The transmedial triangulation of Dracula: how cinema turned the Gothic bloodsucker into a Gothicized serial killer

The main story of Bram Stoker's Dracula is well-known: an aristocrat who resides in the heart of an archaic world derives sustenance from consuming the blood of others. Since the novel's 1897 publication, its narrative has been reconceptualized through rewritings, imitations, adaptations, and transmediations, from early cinema to contemporary reinterpretations. Dracula has shaped the vampire trope and its Gothic formula, spawning Dracula studies with economic, political, and postcolonial readings, including interpretations of "reverse colonialization." Yet less examined are perspectives from Transylvania and the effects of this vampire novel on a peripheral literature and cultures adopting it via translation or imitation. The article proposes that the emergence of the vampire novel in Romania exemplifies a type of transmediation termed "transmedial triangulation": a literary work appears in a new context as a direct influence or reproduction of another work, but its form is significantly altered by an intervening medium—cinema—profoundly influencing the trope's reception in Romania. Though Romania is widely considered the cradle of the vampire myth, research shows that the Gothic iteration of the undead aristocratic vampire has little representation in Romanian culture; the term and its meaning were influenced by French and German models and by the spread of cinemas in the 1930s, which mediated vampire discourse. Romania's historical position as a literary periphery invites reconsideration of Franco Moretti's model, where "foreign forms" are adapted with "local materials." Contrary to simply overlaying Western Gothic plots with local characters, Romanian tradition turned to cinema for creative stimulus, appropriating narratives already influenced by motion pictures. Building on Andrei Terian's "cultural triangulation"—where a hidden third mediates intercultural processes—the study posits cinema as the intermediary, shaping the connection between Dracula and G.M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu's 1938 Vampirul. The article explores textual and circumstantial evidence that Vampirul, while inspired by Dracula, was reshaped through transmedial triangulation involving 1930s films, and also by real-life crime cases (e.g., Peter Kürten, the "Vampire of Düsseldorf"). The study argues that understanding motif evolution requires moving beyond purely literary lenses to consider transmedial triangulations.

The paper surveys extensive Dracula scholarship highlighting economic, political, and postcolonial interpretations, including reverse colonialization and the positioning of Stoker within Irish literature. It engages with world-systems and distant reading approaches (Jameson; Moretti), especially the model of "foreign plots" adapted by peripheries with "local characters" (e.g., Mysteries of Paris and its Romanian adaptation). It critiques the limitations of binary cultural exchanges and adopts Terian's "cultural triangulation" to account for a hidden third mediating agent. The authors frame cinema as this intermediary, noting how early and classical horror films (Nosferatu, Dracula, Vampyr, Dracula's Daughter, Mark of the Vampire) reshaped the vampire figure. They also situate Romanian cultural history: the late introduction of the term "vampire" (1839), its initial metaphorical uses (femme fatale, capitalist exploitation), and the 1930s press and theatrical circuits that popularized cinematic vampirism and serial-killer inflections (e.g., the "Vampire of Düsseldorf"). The review further references Gothic criminology and criminological theories (Lombroso, Ross) and scholarship on the convergence of serial killer and vampire characterizations (Picart and Greek), contextualizing the shift from Gothic bloodsucker to gothicized serial killer.

The study employs close reading and comparative textual analysis of G.M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu's Vampirul alongside Bram Stoker's Dracula and selected 1930s films (notably Fritz Lang's M and Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire). It integrates intertextual and transmedial analysis to trace motif transmission and transformation from literature to cinema and back to literature. The authors analyze narrative structures, character typologies, motifs (e.g., journeys, superstitions, vampiric markers), and paratextual/circumstantial evidence (e.g., film marketing titles in Romania, period press coverage, and Bilciurescu's role as a film critic). The approach also draws on theoretical frameworks (Moretti's core-periphery model; Terian's cultural triangulation; Gothic criminology), and historical context (interwar Romanian sociopolitics, reception of serial-killer cases) to support claims of transmedial triangulation and the reconfiguration of the vampire trope.

