Bram Stoker

La Collectionneuse (The Collector) is a 1967 film by Eric Rohmer. It is the fourth movie (third in order of release) in his series of the Six Moral Tales. In 2001 the Guardian critic Philip Norman included it his list of 100 top movies of the 20th century. In his 2003 film The Five Obstructions, Danish director Jørgen Leth describes La Collectionneuse as his favourite work by Rohmer, and he hired one of its stars, Patrick Bauchau, to appear in The Five Obstructions. La Collectionneuse won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival. Two friends, Daniel and Adrien, are invited to vacation at a mutual friend's house by the sea in Saint-Tropez while Rodolphe is away. When they arrive they discover another friend of Rodolphe's is also staying there, a very young woman named Haydee who turns up, often very late at night, with a different lover each time they see her. The solitary vacation each of the friends had envisioned for themselves is dashed on the rocks of Haydee whom they first resist but then can't resist and it's not clear who is really in control of this game of "collecting" relationships.

The novel is mainly composed of journal entries and letters written by several narrators who are also the novel's main protagonists; Stoker supplemented the story with occasional newspaper clippings to relate events not directly witnessed by the story's characters. The tale begins with Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, journeying by train and carriage from England to Count Dracula's crumbling, remote castle (situated in the Carpathian Mountains on the border of Transylvania and Moldavia). The purpose of his mission is to provide legal support to Dracula for a real estate transaction overseen by Harker's employer, Peter Hawkins, of Exeter in England. At first seduced by Dracula's gracious manner, Harker soon discovers that he has become a prisoner in the castle. He also begins to see disquieting facets of Dracula's nocturnal life. One night while searching for a way out of the castle, and against Dracula's strict admonition not to venture outside his room at night, Harker falls under the spell of three wanton female vampires, the Brides of Dracula. He is saved at the last second by the Count, however, who ostensibly wants to keep Harker alive just long enough because his legal advice and teachings about England and London (Dracula's planned travel destination was to be among the "teeming millions") are needed by Dracula. Harker barely escapes from the castle with his life.