10 Sharpest Intersecting Films Between Vlad The Impaler And Dracula

3. Dracula Untold (2014)

Now this is where we know we're dealing with a major studio franchise. With rumblings about new Frankenstein, Wolf Man and Mummy movies in the pipeline, it can safely be said that DRACULA UNTOLD resembles the novel by Bram Stoker - or indeed, the classic Universal Pictures interpretation by Bela Lugosi - only slightly less than it does, say, the Narnia Chronicles of C.S. Lewis. By now the character conflation is all: Vlad is the 'real' Dracula, but he is also a supernatural figure in a fantasy universe. Welsh actor Luke Evans - already a fantasy veteran from the CLASH OF THE TITANS remake and Peter Jackson's HOBBIT trilogy - plays the Wallachian Voivode as a strictly heroic figure, whose impalement of the Turkic foe was undertaken solely as a deterrent and has become a matter of moral regret. That notwithstanding, the screenplay - by Matt Sazama and Burke Shapless - does juggle quite effectively between Vlad's genuine history and the more fanciful elements. His familiarity with the Turks - including his enemy and contemporary, Sultan Mehmet II - is attributed to time spent as a privileged hostage of the Ottoman Empire; it's acknowledged that many such captive foreigners became Janissaries - kind of an Islamic Foreign Legion fighting for the Sultan. Debutant director Gary Shore admitted that, "Anyone who's going€ expecting a horror film€ will be sorely disappointed." True enough. DRACULA UNTOLD has some well-staged action sequences, but too little of the film is darkly powerful enough to linger in the mind. As with the more anaemic school of vampire movie intended for a modern juvenile audience, it seems to want to have its blood but not drink it. Even Dracula's transformation into a vampire is another heroic act, his powers bestowed by a vampiric cave oracle in order to save his wife and son, and his beloved Wallachian people, from the world-conquering aggressors. (These being the same Wallachian people, remember, who the real Vlad's detractors claimed were tortured and killed by their prince in the same manner as he dealt with the invading Turks - though much of what we know about Vlad is from legend, rather than historically verifiable fact.) More bizarre touches in the original screenplay include the revelation that the oracular vampire was the decadent Roman emperor Caligula - who was assassinated in his twenties, rather than reaching the mature years of actor Charles Dance; Vlad is also confronted by Baba Yaga (Samantha Barks), the cannibal witch of Russian (rather than East European) folklore, in an evocative scene cut from the final print. Despite Shore's assertion that he wasn't inhabiting gothic territory, the film ends with Vlad/Dracula migrating to a post-Stoker contemporary London and meeting a lady named Mina - obviously Mina Harker from the novel, Dracula's desired victim. Evans has spoken optimistically of a DRACULA UNTOLD sequel - though it remains to be seen if Universal will run with the budget, having taken a 'mere' $215m on a $70m investment - but if it goes ahead, the open ending virtually demands more jugular-sucking and less battling Turks.

As a coda to the above, when I was watching the film at the cinema, and Vlad was acclaimed a hero at the end because "the Turks never conquered European cities", there was an indignant response - "Oi!" - from the back rows. But then there are probably a lot more Turkish guys in north London than there are in Hollywood€