10 Sharpest Intersecting Films Between Vlad The Impaler And Dracula

10. In Search Of Dracula (1974)

In Search Of Dracula, by history professors Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, was perhaps the surprise publishing phenomenon of 1972. Investigating the suspected historical origins of Bram Stoker's classic 1897 gothic horror novel, Dracula, they were the first in the West to confirm Vlad Tepes ('Tsepesh') - the Wallachian warlord who was born circa 1431 and died in in battle in 1476 - as the likely inspiration. Sourcing the London-based Irish author's personal materials, they found an 1820 historical work entitled An Account Of The Principalities Of Wallachia And Moldavia, which carries the following footnote: 'Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians were€ used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous, either by courage, cruel actions or cunning.' Prince Vlad III was a fearsome fighter against the Middle Eastern Ottoman Empire and their domination of the region. He knew his enemy well. As an adolescent boy, Vlad and his younger brother Radu had been held by the Turks as 'privileged hostages' in a regional peace treaty with his father. He had grown up with the boy who became Mehmet II - the sultan whose troops now threatened to usurp his principality. Though it's not explicit, in Dracula Stoker seems to very briefly acknowledge his character's origins: "Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed!" boasts the count, and we suspect he's talking about himself rather than an ancestor. Even his archenemy, the paranormalist Prof. Van Helsing, later concedes that in his human existence Dracula was "a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman€" IN SEARCH OF DRACULA was first brought to the screen as a Swedish TV documentary; then, expanded with further material and a narration by Hammer horror movies' own Count Dracula, Christopher Lee, it was released to cinemas as a supporting feature. (In British cinemas it played with THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES, the last Hammer movie to feature Dracula - in this case in league with Chinese vampires against kung fu fighters and his nemesis Van Helsing.) It also featured the tall, dark, aristocratic Lee in dramatised scenes as Vlad himself. His vivid voiceover described his character's war against the Turks thus: "After his capture of the fortress of Guirgiu, he wrote to King Matthias of Hungary that 23,809 men had been slain and impaled. Vlad was certain of the figures, because their heads had been carefully counted - apart from 884 who had been burnt in their houses, and whose heads of course could not be connected. "During the famous 'Night of Terror' he boldly attacked the Sultan's camp. However, his bodyguard emerged and Vlad was forced to retreat. The road to Tirgoviste now lay open, but the Turks were greeted by the grisly remains of the Sultan's troops and envoys impaled by Vlad the previous year, blackened by the sun and half-eaten by birds. The Sultan was moved to tears and said, 'What can we do with a man like this?'" Attempting to answer the vexed question of whether Vlad was purely a ruthless warrior, or whether sadistic tendencies played a part of his personal life, Lee narrates over footage of himself: "Vlad had a peasant mistress who lived in a poor outlying part of Tirgoviste. He visited her often, but his interest was purely physical. The woman, on the other hand, fell in love with Dracula and grew afraid of losing him. One night she told him that she was going to have his child. Dracula became angry, and said that this would NOT be. He then cut her open from her loins to her breast and said, 'Let the world see where I have been and where my fruit lay!'" This accompanies an implicitly sadistic but non-graphic image of Lee drawing his sword to disembowel a grimacing, long-haired brunette - in a film classified at the equivalent of a PG in 1974.