I love Coppolla's Dracula. The only other one I've seen is the old Bela Lugosi B&W one, and while they are very different types of movies, I'd put then about equal in terms of how much I liked them.
You should definitely check out the first Hammer film version, THE HORROR OF DRACULA, as well as the Jourdan version from the eighties. I haven't seen the Palance version in ages, but, as I recall, he made a nicely ferocious Count. That was also, I believe, the first DRACULA movie to explicitly link the fictional Dracula to the historical Vlad the Impaler. It also introduced the whole business of Dracula searching for the reincarnation of his dead wife--decades before the Coppola version. And did I mention that the screenplay was written by Richard Matheson?
John Carpenter has only made one vampire movie (titled VAMPIRES) and it has nothing to do with Dracula. I like it a lot, although I seem to be in the minority.
^Though there was a sequel (or 2?) to Vampires, John Carpenter not being involved. The original Carpenter movie is based on the book by John Steakley and is much, much better than the movie.
To be honest, as many bad Vampire movies as I've sat through, Carpenters was one of the only ones I watched a short while and just gave up on, terrible.
That's right, there was a straight to video sequel to VAMPIRES (possibly 2). It's starred Jon Bon Jovi!
Fevre Dream is a great book, definitely worth reading. Somebody really needs to make it into an epic movie someday. (And, yes, Wes Craven produced, but did not direct, the Dracula 2000 flicks.)
As I recalll, it's a novella or novelette. I read it years ago in a collection titled THE SKIN TRADE, although I wouldn't be surprised if it's been reprinted in other anthologies as well.
found it on my nook it's in a collection called "dreamsongs: volume 2" all off topic it had a story called "the hedge knight" <(is that games of throne related?).
The Hedge Knight is one of the Dunk and Egg novellas, which are Game of Thrones related (but set about 70 years prior to the series, IIRC.)
I'm new to the series as well (didn't read it until after the TV show premiered), and I haven't read them (but I've seen other people talking about them online, which is how I found out what they were.) They're three novellas covering the adventures of Aegon Targaryen and Ser Duncan, a member of the Kingsguard. Spoiler: AGOT (book one) spoiler Aegon is the brother of Maester Aemon and a (future, at the time the stories are set) king. The first time I saw these novellas discussed, I got them confused. Wikipedia has more information, but it's full of spoilers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Dunk_and_Egg