at Crackle
The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Dracula can be found here.
Dracula is based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel of the same name. The novel was adapted for this movie by American screenwriter James V. Hart. Stoker's novel has provided the basis for numerous movies about Dracula, including (but not limited to) Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), Dracula (1931), Dracula (1958), Count Dracula (1977), and Dracula (1979).
Although the movie was advertised as "Bram Stoker's Dracula," it takes more than a few liberties with the book and adds a lot of ideas that are not in the book at all. Most of the back story involving Dracula's origin was invented for the script, including the idea that Mina is the reincarnation of Dracula's lost love, Elizabeta. None of the romantic scenes between Mina and Dracula appeared in the book either, such as when they meet outside the movie house and when they drink absinthe together. However, it does restore certain elements of the novel that are usually left out of Dracula films, such as the idea that the Count can move about in daylight and the chase along the Borgo Pass at the end of the novel. One of the biggest differences between the original novel and this movie is that the movie equates the vampire Dracula with the Wallachian voivode, Vlad Tepes [1431-1476], a tie which is tenuous at best in that Stoker's own writing notes show that the only thing Stoker knew about Tepes "the Impaler" was his name "Dracula" (meaning "son of the dragon"), which Stoker liked enough to use for his fictional character. Until Stoker decided on using the name "Dracula," he originally intended his vampire to be named "Count Wampyr".
As all myths of this nature are confabulations of ideas that accumulate with successive tellings and interpretations, there is of course no "true" version. Dracula crosses the water in several films while in his coffin and flies over water in other films, so at least in the movie, Dracula has no problem with this. The original legend was that witches could not cross water; some tales subsequently extended it to apply to vampires as well.
The idea of vampires being destroyed by sunlight is something that was invented by motion pictures, specifically Nosferatu (1922). It is not part of vampire folklore at all, and Bram Stoker's novel Dracula actually features at least one scene where the Count is seen in daylight hours. Original vampire lore said that vampires only became powerful after sundown; during the day, they would appear as normal people, when at night they would gain the supernatural abilities that were attributed to them. They were required to return to their graves or coffins filled with earth from their burial place, but this did not mean that they couldn't move about during the daylight hours if they had a reason for doing so. This film stays true to the original novel as far as that detail is concerned.
The movie version says that Dracula, while human, fought the Turkish invaders, not simply as a prince of Wallachia, but rather as more of a true Christian knight. He succeeds, but the exaggerated rumor of his death reaches his beloved Elisabeta, who throws herself to her death from the castle walls. As a suicide, she cannot be buried on consecrated ground, and an outraged Vlad renounces God and is somehow transmorphs into a vampire as a result of his blasphemy. This explanation, however, was added by Francis Ford Coppola and is NOT part of Stoker's legend. In the novel, Stoker never explicitly explains how Dracula became a vampire. However, he hints at Dracula's bloodthirsty life and also refers briefly to Dracula studying black magic at the Scholomance. Various versions of vampire folklore hold that people who are violent and bloodthirsty in life, or witches and wizards, become vampires after death.
r73731
