Crimson † Chess (Vlad Dracula)

7 Things About Dracula People Keep Getting Wrong

7 Things About Dracula People Keep Getting Wrong

By Dragonborn_CT November 5, 2013 54 Comments

You can't go five seconds whenever Frankenstein is brought up to conversation without people complaining how Frankenstein monster is always named after its creator. Indeed, this isn't too far from the truth, but its ironic when you think Dracula - another classic monster from literature that had a much greater influence in popular culture than Frankenstein - gets a lot of things misunderstood by the general public and no one corrects them. It makes you wonder if the people who claimed reading Frankenstein has also read the original Dracula novel as well, because when you get down to it, the Dracula mythos get a lot of things wrong from its source material. This list below doesn't begin to cover everything, but its the major things people keep mistaking over...

7. Dracula Could Walk Under Sunlight

Its rule of thumb in vampire fiction that they burn into direct contact with the sun. Its funny when you realize that the work that popularized the genre in the first place never used this trope. In the novels, Dracula suffered no actual damage and could walk during daytime. However, it was noted he was much more vulnerable under the sun and could not use his powers either, so he preferred nighttime. Even further, the typical vampire legends and the books that preceded Dracula (like Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla) were never said to be hurt by sunlight either.

The death by sunlight was first used in Friederich W. Murnau's Nosferatu, which was supposedly a adaptation of the book, Stoker's widow, who owned the copyright, refused permission. So Murnau and his team said "fuck it" changed the characters' name, simplified the plot, and tried to pass Nosferatu off as an original story. At the end, instead of having the vampire hunters slaying him like in the novel, Murnau couldn't find a proper way to kill Dracula (or Orlok as he is called in the movie), so he pulled one out of his ass by having the heroine tricking the vampire into drinking her blood, distracting him long enough for the sun to rise and destroy him.

6. Dracula's Crazy Henchman was Useless

In some vampire stories, they keep a human thrall to guard them while their masters sleep during daylight and do their bidding with the promise of being granted eternal life. This was based on Reinfield, a insane individual under Dracula's control that was seemingly convinced that eating live bugs, birds and spiders can extend his lifeforce. More often than not, he is depicted as a state agent that was sent to Transylvania before the story' protagonist Jonathan Harker and returned batsh*t insane and completely devoted to his master.

While the madness part is still true, most of these accounts are incorrect. Reinfield was a lunatic asylum inmate that already suffered a compulsion to consume live animals and while was convinced to worship Dracula, he spent all his time locked up in his cell doing absolutely nothing. The bug-eating henchman was based on his incarnation in the Bela Lugosi's movie which in is the blueprint which every Dracula movie is based on. He was not even slavishly loyal in the novel either; once the heroine treats him with kindness and concern, he warns her that the Count is coming for her and when he confronts Reinfield over his betrayal, he murders the madman in his cell (in retrospective, it was very common for Reinfield or the human thrall to be murdered by Dracula's own hands in many adaptations for failing him).

5. Van Helsing Was No Action Hero

The first things that sprout to mind when you hear the words Van Helsing is "Hugh Jackman" or "old badass". It is very common to depict the German Professor Abraham Van Helsing as a experienced, highly trained kickass vampire hunter that serves as Dracula's arch-nemesis and has a history with him and score to settle for reason or another.