Vampire media without Dracula

One of the quintessential vampire novels was Dracula. The name morphed from an obscure(for the British Isles at least) title and the namesake of a Romanian hero to the namesake of the most iconic vampire of them all. He wasn't the first charismatic vampire (Lord Ruthven) and Varney the Vampire gave us one of our first sympathetic vampires. So I thought it might be interesting to ask: how might the vampire genre change and evolve if Dracula is never written? This can extend to other horror that'd be impacted by a change in the vampire genre. Also I'm aware the changes would be mostly relegated to the 20th century, but the novel came out before 1900 so it's safe to put here
 
So I thought it might be interesting to ask: how might the vampire genre change and evolve if Dracula is never written?
Step one would be to work out what elements Dracula added to the generic/stereotypical vampire and vampire story.
I'm trying to remember if there were a proto-Van Helsing out there.
 
Step one would be to work out what elements Dracula added to the generic/stereotypical vampire and vampire story.
I'm trying to remember if there were a proto-Van Helsing out there.
Dracula's biggest contribution was being the subject of influential horror movies: Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1931, with Bela Lugosi), and then during the Hammer Horror era (1950s-1970s). Those cemented Dracula as the archetypal vampire in popular consciousness, to the extent that it took until Anne Rice in the 1970s to take the genre in a different direction.

So those films aren't made. Are other vampire movies made in their place? Maybe... but Stoker's story is simply better source material than Polidori or Sheridan Le Fanu. I think Shelley's Frankenstein becomes the pre-eminent horror tale, which at least means you probably still get a Hammer Horror brand... but I think you butterfly Rice.
 
If vampire literature's successful enough, I think we'd still have a few movies made. Le Fanu's been adapted quite a few times OTL so it may still be in a no-Dracula universe. More authors could be adapted too (I'm thinking about Féval's novels The Vampire Countess (1865) and Vampire City (1875) - this one's more satirical).
I'm trying to remember if there were a proto-Van Helsing out there.
Maybe Ann Radcliffe in Vampire City?
 
If vampire literature's successful enough, I think we'd still have a few movies made. Le Fanu's been adapted quite a few times OTL so it may still be in a no-Dracula universe. More authors could be adapted too (I'm thinking about Féval's novels The Vampire Countess (1865) and Vampire City (1875) - this one's more satirical).
The problem is that Dracula's success was a market anchor for the vampire genre. Without it, adapting other authors becomes a riskier proposition, since you're not dealing with stuff you know is popular.
 
Without Dracula, I think the vampire might become more disassociated from its Slavic/Eastern European roots; if movies do get made, I see actors playing Lord Ruthven or Varney with received pronunciation accents, cementing the vampire as a posh Englishman in the Anglo-American pop culture imagination*. Even if a Carmilla movie does get made, Carmilla is not a foreigner travelling to England but a Central European in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so there wouldn't be a reason to cast an actress with 'foreign' accent compared to the rest of the cast.

I think the vampire still becomes a popular monster, as the body that resurrects and feeds on the blood of the living can be used as a powerful metaphor for all kinds of social anxieties (and it's not like there's a Great Werewolf Novel, but they're still popular). However, the Universal Horror Movies and their legions of imitators won't portray Dracula as the 'king of the monsters'. Perhaps the Mad Scientist character would take that place instead.


*EDIT: I had a thought. If as per other posters early movie vampires get butterflied away without Dracula, but an Anne Rice equivalent writes books similar to the ones ITTL that get popular and made into movies, the vampire character could end up with a French accent since Lestat and Louis are French!
 
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Without Dracula, I think the vampire might become more disassociated from its Slavic/Eastern European roots; if movies do get made, I see actors playing Lord Ruthven or Varney with received pronunciation accents, cementing the vampire as a posh Englishman in the Anglo-American pop culture imagination*. Even if a Carmilla movie does get made, Carmilla is not a foreigner travelling to England but a Central European in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so there wouldn't be a reason to cast an actress with 'foreign' accent compared to the rest of the cast.

I think the vampire still becomes a popular monster, as the body that resurrects and feeds on the blood of the living can be used as a powerful metaphor for all kinds of social anxieties (and it's not like there's a Great Werewolf Novel, but they're still popular). However, the Universal Horror Movies and their legions of imitators won't portray Dracula as the 'king of the monsters'. Perhaps the Mad Scientist character would take that place instead.


*EDIT: I had a thought. If as per other posters early movie vampires get butterflied away without Dracula, but an Anne Rice equivalent writes books similar to the ones ITTL that get popular and made into movies, the vampire character could end up with a French accent since Lestat and Louis are French!
Yet I think vampires would still be associated with Eastern Europe - that's where the legend orginated after all. Take Féval's novels, his vampires come from Hungary, Serbia etc. On another note, there's also The Black Vampire, which takes place in St Domingo and features - as it says on the tin - a Black vampire. Could be interesting to have more non-White vampires in a world where Dracula was never written.
 
I wonder if the absence of Dracula opens the door for other horror creatures, like werewolves, or if it limits the market, by making publishers (& filmmakers) think there's nothing in it. IMO, it could go either way.
 
Maybe ITTL, John Steinbeck's werewolf novel gets published.
Maybe that leads more to a Gothic Noir. Mysteries where someone tracks down a "monster" and the monster ends up blurring the traits we consider werewolf and vampires.
People often concentrate on the bloodsuckingness of vampires without realising the early ones were more revenant (i.e. smart zombies) or people possessed.
 
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