Original subtitles

There are more things in heaven

and earth than are dreamt of

in your philosophy.

Dracula, published in 1897,

is one of the all time great money-making novels.

It has been sold in millions of copies throughout the world.

This greatest of all horror classics

has also been a hit play in several countries

and has inspired more commercially successful films

than any other novel.

Dracula was written by the Irish author bram stoker,

best known in his own time as the business manager

of Henry Irving, one of the most famous,

theatrical personalities of the victorian age.

Stoker is supposed to have modeled Dracula's

physical appearance on Irving.

The novel tells the story of count Dracula,

who plans to gain control of the world

by turning everyone into vampires.

He leaves his ancestral home in transylvania

and goes to england,

taking with him several boxes of earth

as his daylight hours must be spent

resting on his native soil.

Transylvania, which means the land beyond the forest

is often thought to be a mythical place,

in fact, it is an ancient province of Romania

which consists of a high plateau ringed

by the rugged carpathian mountains.

Even today, it is one of the wildest

and least known parts of Europe.

The population is of rich, national origins.

Romanian, Hungarian,

slovak, German, and szekelys.

In book, count Dracula speaks of his decent

from these székelys,

who's ancestors were probably huns.

Stoker never visited transylvania

but gained most of his knowledge at the British museum

from old maps and guidebooks.

He made free use of transylvanian history,

folklore and geography to create

an atmosphere of terror.

He wrote that, "every known superstition in the world

was gathered into the horseshoe of the carpathians,

as if it was some sort of imaginary whirlpool.”

On leaving the carpathians,

count Dracula journeys to england

and proceeds immediately to carfax,

an old castle where he intends to hide

while ravaging the countryside.

Dracula must remain in his grave during the daytime

but at night, his lust for blood

becomes unquenchable, his brain power limitless,

and his physical strength irresistible.

He quickly adds to his countless list of victims.

Eventually, Dracula is found out

and forced to flee england.

He makes for his remote castle in transylvania,

certain that no one will be able to trace him there.

Stoker located Dracula's castle near bistrita

in northern transylvania.

Although he had never visited the area,

his descriptions were remarkably accurate.

He writes, "the road was cut through pine woods

that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us,

as the evening fell, great masses of greyness

produced a weird and solemn effect.

Beyond Rose the forest up to the lofty steeps

of the carpathian's themselves.

Blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks,

green and brown where grass and rock mingle.

An endless perspective of mountains

losing themselves in the distance.

Then the mountains seem to come nearer to us on each side,

we were entering the borgo pass itself.

A sinister silence seemed to settle,

but for a strange music a far.”

According to the novel, Dracula's castle

is not mentioned in any guidebook

nor did it appear on any map.

Stoker wrote, "we looked back and saw

where the clear line of Dracula's castle cut the sky,

there was something wild and uncanny about the place.

We could hear the distance howling of wolves."

At the end of the story,

count Dracula is about to reach the safety of his castle

when he is caught by the hero Jonathan harker

and the vampire expert, Dr. Van Helsing.

Just as the sun is about to set,

Dracula's head is cut off

with a kukri knife,

and a bowing knife is plunged into his heart.

Count Dracula instantly turns to dust

and vanishes forever.

In reality, peasant life in the more remote villages

of transylvania has not changed much for centuries,

and belief in vampires and other superstitions

is still strong, though such things are now rarely spoken.

Living today, in the valley of arges

below castle Dracula, is the gypsy tinker.

Should it calls that when her father

was laid out for burial in 1932,

it was discovered that rigor mortis had not set in,

the skin was still pliable

and the cheeks bore a ruddy completion.

The villagers believed, that of course he must be a vampire.

So they plunged a wooden stake through his heart

and as an added safeguard, burned his body.

Vampire belief has existed since the dawn of civilization

throughout the world, but has been most common

in eastern Europe.

Vampires are creatures of the night

who can either be men or women.

In eastern Europe they're supposed to have two souls

and are neither alive nor dead

but undead, as one's soul never dies.

Vampires cannot rest in the grave

but will spend the night searching for victims,

people, or animals whose blood they drink.

The victims either die immediately

or gradually waste away,

and some become vampires after death.

At cockcrow or when the morning bell tolls,

vampires must return to their coffins

or risk dissolving in the sunlight.

