Rage (8 page)

Although there were significant and often bizarre regional differences—Albanian vampires were said to have a preference for high-heeled shoes, while a Bulgarian one could be identified by his single nostril—the armature of the story was surprisingly consistent throughout much of the region. Vampires were dead humans who rose at night to drink the blood of living humans. Blood gave them strength and warded off a permanent grave. They feared and hated sunlight, and they could only be killed by esoteric means, including a stake to the heart or decapitation.

Stoker became intrigued, as he saw the potential for both horror and sexuality in the blood-sucking undead. He also wanted to play on the rising current of fear of foreigners that was then plaguing much of the British Empire. He knew he needed a compelling, charismatic nobleman as the lead character. An avid student of European history, Stoker settled on a combination of two notorious men, Gilles de Rais and Vlad Tepes.

De Rais was a fifteenth century French nobleman who used his position, good looks and abundant charm to get away with murder. He did get away with it for years, until he was implicated in the disappearance of a local priest who he’d been seen arguing with. Investigators discovered in his castle the remains of between 80 and 200 children, mostly boys, who de Rais had tortured, raped and murdered (often not in that order). His two henchmen told the complete story of how de Rais sent them to recruit the youngsters, ranging in age anywhere from 6 to 18, for him to have his deadly way with. The trio were hanged in 1440 and de Rais has since become identified as the first modern serial killer.

Tepes, on the other hand, was (and still is) to many people something of a hero. Although his father, Vlad II, was King of Wallachia (approximately the southern half of modern-day Romania), Vlad was born in Transylvania after his father was exiled by powerful Wallachian nobles loyal to the mighty Ottoman Empire. The second of three sons, Vlad III was later given by his father to the Turkish sultan as part of deal to stave off an Ottoman invasion.

Vlad hated his life as a captive and was frequently beaten for his insolence and refusal to convert to Islam. He secretly vowed to make the Turks pay.

In 1447, Vlad II was discovered in Transylvania and assassinated by Wallachian knights. Fearing rebellion, the Turks invaded and placed Vlad III on the throne as a puppet ruler. It made sense at the time: he was the legitimate claimant to the throne after his older brother Mircea was blinded by iron stakes and buried alive by political rivals; he had lived for so long under the boot of Ottoman oppression, they believed, that he would be too timid to do anything but what they told him.

It might have worked if Wallachia hadn’t been invaded later that year by John Hunyadi—the man who killed Vlad II—forcing Vlad III to flee to Hungary. Eventually, the Hungarians convinced Hunyadi that Vlad III was a valuable ally, so he was pardoned and brought back to Wallachia as a political advisor. And when Hunyadi died of plague in 1456, Vlad III succeeded him as king.

Vlad quickly decided that his primary purpose as king was to protect himself. He eliminated a number of his rivals by execution and greatly reduced the economic and political power of the unpopular and often cruel noblemen, known as
boyars
. This—along with his natural charisma, frequent appearances at public events and reputation for fairness—made him phenomenally popular among his people.

Vlad is said to have won many loyal Wallachian admirers by his reaction to a Turkish emissary who refused to take off his hat before an infidel. According to the story, he had his men nail the Turk’s hat to his head, which many Wallachians found hilarious at the time.

Vlad III was relentless in hunting down political rivals—particularly members of the Danesti clan—and killing anyone of any political stripe who could possibly pose a threat to his reign. It was at this time that he became known as Vlad the Impaler, because his preferred method of execution was to place the victim on top of a long metal rod so that the point of the rod entered the victim’s anus and he died slowly as the weight of the body pushed it down the rod.

Deciding it was time to get back at the much-hated but all-powerful Ottoman Empire, he stopped paying them tribute and signed a truce with the Turks’ bitter rivals, the Hungarians. When a Turkish mission to assassinate him failed, Vlad III invaded their territory in what’s now Serbia and killed 20,000 mostly innocent people, many of whom received his signature impaling.

Enraged, Sultan Mehmed II of Turkey sent in an invasion force five times the size of Vlad’s 20,000-man army and chased him out of Wallachia, installing Vlad’s hated younger brother, Radu the Handsome, on the throne. Soon, Vlad was captured in Transylvania and imprisoned by the Hungarians.

