Today, audiences will be given what could be Hollywood’s sexiest cinematic incarnation yet: Count Dracula played by Nicolas Cage. Renfield, a 21st century reimagining of the dynamic between Dracula and his lunatic familiar, is one in a very long list of movies in some way dedicated to the legendary Transylvanian vampire. The facts are that Dracula has, and will always be, an inherently sexy fictional character.
With its overtly-puritanical bent and good versus evil narrative, Bram Stoker’s classic novel presents the Eastern European figure as a debased villain against the goodness of God-fearing, Aryan Christians. So it’s not the heroic Johnathan Harker or Abraham Van Helsing who come out of the story as lasting figures of pleasure and eroticism – it’s Dracula, and, let’s be honest, which would you rather be remembered as?
For over 100 years, Dracula has been repackaged and retold countless times with its titular bloodsucker embodied with varying degrees of hotness. From the iconic portrayal by Hungarian Bela Lugosi to Gary Oldman’s shape-shifting statesman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and… that’s right, Adam Sandler in Hotel Transylvania, Hollywood knows that Dracula has got to be a sexy guy. But you’ve probably been wondering: who are the very sexiest Draculas of all time? Well, we’ve got you covered.
7. Udo Kier, Blood for Dracula (1974)
In the mid-70s, Andy Warhol produced two horror films called Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein. Shot in Italy back-to-back with largely European casts speaking English, they both star German actor Udo Kier, whose unconventional handsomeness fits well for horror roles. Blood for Dracula is uniquely bizarre, full of wild line readings, erratic performances, shocking sexual violence, incest, and near-slapstick gore. It’s also a fascinating reconfiguring of Dracula’s story, in which director and writer Paul Morrissey makes the Count a part-time vegetarian who can otherwise only survive on the blood of virgins.
Sadly, Romania has run out of virgins, and Dracula is dying of hunger, so he and his impudent manservant Anton (Arno Jürging) travel to Italy to find some pure, untouched women. Blood for Dracula turns Dracula from a sensual predator into a near-helpless baby, but a young Udo Kier is one of the more attractive offerings, even if he spends much of the film wailing like a child and puking up blood.
6. Richard Roxburgh, Van Helsing (2004)
In 2004’s Van Helsing, Dracula’s vampire-hunting nemesis is no longer a kindly old Dutchman, but a hot young hunk named Gabriel (played by Hugh Jackman), who’s forced to contend with the likes of Dr. Hyde, Frankenstein’s monster, werewolves, and of course, the man of the hour, Count Dracula. Van Helsing is a deeply tedious and unwatchable film and should have served as a warning to Universal that perhaps a shared universe of horror icons would not work. But Richard Roxburgh (star of the 2022 hit film Elvis) as Dracula is pleasing to me. Is he very good in the role? Who’s to say – but he’s got a greasy ponytail and little earrings. And while Van Helsing is a largely sexless film, Dracula does share a charged moment of ballroom dancing with Kate Beckinsale. We’ll take it!
5. Adam Sandler, Hotel Transylvania (2012)
As an “Adam Sandler is sexy” apologist, the funnyman’s voice work as Count ‘Drac’ Dracula in his Happy Madison-produced animated film series has to grant him a spot on this list. You can decide for yourself, but for a CGI character, they did make him pretty handsome. Not to be weird; but there should be a subset of creepy Tumblr stan thirsting for Sandler’s Dracula if there isn’t already (though there is of course the entire Hotel Transylvania archive on FanFiction.net). If you still don’t think Adam Sandler is hot in 2023, you’re falling behind the times.
4. Christopher Lee, Dracula Hammer Horror series (1958 – 1974)
If there’s one thing wrong with the first instalment in Hammer Film Productions’ iconic string of Dracula films, it’s that it doesn’t spend nearly enough time with the man himself. Thankfully, there are six more films to get to in this series, all starring legendary English actor Christopher Lee. Lee made his debut as the Prince of Darkness in 1958’s Dracula (renamed Horror of Dracula in the US) and if there was ever a man who embodied “tall, dark, and handsome” it’s him. The pairing with Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing, positing the two as existential adversaries, is more than a bit sexually charged. Van Helsing is just so obsessed with Dracula, after all. I’m just saying, I wouldn’t mind seeing them kiss!
3. Bela Lugosi, Dracula (1931)
What would a list of “sexiest movie Draculas” be without the king himself? Notwithstanding the fact that he’s just a good-looking guy, Bela Lugosi’s version of the character always had the added draw of being portrayed by an actor from the same region of the world as the Count himself, with a thick, natural Transylvanian accent. There’s not a hint of put-on in Lugosi’s voice when the velvety smooth intonations of “I am Dracula,” leave his lips, as he invites the oblivious Renfield (Dwight Frye) into his castle. Based on the 1924 stage play adaptation also starring Lugosi, the Hungarian actor portrays the Count with just the right amount of charm, suavity, and dangerous intrigue.
2. Gerard Butler, Dracula 2000 (2000)
Let’s go back in time two decades, and then some. Gerard Butler is playing Dracula in this modern retelling of the story – one in which Stoker’s own novel is canon. Abraham Van Helsing (Christopher Plummer) has been prolonging his life by injecting himself with blood from the leeches he leaves to suckle on Dracula’s body, whom he has imprisoned in a metal coffin under his shop in order to study and find a means to kill. In Dracula 2000, Dracula cannot die – not by silver bullets, not by stakes – so it’s up to Van Helsing and his trusty sidekick Jonny Lee Miller to figure it out, as a group of clueless hacker thieves in Matrix-aped trench coats have stolen the coffin and set Dracula loose on New Orleans.
This aggressively made-in-the-year-2000 movie features the perfect amount of nu-metal for a Dracula reboot and is shockingly horny, including a scene in which Dracula copulates with a young woman while levitating on the ceiling. Gerard Butler isn’t quite a sex symbol, but there is something titillating about Scottish-accented Dracula. He’s gotten more handsome with age, but his strange, smooth young face and wreath of curly hair make a fitting vampire who is equal parts uncanny and irresistible. Plus, there is a bonkers twist involving Dracula and Jesus Christ that makes this adaptation so ridiculous that it is deeply worth your time.
1. Gary Oldman, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
I’m not exactly in the camp that would consider Gary Oldman to be a particularly sexy actor. But Francis Ford Coppola’s reimagining of Count Dracula with Oldman in the role is easily the sexiest version of the Count and of the story itself ever put to film. While Bram Stoker’s Dracula is reconfigured here as a tragic love story between him and Mina Harker, it adheres more to the novel than pretty much any other film adaptation. Though the pairing of Winona Ryder’s Mina and Keanu Reeves’ long-maligned portrayal of her husband, Johnathan Harker, make a sexier match, it’s undeniable that The Godfather director’s interpretation of Dracula as a suave, sensuous lover yearning for his long-dead paramour – whom he believes Mina to be the reincarnation of – yields a darkly beautiful and erotic fable.