They spend their daylight hours in the grave,

their bodies undecomposed and around their mouths

and under their fingernails are traces of blood.

The universal fear of death

and the impossible desire for eternal life

are deeply rooted in vampire belief.

As is the oriental concept of reincarnation

or eternal return.

In transylvania, vampirism was originally

a folk superstition rather than a religious idea,

it probably came from Asia by caravan route

and with a nomadic magyars around the birth of Christ,

centering in the carpathian mountains

and mixing with the rich folklore of that region.

Who can become a vampire?

Criminals, witches, those born with teeth,

those under a curse,

and young children who die unchristened.

The seventh son of a seventh son is doomed.

And one must be very cautious of a man

who does not eat garlic.

Vampires can assume a variety of animal forms,

such as large dogs, snakes, or bats

and in Romania, particularly, wolves and black cats.

They are tremendously strong,

they cast no shadow, have no reflection in mirrors,

and can make themselves invisible

by dissolving into a mist.

It is also believed that every year

on Saint Andrew's Eve,

vampires meet at places like graveyards,

to decide on their programs for the coming year.

Who is to be killed and by who.

In transylvania folklore, vampires are almost always

peasants rather than nobleman,

as literary tradition would have it.

However, countess Elizabeth barthory

born in 15670 was a famous exception.

Her family coat of arms

consisted of three wolves teeth,

and Elizabeth herself was said to have been

a living vampiress or werewolf.

In her castle in northern Hungary,

she butchered nearly 600 young girls,

bathing and showering in their blood,

which she hoped would keep her eternally young

and beautiful.

Still standing in Vienna is her house on blutgasse,

blood street, where she perpetrated

many of her horrible deeds.

Eventually, Elizabeth's monstrous crimes

were discovered and she was

walled into a cell in her castle.

Here, she died 12 years later.

Never again having seen the light of day.

This traditional Romanian dance

here performed by the national folklore ballet,

was once used to exercise evil spirits.

The solo dancer was beaten with sticks

and bitten by his fellow dancers

in an attempt to frighten away the devil.

In Romania, witchcraft, diabolism, and vampirism

are all closely associated.

For instance, the snake or dragon

is an ancient symbol for the devil.

Dracul in Romanian, which frequently appears

in Romanian paintings and literature.

The legend of Saint George and the dragon

is very reminiscent of both vlad's impalings

and the killings of vampires with stakes.

Vampires are also said to be most active

between the Eve's of Saint Andrew and Saint George,

a superstition which is closely tied

fo the Greek orthodox religion.

The Greek orthodox church has often unjustly

been credited with originating the vampire concept,

however, the Greek church has always leaned towards

mysticism and attached great importance to complicated

rituals in the worship of saints and icons,

thus creating a hotbed for all sorts of superstitions.

Vampire belief may sometimes have been used by the church

to increase its hold on the people.

In much the same way as the Jews believe in witchcraft.

For centuries, the Greek orthodox church

taught that the bodies of those excommunicated

would not decompose in the grave.

As vampires, according to popular belief,

were recognizable because their bodies

did not decompose in the grave,

excommunication meant becoming a vampire on death.

The church claimed that if a priest administered exorcism,

this was sufficient to seal the vampire in its grave.

However, history shows that most people

did not trust the power of the church over vampires.

The drinking of blood and sacrificial blood offerings

have played an important role in most great religions.

For thousands of years, man has endowed blood

with magical powers such as, that drinking the blood

of someone of great strength

increases ones own strength.

During mass, priest drinks wine,

which has become the blood of Christ

through transubstantiation

and the congregation eats the bread or flesh of Christ

fo has thus sacrificed to god anew

the gospel according to Saint John holds a passage

which could well apply to the vampire mixing its blood

with that of its victim.

"Except ye eat flesh to the son of man

and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

So eat my flesh and drinkith my blood

hath eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.”

The vampire bat has many things in common

with its human counterpart.

An erect head, web-like hands for wings,

and the ability to walk upright.

A bite from its extremely sharp teeth

has an anesthetic quality and its saliva

contains an anticoagulant

which quickens the flow of blood from the wounds

it inflicts on its victims.

The attack of the vampire bat

is very like that of the folklore vampire.

