I also wasn't thrilled with the '79 miniseries changing the vampire from an articulate Dracula/Barnabas Collins character to a Nosferatu hissing monstrosity. I could even picture James Mason playing him rather than his henchman. But that version had some authentically creepy scenes, such as the vampire child scratching at the window of his friend, and the sheet-covered rising female vampire in the morgue. Believe it or not, one of the major things that impressed me was how they used make-up to age James-at-15 to several years beyond his real age in the epilogue.
Gerard