It's been a while since I've read the original and I'm reading the sequel now and, quite the contrary to the reviews I've been reading, I'm really liking it. It's kind of out there and, after a while you can tell where Stoker's writing stops and the recent authors' pick up (the book is an amalgam of Stoker's own writings that were cut from the original manuscript and add-ins from Dacre Stoker, his great-grand nephew and Ian Holt, a Dracula historian, if you will) but it's still launching me through all 400-something pages of the book.
Then there's the 1991 movie. Awesome. Aside from the fact that Keanu "Ted 'Theodore' Logan" Keeves was cast as Jonathan Harker (WTF was Coppola thinking there? was there no one better to play an English solicitor? really?), it really doesn't have any flaws. I mean, Gary Oldman . . . hello? Again, it's been a while since I've read the original so I can't compare the movie to the book but I can tell you they'll both boatloads of awesome.
We have genuine horror, the vampire in all its dastardly forms and ways, and we have the tortured love angle that does not end happily. It's terrifying and engrossing and painful all at the same time. If you haven't seen it, go rent it. Now. If you haven't read it, you're not a real vampire fan until you do. So go read it. Now.