It first stalks and hypnotizes its prey,

after which, it bites into a vein

and begins to lap up blood

with its long tongue.

At sundown, creatures of the night

are thought to stir and vampires rise from the grave.

People must be careful in passing low ruins,

crossroads, and churchyards.

The erotic element in vampirism is very strong,

for instance, a vampire is said to be the only night creature

capable of sex, although his children are born

without bones.

He usually chooses one particular woman,

in a specific locality to be his bride

and relentlessly pursues her

in a kind of macabre courtship.

He may attack others,

but if he is denied his chosen loved one,

he may go berserk and wreak havoc.

In former times, the report of a vampire attack

created panic, everyone took immediate precautions

to protect themselves, especially during the hours

between sundown and sunrise.

Bells were rung to sound the alarm

and were thought to frighten vampires away.

People shut themselves tightly indoors.

Many left the countryside to seek shelter in towns,

and Shepherds drove their flocks to safety,

as vampires might attack sheep as well as humans.

At night, torches were lit outside

and many candles were kept burning inside.

People sat up until cockcrow and told stories

for when stories are told,

vampires cannot approach.

In some areas, vampires were thought to be unable

to cross running water and throughout transylvania

garlic was an extremely potent weapon.

Windows and doors were anointed with this garlic

and all cows and other farm animals were supposed to

be rubbed with it to protect them as well.

The thorns of wild roses were sure to keep vampires away,

thus thorns or Poppy seeds were spread on the paths

leading from the local churchyard to the village.

When the vampire took the path,

he had to stop to pick up every one of the thorns or seeds.

This so delayed him as he could not reach the village

before sunrise, at which time he had to return to the grave.

Large black dogs with an extra set of eyes

painted on them in white, also discouraged vampires.

The church added the cross and the communion wafer

as major weapons against vampires.

As soon as a vampire began to ravage an area,

an all out effort was made to find it in its grave

and destroy it.

One common method of locating the vampire

was to chose a boy or girl, young enough to be a virgin

and seat them naked on a horse of a solid color,

which was also a virgin and it never stumbled.

The horse was lead through the cemetery

and over all the graves recognizable

from one or several holes big enough,

the vampires tomb was also supposed to be

for a servant to pass though.

The most usual way of killing a vampire

was to drive a stake though the heart or navel

during daylight hours, when the vampire lay in its grave.

The stake had to be made from a wild rosebush,

an ash, or Aspen tree.

In some areas, iron bars, preferably heated red-hot,

were used instead of wood.

The stake had to be driven though the body

and into the ground under the corpse

fo keep the vampire from rising again.

As the stake pierced it, the body twisted in agony

and fresh blood flowed, a horrible scream

also accompanied the act,

after which a look of peace settled on the vampire's face,

final release of torment and real death.

Ah!

Many other means of killing vampires were practiced.

The vampire's head was sometimes cut off

and put between the legs of the corpse,

or the body could be buried at crossroads,

or burnt and the ashes strewn in a river.

According to Romanian legend,

if a vampire is not found and rendered harmless,

it first kills all members of its immediate family

and then the other inhabitants of the village.

At last, the vampire climbs up

into the belfry of the church

and calls out the names of any survivors

who instantly die.

Or in some areas, the vampire rings the death knell

and all who hear it die on the spot.

Inevitably, the folkloric vampire of eastern Europe

began to disappear in modern times,

but in 1964, Dr. Robert mccully

of the medical university of south Carolina

published the only authentic psychological case study

of a person showing vampire traits.

The subject was bill, a young,

unmarried, white male American.

He displayed the essential vampire characteristics.

He was clearly aware of bearing eternal curse,

the ever constant desire for life and renewal,

coupled with a horrible wish to destroy human beings

in order to maintain his own existence.

Bill performed acts of vampirism on himself,

that is, he drank his own blood.

The vampire's always been a creature of nightmares,

the nocturnal spirit who embraces the sleeper

to suck his blood.

Bill frequented reported dreams of bloodletting

and felt anxiety upon awakening.

Sometimes these dreams were filled with a sense of peace

and being loved by someone,

but sometimes bill felt that he had subdued someone

who had attacked him.

He often dreamed of sucking blood

from the necks of young boys.

Bill spent most of his time wandering about alone

and constantly suffered from an unexplained cycle.