The Hungarians took it easy on him—particularly after he converted to Catholicism—and eventually freed him. He lived with his wife and son in Budapest, plotting his revenge. At least one (largely pro-Vlad) telling of the story maintains that he simply could not give up his favorite hobby and frequently captured birds and animals to torture and mutilate.

In 1475, he gathered a number of Hungarian, Transylvanian and Wallachian allies and marched on his old capital. Radu had died two years earlier and the Turks had installed a man named Besarab as king. On hearing of Vlad’s approach, Besarab fled, and Vlad was crowned without a fight. Convinced that their job was done, his allies left him with just a token guard of loyal Wallachians.

It was a bad idea. The Wallachian boyars, still angry with Vlad, revolted, captured him and delivered him to the Turks. There are many different accounts of the circumstances leading up to Vlad’s death (all cruel), but historical documents of the event agree that he was finally beheaded, his head was preserved in honey and delivered to the Turkish sultan, who placed it on a stake in his palace as proof that Vlad was actually dead.

One of the key indications that Stoker based his character on Vlad is the novel’s title itself. Vlad II’s bloodthirsty reputation earned him the title “Dracul”—contemporary Romanian for “devil” or “dragon”—and he bore the title proudly, styling himself as Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Devil) during his reign. When Vlad III burst onto the scene with even more bloodlust, he became known by the diminutive form—as Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Little Devil.

So entrenched was the idea that Vlad was the basis of Dracula that two Romanian sites later became tourist attractions billed as “Dracula’s Castle.” Poenari Castle actually was inhabited by Vlad III for a few years because it was at the top of a treacherous canyon and almost impervious to attack. But that same remoteness led Vlad and other rulers to abandon it, and it fell into ruin at least three times. Most of the walls and some towers still stand, but Poenari Castle is now really little more than a weedy pile of old bricks that tourists have to climb up 1,859 nearly vertical stairs to see.

Bran Castle, on the other hand, is easy to get to and looks very much like a storybook castle. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors—but it’s not Dracula’s castle. Although the locals will tell you Vlad lived there, there’s no historical evidence that he did. He was held prisoner in its dungeon for two days when the Ottomans held sway in the region, so he did actually stay there. And you can actually buy “Dracula’s” castle if you really want it. The Romanian government, under pressure from the rest of the European Union to right the wrongs of its Communist predecessors, gave Bran Castle back to its rightful owner in 2006. Dominic von Habsburg—a retired furniture designer from suburban North Salem, New York, who is usually too humble to point out he’s also Archduke Dominic—has put the property up for sale. The asking price is about $82 million, but may go higher because he has told his lawyers he will only sell to those “who will treat the property and its history with appropriate respect.”

Although a number of popular novels featuring vampires had already appeared by that time, none had the critical impact of
Dracula
. Originally published in 1897,
Dracula
tells the story of an English lawyer, John Harker, who is sent to Transylvania to handle a real estate transaction his bosses are undertaking with a count who lives there. On his arrival, Harker is immediately impressed with Count Dracula’s wealth, charm and refinement. But when Dracula pays a little too much attention to a picture of his fiancée, Mina, Harker begins to wonder about the intentions of his host. Before long, he realizes he’s a prisoner in Dracula’s castle and disobeys his orders not to go out of his room at night. When he first emerges to explore the castle, Harker is set upon by three beautiful women. At first he’s pretty happy, until he realizes they want to kill him. Dracula saves him at the last minute and sends him on his way back to London.

After he returns, a Russian ship carrying nothing but coffin-sized boxes of sand from Transylvania runs aground in England. The crew is missing and the captain’s log recounts a harrowing tale of crew member after crew member disappearing. After the ship crashes, witnesses report seeing a large animal, perhaps a wolf, jump off and dash away into the woods.

