‘Dracula,’ one of the most famous novels ever written, had been produced as a movie in 1931. The movie in itself earned a lot of fame till Frankenstein eclipsed it. However, there are significant differences among the characters in the movie with the original novel.
The primary character Count Dracula remains the same. Bela Lugosi plays the role and does a great job.
Mina Murray of the novel become Mina Seward. And poor Dr. John Seward, the failed suitor of Lucy in the original novel, now becomes the father of Mina. And hey presto, Lucy still remains a friend of Mina.
Jonathan Harker, Mina’s fiance in the novel, remains the same in the movie.
Renefield of the movie is significantly different from Renefield of the novel. In the novel, Renefiled is merely another patient in Dr. Seward’s asylum. He eats and kills creepy creatures. And he beings Dracula inside the asylum of Dr. Seward accepting Dracula’s baits. However, in the movie, he is almost a servant to Dracula. He does some of Dracula’s lease papers, sends them to Transylvania, gets bitten by Draula and that gives him the power to bite and drink the blood of other people. And he eventually gets to bite a real woman before getting thrashed to death by Dracula for leading Jonathan and Van Helsing to where he was living (hiding).
Van Helsing is similar in the novel and the movie. He is still the nice caring person.
And then there is Martin, the person in charge of caring for Renefield. He provides an angle of comedy in the movie and appears in some of the more interesting scenes.