I'll start with my three favorites:
1. Nosferatu (1922 -Dir. F.W. Murnau). The eeriest and most intense of all the Drac films. Despite the limited filming technology available in 1922, the great Murnau makes you feel as if you're right in the middle of the Great 1843 Plague of Wisborg--it's absolutely authentic throughout. He also filmed in a real (rundown) castle. Max Schreck, as Count Orloff (couldn't call him Dracula because of a copyright issue with Bram Stoker's estate) gets uglier and scarier as the film progresses. Many unforgettable scenes. The original is still the greatest!
2. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 -Dir. Francis Ford Coppola). The exact production opposite of Murnau's spare, eerie film, Coppola's version is rich, lavish, romantic, sexual; and his Count is vulnerable and lovelorn. Gary Oldman puts in a bravura performance as the Count (in at least four embodiments). Anthony Hopkins hams it up as Van Helsing, but is good at it. Keanu Reeves is terrible as Harker, Wynona Rider only a little better as Mina. But, you won't notice it because Coppola pulls out every stop, with every imaginable visual and audio trick to keep it constantly busy and interesting. If "Nosferatu" was, as Murnau called it, "A Symphony of Horrors," "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is a love story with blood--lots of it.
3. Dracula (1931 -Dir. Tod Browning). This is the film that established Bela Lugosi as the forever model of Drac--suave, exotic, compelling, but never less than pure evil. He moves easily in society and in the world of the undead, but that's part of his charm (thought the movie is anything but charming). Also introduced a fine, often seen stock company of supporting actors: Dwight Frye (brilliant here as Renfield), Edward Van Sloan, Eternal Mitteleuropa Doctor, and David Manners, Eternally Useless Leading Man.
The rest sort of fade into the woodwork for me, although "Dracula's Daughter" (1936) is a pretty good gothic love tale, and an earlier (1973) "Bram Stoker's Dracula," a cheapo made-for-TV-er, has Jack Palance--a consistently underrated actor--as the Count. He reprises his Jack Wilson hired-gun character from "Shane," this time with a cape instead of a big hat.
Your favorites?