Immediately afterwards, Dracula appears in England and reenters Harker’s life. The Transylvanian count starts paying an undue amount of attention to Mina and her attractive friend Lucy. Before long, Lucy falls seriously ill. One of her wealthy suitors calls in a specialist, professor Abraham Van Helsing from Amsterdam, to help her out. Van Helsing quickly determines that Lucy has been bitten by a vampire, but refuses to tell anyone about it for fear he won’t be believed. Lucy dies. When Van Helsing and her trio of suitors visit her grave to prove his hypothesis, she emerges, attacks them and they kill her (again) by beheading her.

Dracula finds out about this and bites Mina. He then flees to Transylvania, followed by Van Helsing and others who manage to kill Dracula by slashing his throat and stabbing him in the heart. His death frees Mina from his power and she and John live happily ever after.

Despite rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic,
Dracula
was only a middling commercial success. It was very popular with literary and academic types, but failed to catch on with a larger audience.

Realizing that Stoker’s slow pacing and dense prose were
Dracula
’s inhibiting factors, an enterprising German filmmaker, Freidrich Wilhelm Murnau, decided to adapt the story for the screen in 1921. He had no trouble finding investors once he decided on a leading man. Max Schreck was a talented veteran stage actor whom Murnau described as “strikingly ugly”—and it didn’t hurt that his family name coincidentally happened to be the German word for “terror.”

Careful not to infringe on copyright, Murnau changed the name of the main character from Count Dracula to Graf (the German equivalent of count) Orlok and the title from Dracula to
Nosferatu
. Actually, the entire title was
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens
(Nosferatu, Symphony of Horror). Murnau never explained the origin of the name, but
nosophoros
is Greek for “plague carrier” (Orlok does spread the plague in the movie) and
nesuferitul
is Romanian for “the insufferable one.”

His precautions didn’t work. In 1922, Florence Stoker, Bram’s widow, received an anonymous package from Berlin. In it was a poster for
Nosferatu
that featured a line that read: “Freely adapted from Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
.” As diligent as Murnau was throughout the production, his promoters let him down after the film was made.

Florence set her lawyers upon Prana-Film GmbH, the company that produced
Nosferatu,
and obtained a cease-and-desist order. All prints of the film were ordered delivered to Florence to be destroyed, and Prana-Film, crippled by damage payments, went bankrupt before it could produce another film. Murnau, however, went on to great success, including a stint in Hollywood. His film
Wings
, about World War I fighter pilots, won the first-ever Oscar for best picture.

But the European legal authorities were not completely effective in suppressing the film. Nobody knows how they got there, but prints of
Nosferatu
had emerged in both New York and Detroit by 1929 and drew large audiences at unauthorized exhibitions. It still plays regularly (the copyright has lapsed), mostly to audiences of film students and hardcore vampire fans.

If you watch it now (plenty of people do; it’s regarded as a landmark film),
Nosferatu
is quaint at best and hilarious at worst. But at the time, it was considered absolutely horrifying. There are many recorded reports of its viewers passing out in terror. The Swedish government actually outlawed it on the grounds of “excessive horror,” and did not lift the ban until 1972.

Murnau has a reputation as an expressionist genius, but he seems to have missed the point of
Dracula
when he made
Nosferatu
. The movie is horrifying, sure, but the vampire is a terrifying creature with no redeeming qualities. He’s a monster. Unlike the Dracula of the book, Orlok has no charm, no
savoir faire
. He’s about as sexy as Leatherface from
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
.

Movie audiences didn’t see a deeper, more effective—truly gothic in the Walpolian sense—representation of Dracula on screen until 1931.

Harry Deane moved to London from Northern Ireland and supported himself by writing, acting in and producing small-scale stage plays. Aware of what had happened with
Nosferatu
, Deane sought Florence Stoker’s permission to make a play based on
Dracula
in exchange for a cut of the profits. Deane had intended to play the count himself—he had already produced and played the part of the monster in
Frankenstein
—but decided that Van Helsing was a better role, leaving an actor named Richard Huntley to play the vampire.

His version of
Dracula
opened in 1924 in Derby and was a huge and immediate success, the like of which Deane had never seen before. It played London nonstop for three years and spawned dozens of touring companies that took it to audiences all over Britain and Ireland, raking in millions.