Jonathan Harker is an English solicitor, or lawyer, traveling to the castle of Count Dracula
in Transylvania because the Count is buying Carfax Abbey in England.
Harker records details of the trip in his journal for his fiancée, Mina Murray.
His journey to Dracula's castle is frightening, with madly galloping horses pulling the careening
coach over steep mountain roads and evading snarling wolves.
Count Dracula is a pale, aged man dressed in black.
His enormous castle is richly furnished, dark, and empty.
Wolves howl outside.
He and Harker talk for a while, but at dawn Dracula quickly leaves.
Harker is shaving when Dracula suddenly appears behind him.
Startled, Harker cuts himself, and realizes the Count has no reflection in the mirror.
Harker grabs a crucifix and Dracula backs down, but breaks the mirror.
Harker realizes he is a prisoner in this castle.
One night Harker sees Count Dracula crawling up the outer wall of the castle.
Then Harker encounters three ghostly women, who are about to seduce him when the Count
chases them out.
Harker finds Dracula sleeping in one of many wooden boxes in the vaults below the castle
and realizes the Count is a supernatural monster.
The boxes are later filled with earth, nailed shut, and loaded onto wagons by gypsies.
The Count is leaving for England and Harker cannot stop him.
Jonathan Harker's fiancée, Mina Murray, and her dear friend Lucy Westenra exchange letters.
Lucy is engaged to Arthur Holmwood.
Dr. Seward, one of Lucy's rejected suitors, runs the lunatic asylum beside Carfax Abbey
and has a dangerous patient named Renfield.
Mina has not heard from Jonathan in a month.
Lucy has resumed her childhood habit of walking in her sleep.
Dr. Seward notes that Renfield is capturing spiders, flies, and sparrows and eating them
raw.
During a storm, the Demeter runs aground in the harbor.
Only the captain is on board and he is dead, tied to the wheel and holding a crucifix.
A huge dog leaps down from the deck and runs towards the town.
The cargo consists of fifty wooden boxes filled with earth.
Mina discovers Lucy sleepwalking up on a hill.
A tall, dark figure with white face and red eyes bends over her.
Lucy has puncture marks on her throat and grows very weak.
Dr. Seward says she suffers from a lack of blood.
Mina finally gets word that Jonathan is seriously ill in a hospital in Budapest, Hungary.
She goes to him and they are married in the hospital.
Seward's colleague, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, arrives.
He is shocked by Lucy's hideous deathly appearance and wounded throat.
Van Helsing gives her repeated blood transfusions from her fiancé and suitors and places garlic
flowers in her room.
Mina and Jonathan Harker return from Hungary.
Renfield escapes the asylum and becomes violent.
Van Helsing believes Lucy is dying and sends for Arthur Holmwood, her fiancé.
The monstrous Lucy behaves seductively towards him, but then collapses and briefly looks
like herself again.
Arthur kisses her just before she dies.
Jonathan Harker believes he has seen a younger Count Dracula in London.
Van Helsing places garlic flowers and a crucifix in Lucy's coffin and tells Seward they will
have to remove her heart and head.
They soon learn that the crucifix has been stolen from the coffin.
Days later, a newspaper reports that several small children have gone missing.
Some return with injured throats and stories of a "bloofer lady" (a beautiful lady) who
took them.
A horrified Mina reads Jonathan's journal.
Van Helsing contacts Mina to learn more about Lucy's illness and Mina shows him the journal.
Harker agrees to help defeat Count Dracula.
Van Helsing says Lucy is now a vampire.
He takes Holmwood and another former suitor, Quincey Morris, to destroy her.
They see her in vampire form dragging a half-dead child but she escapes them.
Later, when she is again in her coffin, Arthur – her fiancé – stakes her through the
heart.
She shrieks and thrashes but soon looks like her normal self again.
Van Helsing cuts off her head and she is finally at peace.
Dr. Seward realizes that Renfield's violent episodes are somehow linked to the Count.
Harker learns that the fifty large boxes of earth on board the wrecked Demeter were delivered
to Carfax Abbey – Dracula's new property.
Van Helsing reminds the others that they are men of science, while Dracula is a cursed
monster.
They take garlic, stakes, crucifixes, communion wafers, and holy water to Carfax Abbey.
But it is overrun with rats and Dracula is not there.
Harker notices that Mina is pale and weak.
She has dreamed of a frightening mist that seemed to have two red eyes.
Renfield has been badly beaten at the asylum.
He says Dracula came to his window and Renfield invited him in, but when Dracula returned
Renfield refused him and was smashed to the ground.
Fearing for Mina, Van Helsing and Seward go to the Harkers' apartments.
They find Jonathan unconscious and Mina being forced to drink Dracula's blood.
The men raise crucifixes and Dracula vanishes as a mist, but Mina is entirely under his
control now – just as Lucy was.
Van Helsing tr sylvanian earth so the vampire cannot hide in them, but only forty-nine of
the fifty boxes are there.
Hoping to use the connection between Mina and the vampire, Van Helsing hypnotizes her
at dawn.
She states that Dracula is asleep on an anchored ship.
Dracula means to escape to Transylvania on the Czarina Catherine, which has already sailed.
The men take the train across Europe to intercept the ship.
Mina goes with them so they can use her to track the Count, but he breaks the link.
The vampire hunters decide to go to Dracula's castle and wait for him there.
Approaching the castle, Mina becomes increasingly depraved just as Lucy did.
Van Helsing draws a ring around her in the dirt and places communion wafers in it.
The brides of Dracula approach but the ring and wafers stop them.
Van Helsing goes alone to the castle, where he destroys the brides.
The Count, closed up in a box, is being brought to the castle in a wagon by gypsies.
In the wild chase the box falls out and the lid comes off, revealing Count Dracula.
In the struggle, Quincey Morris is killed but so is Count Dracula.
His body turns to dust and blows away, freeing all of them to live in peace.