass with his own power, regardless of speed. Novel Dracula could also use his improved movement option of Teleportation to vanish from where the Universal one could see him, as he lacks the super senses to track him down. Most Damningly, since the Novel Dracula can move around in the Daylight, he could easily just escape and expose him to the sun to kill him, hell he could literally Telekinetically break a hole through the building he’s sleeping under to expose him that way if he wanted. Yeah Novel Drac wins.
Dracula (Novel) vs Dracula (Hammer)
Round 2: Hammer Dracula was first made in 1958 and continued on until the late 70s. With a total of 7 films, it is the longest run of Dracula films that exists.
Power:
Hammer Dracula is portrayed as being able to smash through walls and endure violent carriage crashes, he’s superior in power to anyone in his series.
This would still be very weak compared to Novel Dracula even physically, he would not be able to win in melee.
Speed:
At one point he was able to wake up from his coffin, open the lid, climb out of it and close the lid back up again before a human sitting right next to and watching the coffin noticed, which is a casual Subsonic Feat.
Hammer and Novel Dracula would be relatively even in speed overall, with Novel maybe having a slight advantage.
Abilities:
Hammer Dracula has many more unique abilities, in addition to some possessed by the Novel version. Able to climb walls, hypnotize foes, and use telekinesis, and while he can’t actually turn into a bat, he has control over all bats and uses them to do his bidding. He can control fire, and possesses a Fear Aura so powerful that the very shadow of his castle prevented anyone from going near it, or to church in 10 years, despite him actually being dead that entire time. But his greatest aspect is just how impossible it is to kill him conventionally. Hammer Dracula has Mid-High regeneration, and has returned from nothing more than ashes or a drop of blood. He was once even able to self resurrect himself after his entire physical body was erased from existence!
Novel Dracula has a fair deal more power variety than he does, but some of the abilities exclusive to Hammer Dracula, allow him to hang in there like a real cockroach.
Weaknesses:
Where this version of Dracula seems to fall apart is how he has literally all the weaknesses possible. He has every single weakness the above two have, including obscure things like running water from a river being able to paralyze him. He has that weakness of not being able to enter into a place he was not invited into. And in addition to Sunlight and Wooden Stakes, he can also be killed by Fire, Silver, the Hawthorne bush, and a Bible.
Battle:
Battle time...well I suppose it's not so much a Battle as it is a Standoff! Hammer Dracula basically has no way to kill the Novel Drac, but would be next to impossible to kill even with the Massive power advantage. But could the Novel Dracula pull it off? Well lets see, Novel Dracula is described as being particularly very fearless, so I believe he is perfectly capable of walking straight through the Fear Aura of Hammer Drac, and after that he could easily pound him down over and over, but it couldn’t kill him. BUT then there's the trick, this Dracula could easily use weaknesses of Hammer Dracula that he doesn’t have himself. If he walked in there armed with Silver, and Fire and a Crown of Thorns then there’d be no way Hammer Dracula would survive. And Hammer Dracula really cannot replicate this strategy, as ANY Weakness that the Novel Dracula has, this one has to an even worse degree. Even with prep time Hammer Dracula’s best accomplishment was making a Plague that could wipe out humanity if allowed to spread, but Novel Dracula is explicitly immune to earthly disease.
Dracula (Novel) vs Dracula (Coppola)
For the final round, we’re doing Coppola Dracula. Coming out in the year 1992, this is the film version of Dracula I personally consider to be the closest and most accurate to the original novel, so this will be fun!
Power:
This Dracula was able to create a massive hurricane that devastated the British coast line for days on end, Telekinetically moved A cumulus cloud to block the sun and has displayed Hydrokinesis enough to create so much fog, that the cargo ship carrying him got lost in it for 4 straight days, these feats of weather manipulation are roughly in the gigatons.
This film essentially copied the feats from the novel, but they ended up actually being slightly more impressive in practice, Coppola Dracula would actually have a small edge in sheer power.
Speed:
Coppola Dracula was able to sprint across the streets of London at speeds too fast for any bystanders to notice, which would be supersonic speed. He was also able to telekinetically move that cloud at speeds many times faster than sound, implying he can react to that at least.
While their movement speeds Are fairly comparable, Coppola Dracula’s reactions are more impressive. If they were to enter into Melee, the Novel Version would appear to be sluggish by his perception.
Abilities:
This Dracula has the same shapeshifting abilities as the Novel version (bat, wolf, fog) but with extra features like being able to stretch his body elastically, turn into several different monster forms, and even turn himself into a literal swarm of rats, where if one survives, so will he. This Dracula is an incredibly skilled warrior, stated to be able to take on armies at once, before becoming a vampire at all. He has a Great deal of the abilities that Dracula had in the novel, including hypnosis, weather manipulation, telekinesis, intangibility, adhesion, teleportation, and power over animals. He’s also got a few of his own powers, including memory manipulation and mind reading, levitation, and the power to turn invisible. He’s got animalistic super senses and X-Ray Vision, control over Darkness, Fire and Blood, and an aura of passive Death Hax that kills those around him.
I have to admit, considering that this Dracula only had one movie, while the last two had more than five each, his power variety is insane! Coppola Dracula easily has an arsenal of abilities that rival his novel counterpart, and it would be to some fun interactions between the exclusive powers they have. Things like the novel version's size manipulation against this version's ability to turn into a rat swarm, or electrokinesis versus umbrakinesis.
Weaknesses:
This Dracula has essentially the exact same weaknesses as the Novel version, meaning while it weakens him, Dracula cannot die due to sunlight alone, able to walk through it with little trouble. Garlic and Holy objects still work fine, but he actually does have less weaknesses than the novel version, due to the movie not establishing the Rose or Water weaknesses.
Battle:
Now THIS is a major challenge, these two are very close in almost every way, to the point that all of their shared powers essentially cancel out. Coppola Drac has Umbrakinetic attacks, but with the light that Novel Dracula can generate with lightning, it's unlikely this would be able to do much to help, similarly his passive Death Hax doesn’t matter because Novel Dracula is among the Undead. Novel Dracula’s could try to sneak up on him with his size manipulation, but Coppola Drac actually has several counters to that, including super senses, mind reading and turning into a swarm of rats, NTM with Coppola Drac’s reaction time, even his lightning would be hard to score a hit with. The two are close but Ultimately I believe that the Coppola Dracula would take this more often than not. The Coppola Dracula has a slight advantage in his stats, and having some powerful additional abilities like memory wiping, could give him a considerable statistical edge. Plus, since he has Less weaknesses than the Novel counterpart, he has more on the table to exploit.