• Vampirul (1938), the first Romanian vampire novel, reframes the vampire as a human priest-serial killer who exploits communal superstition, reflecting a shift from Stoker's undead aristocrat to a gothicized crime-fiction antagonist.
• Transmedial triangulation is demonstrated: Dracula's "foreign plot" is first mediated by cinema and then reinterpreted locally. Two films are pivotal: Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire (1935) and Fritz Lang's M (1931). Evidence includes the Romanian marketing title Vampirul din Praga for Mark of the Vampire and onomastic proximity between Vampirul's Almaș Becker and M's Hans Beckert, plus Bilciurescu's documented engagement with cinema (film criticism; mention of London After Midnight).
• Romanian 1930s media popularized "vampire" as a label for serial killers (e.g., the "Vampire of Düsseldorf"), aligning public discourse with cinematic modernizations of the trope where vampirism functions as masquerade.
• The novel preserves multiple structural and motif echoes of Dracula (e.g., outsider's journey into Carpathian region; coach travel under superstition; black-clad community pillar as antagonist; bat/bird at the window; fainting/hypnosis; use of garlic), yet inverts key supernatural tenets: the vampire is mortal and uses deception and occult performance for social control and personal motives.
• Class dynamics are foregrounded: peasants invoke the supernatural; workers suspect capitalist plots; intelligentsia pursue rational explanations, mapping anxieties over modernization and industrialization. The priest-vampire embodies reactionary forces resisting capitalist secularization and sustaining a feudal order.
• Gothic criminology illuminates the convergence between mythic vampire and serial-killer profiles (compulsion, patterned killings) and explains why a respected community figure (priest) evaded suspicion, reflecting criminological typologies of the era.
• The study refines Moretti's model by showing that in semi-peripheral contexts, cinema can act as the "hidden third," reshaping how foreign plots are locally rearticulated.

The findings demonstrate that Vampirul's vampire-priest is a cinematic-inflected reinterpretation of Dracula rather than a direct replication of Stoker's undead aristocrat. This addresses the research question by evidencing a mediating channel—1930s cinema and contemporaneous crime sensationalism—that transformed the trope prior to its local literary consolidation. The triangulation model clarifies how semi-peripheral literary systems can absorb foreign plots via another medium, leading to hybrid genres (Gothic crime fiction) and localized monsters that reflect specific sociopolitical anxieties (industrialization, class tensions, reactionary clerical power). The implications extend to models of literary circulation: influence is not strictly binary (center-periphery) but can be routed through media ecosystems that filter, parody, and modernize motifs (e.g., masquerade vampirism in Mark of the Vampire, serial-killer framing in M). This nuanced pathway explains Vampirul's blend of Gothic atmosphere with procedural rationalism and criminological discourse, and it underscores cinema's role as a powerful vector in shaping literary evolution during the interwar period.

Vampirul received little contemporary attention and later criticism has been mixed, yet it remains the first Romanian novel to explicitly feature a vampire antagonist and to recast Dracula's foreign plot through a cinematic lens. Rather than proposing a local Gothic formula of undead aristocracy or pure masquerade, the novel fuses both dimensions into a local figure: a heretical, serial-killing priest who wields vampirism as a performative guise to maintain a feudal-like order against industrial modernization. The study shows that authors in semi-peripheral contexts may depart from the "foreign plot, local characters" binary by triangulating via a third medium—cinema—particularly the sensationalist horror and crime films of the 1930s. Recognizing transmedial triangulation enriches literary, media, and cinema studies by evidencing cinema's agency in directing literary trajectories and by clarifying how cultural myths mutate across media to align with contemporary social concerns.

• The argument relies partly on circumstantial evidence: no direct archival proof confirms that Amza or Bilciurescu read Dracula or Gorun's translation, or that they explicitly cited the "Vampire of Düsseldorf" influence.
• Digitheca Arcanum currently lacks periodical links tying the authors directly to Dracula-craze or Kürten, limiting documentary corroboration.
• The methodological approach is interpretive and comparative; absence of datasets and limited contemporaneous reviews constrain empirical triangulation.
• The reception and circulation history of Vampirul remain underdocumented, which may affect generalizability about broader Romanian literary trends.