Four days of elation,

followed by twelve days of depression,

his deepest depression coincided

with the appearance of the full moon.

Bills case defies conventional psychology.

He had no knowledge of the vampire myth.

However, his earliest childhood memories

were strangely significant.

At the age of seven, he saw a dog hit by a car,

lying in a dark pool of blood in the street.

He also recalls that after a walk in the park

together with his nurse,

she placed his warm hands on her cold neck.

Extensive psychological testing showed bill to be intelligent,

but emotionally very immature.

However, nothing directly pathological was established,

except possibly, a fascination with blood

and the mystical.

Bill's interpretation of the rorschach cards

was very revealing.

The lower part of the anatomy

of some large animal,

part of a living thing,

or once part of a living thing.

The red could be blood that came from it,

ripped out of a dissected corpse.

On second look, the red seems like a fluid,

draining symmetrically.

Dr. mccully reasons that bill may not have been mentally ill

in the usual sense and offers a startling theory,

that the ancient vampire image may be one

of the primitive archetypes

suggested by Dr. Carl jung.

Concepts which supposedly govern our thoughts

hidden deep within everybody's unconscious mind.

Mccully speculates that the vampire archetype

may have mysteriously risen from the unconscious

and taken possession of bill,

of that in the same way,

all of us might have the potential

fo become vampires.

How happy this would have made count Dracula.

In criminology, the living-vampire is not uncommon.

The term refers to the sadistic sex murderer,

mostly male, bites or cuts the throats

of his victims and drinks their blood.

One famous example is Peter kiirten

the vampire of Dusseldorf

who directly inspired Fritz lang's famous film m.

Kiirten was executed in 1931

for 29 murders.

In the daytime, he was a hardworking lorry driver

and considerate husband,

but at night, he became a vampire.

He wrote to the mother of one of his victims,

five-year-old girl,

"what do you want me to do, madame?

I need blood as others need alcohol.”

John haigh, the vampire of London,

writes in his confession

that his thirst for blood was awakened

when he cut his finger as a small boy

and licked the wound.

The feeling of lust, he then experienced,

changed his whole nature.

He said, "I then realized that I belong

to the species of vampires.”

He killed nine people,

slitting their throats and drinking their blood

directly from the wounds.

Modern criminologists may well term

the 18th century prince, vlad tepes Dracula

a living vampire.

This dreaded Romanian prince,

described in contemporary pamphlets as,

"a monster of tyrannical cruelty,”

inspired bram stoker to create his character, count Dracula.

The prince was best known as, "te 0 e s, ”

which means, "impaler,"

because of his fondness for that form

of torture and execution.

However, he was also known as, "Dracula,"

which, in Romanian, can mean

either, "son of the devil,"

or, "son of the dragon.”

Stoker simply drew upon

the rich Romanian vampire tradition

in resurrecting vlad as count Dracula.

The count, as described in the novel,

closely resembles various 15th century portraits of vlad.

Stoker writes, "his face was a strong aquiline

with a thin, high-bridged nose

and peculiarly arched nostrils.

His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose,

and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.

The mouth, so far as I could see it under

the heavy moustache was fixed and rather cruel-looking."

This painting of a martyrdom of St. Andrew

from Dracula's own time

includes him as an observer.

As St. Andrew was the patron Saint of the saxons,

vlad may have been shown

because of his reputed cruelty towards saxons.

But, in Romania, St. Andrew is also said to be

a protector of vampires.

The only existing life-sized portrait of vlad

is located at ambras castle near innsbruck, Austria.

Archduke ferdinand ii who owned the castle

during the 16th century

had a perverse hobby of documenting the villains

and deformed personalities of history.

If such persons could be found alive,

the archduke tried to settle them in the castle.

A few giants, a notorious dwarf,

and the wolf man from the canary islands

stayed on at ambras castle for some years

in order to have their portraits painted.

The wolf man had a hormal wife

but his two children inherited his hairy skin

and devilish countenance.

Ferdinand's gallery of rogues and monsters

contains many grisly studies.

Dracula's reputation as a mass murderer

ensured his place in the archduke's collection.

Vlad Dracula's birthplace in transylvania

is the old German fortified town of sighisoara,

south of bistrita.

The house in which viad was born

bears a plaque identifying his father,

vlad dracul, the devil, prince of wallachia.

