Dracula: 10 References And Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

Zoe Helsing's hospital room is just one small way in which the new Dracula references Hammer Films. In fact, the entire series with its lurid design, hammy but gory style and suave, sexy Count, owes more to Hammer than any other Dracula.

That should come as no surprise to long term followers of Gatiss who is an avowed Hammer aficionado and whose work from The League Of Gentlemen onwards is packed with references to and reworkings of the material of the cult British B-movie makers.

Here there are moments in which Bang's Dracula is shot and framed almost identically to moments of Lee in the Hammer films, particularly when we see him looming, red-eyed and bearing his sharp fangs, simultaneously sinister and seductive.

The big Hammer moment, though, comes in the finale of the current series which directly replays the finale of Hammer's first and best Dracula, the 1958 film sometimes called Horror Of Dracula.

In the climactic moments of that film, Peter Cushing's Van Helsing notices the sun rising behind the curtains of Dracula's castle. In a moment of surprising agility, he jumps onto the long dining table, dashes across it and throws himself at the towering curtains, tearing them from the wall and exposing Drac to the sunlight which kills him.

Those exact actions play out courtesy of Dolly Wells's Zoe in the final scenes of this Dracula, with the only difference being the twist that the centuries old bloodsucker doesn't die from sunlight. He just thinks that he will. It's the most obviously direct recreation of a scene in a previous Dracula film and shows where this series's creators' affections lie.

Did you spot all these references? And are there any that you saw which we missed? Let us know below.