10 Sharpest Intersecting Films Between Vlad The Impaler And Dracula

7. Dark Prince: The Legend Of Dracula (2000)

The success of Coppola's conflation of Dracula and Vlad didn't so much open the floodgates as instigate a steady drip-drip-drip of new blood into the concept. A TV movie that aired on Halloween 2000 and saw VHS/DVD release around the world, DARK PRINCE compensated for its modest budget by a certain authentic feel (even though aspects of the story were fictionalised), enhanced by rural location shooting just outside Bucharest, the capital of modern Romania. Once again, Prince Vlad III is a heroic figure, though the film doesn't shy away from his dark side; played by Rudolf Martin, who'd been a longhaired Count Dracula in cult TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the Voivode is a warlord throughout and manages to avoid undead cliches (at least until the final scene). Characters are renamed or conflated - Vlad's wife, now called Lidia, commits suicide not at the prospect of defilement by the Turks, but in horror at the fate her husband consigns his enemies to; the Hungarian historical figures John Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus - Vlad's sometime allies against the Turks, though 'Corvinus the Crow' also held him prisoner in Budapest - are moulded into one, King Janos (played by Who vocalist Roger Daltrey). Though it's not an out-and-out gorefest, DARK PRINCE doesn't skimp on the brutality of Vlad's story: burial alive, torture and impalement make up the grim dramatic climaxes. Ultimately, Vlad's 1476 death on the battlefield is depicted as taking place at the hands of his own traitorous brother, Radu. There's no historical evidence for this, although it's known that Radu was won over by the Turks (both culturally and, it's reputed, sexually) in a manner that the iron-willed Vlad would never allow himself to be. And at the very end, this same immutable will won't allow Vlad to rest in his grave - rising from it in an undead form which, it's safe to assume by now, is probably a vampire€