Some historians consider vlad Dracula a hero,

who fought for christianity and the independence

of his country against the turks.

Others claim he was a madman who killed

and tortured wantonly for sadistic pleasure.

Dracula may not have been more cruel

than many other rulers of the 15th century,

such as Mohammed il of Turkey,

Ivan the terrible, or cesare borgia.

But, his executions were much greater in number.

In creating count Dracula,

stoker may have been struck by the similarity

between viad's impalings and the killing of vampires

by driving stakes through their bodies.

Impalement was a fairly rare form of execution

and vlad was one of the few rulers to use it.

Horses were usually employed to pull a victim onto a stake

so that it pierced the length of the body.

The pale was then put in an upright position

and the victim left to die,

which sometimes took agonizing hours,

or even days.

Dracula's best known mass impalement

took place in 1459,

on tampa hill, above brasov.

Here Dracula and his boyars

feasted for a whole month,

while thousands of saxons were methodically impaled

on neat rows of stakes around them.

This contemporary German woodcut

depicts the scene.

It is said that Dracula's chief pleasure

was to dine with his court

surrounded by dead and dying people impaled on stakes.

Once, a certain nobleman was supposed to have complained

that he could not enjoy his meal

because of the stench of rotting corpses

surrounding the table.

Dracula thereupon had the nobleman impaled

on a much higher stake than the others,

so that he would be above the stench.

Countless such tales about Dracula's bloody deeds

and macabre sense of humor

persist to this day in transylvania.

Most of them portray him as merciless,

yet possessed of a strange sense of justice

and tragic destiny, much like count Dracula.

According to legend, a Hungarian merchant

once came to viad's city.

While he slept, someone stole 160 gold ducats from him.

The merchant went to Dracula and told him of his loss.

Dracula said, "go your way

and in the morning you will find your gold."

He then commanded that a search be made for the gold

throughout the city and said that if the thief was not found

he would burn the entire town.

When the merchant arose next morning,

he found his money returned.

He counted it once, and then twice.

There was one ducat too many.

The merchant went again to Dracula and said,

"my lord, I have found the gold,

but there is one ducat more which is not mine."

Dracula then revealed that he had ordered the extra ducat

placed there and said that

if the merchant had not told him about it,

he would have impaled him with the thief.

The merchant was very grateful to Dracula

and took his cart and left the city.

Though Dracula showed a certain kindness to the merchant,

he is said to have solved the problem of poverty

in his kingdom by inviting all poor people and beggars

to a great banquet, and then,

setting fire to the hall.

Everyone inside was burned alive.

In a particular place,

there was a spring of cola, fresh water

and many came to drink.

Dracula placed a large, fine, golden cup by the spring.

All who drank from the cup returned it to its place,

and while vlad Dracula lived, no one dared steal it.

Dracula had a peasant mistress

who lived in a poor, outlying part of targoviste.

He visited her often,

but his interest was purely physical.

The woman, on the other hand, fell in love with Dracula

and grew afraid of losing him.

One night she told him that she was going to have his child.

Dracula became angry and said that this would not be.

He then cut her open from her loins to her breast and said,

"let the world see where I have been and where my fruit lay."

Bram stoker did not know that a real

castle Dracula existed.

But his description of the count's castle

at the borgo pass is uncannily apt.

The real castle Dracula is perched on top of a rock

1,000 feet above the arges river in wallachia.

It is nearly inaccessible from the valley.

The original fortress was very old,

but vlad rebuilt it when he came to power.

And, ever since, it has been known as the castle

of vlad tepes, viad the impaler.

Reconstruction of the castle was a nearly super human feat,

accomplished in typical Dracula fashion.

One of vlad's brothers, mircea,

had been killed by the boyars of tirgoviste.

It is said that Dracula retaliated

by seizing the boyars during the easter celebrations

when they were all dressed in their finest clothes.

He impaled the old people and put the younger people,

men, women, and children, to work rebuilding the castle.

They are supposed to have labored

until their clothes became rags and dropped off their backs.

Many died from over-work and fell from the cliffs.

But the caste was finished within a few months.

Dracula's reign was dominated by his confrontation

with Mohammed the conqueror of Turkey.

By 1461, vlad had achieved sufficient power

to plan an all out campaign to rid Romania of the turks.

