Bram Stoker's thriller is low-key, even sporadically plodding, but saturated in atmosphere. The novel so awed the Daily Mail of Stoker's day that it judged him more gifted than Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Bronte at her finest hour in Wuthering Heights.

At the heart of Stoker's masterpiece stands the titular count: a centuries-old vampire, sorcerer and Transylvanian nobleman, who claims to be a descendant of Attila the Hun. The count, who occupies a crumbling mountainside castle, oozes style.

But, like a Bond baddie, Dracula plots world domination. Starting small, he summons newly qualified English solicitor Jonathan Harker to his lair to conclude a property transaction. Harker is uneasy. 'I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool,' he says.

Determined to lower Harker's guard, Dracula turns on the charm and poses as his saviour, rescuing him from the claws of three female vampires. But Harker feels trapped. Before he is able to escape, Dracula extracts as much intelligence as he can about England: the launch pad for his planned reign of terror.

The storyline becomes borderline ridiculous during the invasion voyage, with Dracula turning feral and eating the crew before he lands on England's northeast coast at Whitby in the guise of a wolf. After reverting to his usual form, Dracula embarks on a stalking campaign. His targets: Harker's fianc?e, Mina, and her confidante, Lucy. Stealthily, the count drains Lucy's blood.

Lucy falls sick, doomed to die and becomes a vampire. Shielded by a phalanx of gypsy bodyguards, Dracula appears unstoppable, but his dream is set to sour. Harker and another professional, Dr Van Helsing, neutralise Lucy then converge on Transylvania for the showdown. The suspense mounts before good prevails in a bloody fashion that foreshadows the assassination of Rasputin. Dracula dies.

Still, preserved by popular culture, the count's spirit lives on in a perpetual twilight. Resistance to his infectious charisma may be futile.