No. The Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi movies, and most of the others, have little to do with the original book, but “reading between the lines” is what every Hollywood @$$-hat uses as the excuse for adding material that was never intended, hinted at, or even remotely suggested, by its original source material; something the writer and Coppola both said to justify their “changes”, and “additions.” The only vampire in the book seen in the daytime was Dracula himself (and only once), when Harker is released from his stay in the hospital/sanitarium; all the other vampires are only seen at night, all of Dracula’s unseen attacks occur at night. Hardly a tired concept that vampires can only come out at night for a book written in the 1800s. Everything that I mentioned in my previous post isn’t even hinted at in the book, so where are you getting that I’m being too literal? As someone else mentioned, you should take a look at the BBC Louis Jordan version (that is almost a literal adaption of the book, despite it’s low budget). Coppola’s movie is tons of extrapolation added by the filmmakers, and not intended, suggested, implied, or otherwise by Stoker. That’s not taking things too literally, that’s reality. Very few books get translated faithfully word for word to screen, but adding elements, relationships, and just complete changes overall to the tone and intent of the original material, then having the audacity to slap “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to the title is disingenuous. I’m finding it hard to believe you’ve read the book several times, just because you can recall that Quincy (a character nowhere near as significant as Dr. Seward), isn’t in all the other inaccurate film versions (most don’t have Dr. Seward either). I call foul; you should probably become a journalist where your skewed view of facts will fit in perfectly. I’d love to argue this further but it’s irrelevant in the long run. You can like the movie all you want, that’s cool. Just please don’t make factual declarations for something that isn’t — not even remotely — factual; there may be folks out there who haven’t read the book, who may think they are about to read some goofy Twilight-like love story vampire book based on that movie, instead of the very casually paced horror masterpiece that is Dracula.