The sultan became aware of his ambitions

and sent envoys to negotiate a truce with him.

However, they had secret instructions

fo lure vlad into a trap

where he would be seized by turkish troops.

The story goes that when the emissaries refused

fo remove their turbans in vlad's presence,

as it was against their custom,

he ordered the turbans nailed to their heads

and sent them away saying that the turks

must learn to respect the customs of a great leader.

History records only that vlad sensed treachery

and captured the entire turkish force.

He impaled them oh a forest of stakes

outside the walls of his capital, tirgoviste,

placing the envoys on two stakes higher than the rest,

in deference to their rank.

He then launched his famous campaign

along the danube river

with a force of between 10 and 20,000 men,

consisting mostly of rapid moving cavalry

and peasant conscripts,

vlad pushed all the way to the black sea.

At first, vlad met with great success.

After his capture of the fortress of giurgiu,

he wrote to king Matthias of Hungary

that 23,809 men

had been slain and impaled.

Vlad was certain with the figure,

because their heads had been carefully counted,

apart from 884 who were burned in their houses,

and whose heads, of course, could not be connected.

During the famous night of terror,

he boldly attacked the sultan's camp.

However, his bodyguard read it

and vlad was forced to retreat.

The road to tirgoviste now lay open.

But the turks were greeted by the grisly remains

of the sultan's envoys and troops

impaled by vlad the previous year

and now blackened by the sun and half eaten by birds.

The sultan was moved to tears and said,

"what can we do with a man like this?"

He ordered the retreat of his army

but a small force in command of vlad's own brother, radu,

was directed to pursue Dracula to his remote castle

high in the mountains above the arges river.

Radu laid siege to the fortress, during which,

Dracula's wife despaired and took her own life

by casting herself from a parapet

to the arges river far below.

Viad himself was forced to flee

through a secret tunnel on a horse shod backwards

to confuse pursuers.

After escaping the turks by crossing

the nearly impossible transylvanian alps,

Dracula sought the protection of king Matthias

at fagaras castle.

Instead of granting vlad sanctuary,

the king had him arrested.

Little is known about Dracula's life of exile,

but he, apparently, could not control his lust for blood.

A Russian story relates that he used to catch mice

and buy birds in the market

and then torture and impale them

on rows of small stakes.

In stoker's novel, count Dracula's mad helper,

renfield, also took a sadistic pleasure

in torturing small animals.

Viad was a handsome man

and his fabled power over women

soon led to a romance with one of king Matthias's sisters.

They were eventually married

and Dracula regained his freedom.

Viad did succeed in recapturing tirgoviste

and the citadel of Bucharest from his brother, rad...

But only two months after regaining the wallachian throne

he was killed outside of Bucharest.

He had disguised himself as a turkish soldier

in order to obtain precise information about the enemy.

His head was sent to Istanbul

as a trophy for the sultan.

Viad's headless body is said to have been found by monks

from snagov monastery in the marshes near Bucharest,

who secretly interred him in a crypt

facing the chapel alter.

In 1931, the tomb was opened,

but the casket and body were missing.

Later on, another grave was discovered

near the front door to the chapel.

It is possible that vlad's body was moved

because the monks did not want to have someone

of his sinister reputation buried close to the alter.

A Romanian peasant belief holds

that vlad Dracula will someday rise again

to save the country in a time of great trouble.

A well known Romanian poem goes,

"Dracula, where are you now that we need you?"

Eastern Europe, and particularly transylvania,

has long been known to folklore experts

and devotees of Dracula alike

as the center of vampire belief.

But the vampire in literature owes its fame almost entirely

to the works of english and Irish authors.

The most successful of these vampire tales

were written during the 19th century.

This was the age of gothic horror,

and countless stories of the terrible and the unknown

flooded the bookshops of england.

Strangely enough, the two most famous

literary and movie monsters were born at the same time,

the undead vampire count

and Dr. Frankenstein's living monster,

fashioned from dead bodies.

It happened in 1815 at the magnificent villa,

diodati, on the shores of lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Lord Byron, the leading literary figure of the century,

was spending the summer there

together with his 20-year-old physician, John polidori.

Percy bysshe shelley and his 18-year-old wife-to-be, Mary,

had rented a modest house nearby.

