This is an offshoot from the comical exchange between Cardinal TT and myself in the other thread.

Count Dracula is a well known movie character and he's partly derived from old Romanian folklore involving ghosts and bloodsucking creatures roaming the night and partly from Vlad Tepes also called Vlad III Dracula who was a prince of the region in the 1400s and who liked to impale his victims.

In the movie it doesn't get any better and count Dracula is basically just evil. I'm a fan of the 1979 version of the movie, for it's artistic and poetic qualities. Dracula can be seen as someone wanting to purge the land by destroying humans by way of plagues but he doesn't have a reasonable alternative so it doesn't go very far.

When I travelled Romania in 2005 and after talking to a Romanian in Norway some time later, I found that the folkloric version isn't completely evil. It does at least represent someone who wants to come alive by going through death and being finished with death, still finding his existence in this world, but at a terrible price. Why the blood ? I came up with the notion that the myth must at least in part be derived from Catholicism and in turn from the Bible.

We die with Christ and are buried then resurrect with Christ again into a new life. Not that different from count Dracula who should have died long ago but continues to exist as long as he buries himself in his coffin during the daytime, to rise again during the night.

We drink the blood of Christ and eat his flesh and have life in him through that identification. The vampire Dracula drinks the blood of his victims and sustains his existence as an undead that way.

My favorite from the 1979 movie is Lucy, portrayed by the beautiful French actress Isabelle Adjani.



She's still quite beautiful at around 60.



In the movie she sacrifices herself to rid the world of the evil vampire and in an attempt to save her husband who has been inflicted with vampirism. She represents good, somewhere in the middle between the world of the vampires and the unbelieving world of the scientists, lead by dr. van Helsing.

She isn't a vampire in the 1979 movie but she sort of radiates some of the qualities that I talked about.



A countess descending the staircase of count Dracula ? Nope. Interpreted in the most positive sense, more like a Christian woman (with a cross hanging from her neck and a Bible in hand) who attempts to overcome the devil but doesn't really succeed with it.

In the real world, those who die with Christ, are buried with Christ and resurrect with Christ and who sustain themselves on his flesh and blood are able to overcome the devil and all his devices and become an anti-thesis to the vampire of the movie.