According to Mary's diary,

rainy evenings were spent round the fire

at the villa diodati reading ghost stories

and discussing the supernatural.

One night, Byron suggested that they all write

their own ghost stories.

He himself never finished his.

But, polidori, who also had literary ambitions,

turned Byron's story info

the first english vampire novel:

The vampyre, published in 1816.

His hero, lord ruthven, was the first in a long line

of vampire counts culminating in stoker's, count Dracula.

Polidori probably intended lord ruthven

as a parody to Byron who, he felt, had mistreated him.

Byron did had some classic vampire characteristics.

He once, for instance, lived in a half ruined Abbey.

And, in later years, wore only black,

ate almost nothing to keep slim,

and drank vinegar to make his face pale.

He also had an extraordinary power over women and young men.

Mary shelley's Frankenstein,

perhaps the first work of science fiction,

also took form one evening at the villa diodati,

during which, everybody discussed Darwin's theories

and human efforts to create life.

Afterwards, Mary went to bed in an uneasy mood

and experienced a terrible nightmare.

She awoke in fright and could not go back to sleep.

The next morning she began writing her story.

"Twas on a dreary night of November that I beheld

the accomplishment of my task.

It was already one in the morning.

The rain pattered dismally against the panes

and my candle was nearly burnt out.

Then, by the glimmer of the half extinguished light,

I saw the dull, yellow eye of the creature open.

It breathes hard and convulsive motion

agitates its limbs."

Mary shelley's diary provides some clues

as to how she conceived of Frankenstein.

During 1814, she took a trip up the rhine river.

On Sunday, September the 4th, she writes,

"we leave mainz at six o'clock and proceed in a little boat.

The banks of the rhine are very fine,

rocks and mountains crowned with lonely castles."

One such castle Mary probably visited

was the burg Frankenstein,

built atop the densely forested magnetburg mountain.

Within this castle, in 1673,

was born the famous alchemist,

who searched for the elixir of life

through diabolical experiments.

Mary no doubt heard this strange story,

as well as others, about the mysterious barons

Frankenstein.

The castle chapel has an eerie atmosphere

which would have made a strong impression

on the young Mary shelley.

Stone reliefs Mark the graves

of several long dead frankensteins

who met with violent ends.

A curse was supposed fo have destroyed three members

of the family in rapid succession.

There is also the legend of baron Georg Von Frankenstein,

who killed a dragon that was chasing his lady love,

annemarie, only to be killed himself.

Mary's diary also tells of a visit to mont blanc

and the sea of ice, so lyrically described

in her book by the creature himself.

"Monday, July the 22nd, chamounix.

As we continued, the mountains increased in height and beauty.

The summit of the highest

was hidden in clouds.

But they sometimes peeked out into the blue sky higher,

one would think, than the safety of god would permit.

Tuesday, July the 23rd, chamounix.

We continued our route on foot and came to the source

which lies like a stage, surrounded on three sides

by mountains and glaciers.

We sat on a rock which formed the fourth side,

gazing on the scene before us.

An immense glacier was on our left.

In the cathedral at sibiu, transylvania,

is buried baron franc Von Frankenstein.

Oddly enough, Dracula's only legitimate son,

mihnea the bad, was murdered in the church

and is said to be buried there as well.

By the middle of the 19th century,

interest in vampires and vampirism

had spread throughout Europe.

In england, weekly serial novels had become the rage.

One of the most popular was varney the vampire

or the feast of blood.

It was of doubtful literary value,

but the piece ended spectacularly

with the vampire baron throwing himself

into the hissing mouth of mt. Vesuvius.

But it was a woman vampire, rather than a man,

who set the stage for Dracula.

Sheridan le fanu, Irish master of the supernatural,

published carmilla in 1872.

The story made a deep impression on bram stoker,

who was then a civil servant in Dublin

and an unpaid theater critic.

10 years later, the flamboyant, red-bearded irishman

became associated with Henry Irving.

Just as polidori had modelled lord ruthvern on Byron,

stoker no doubt gave Dracula

some of Irving's impressive qualities.

Bram stoker claimed that a nightmare about a vampire

after a late supper of dressed crab inspired Dracula.

However, he had always had an intense interest

in the supernatural.

He wrote 17 books in all,

but only Dracula is really remembered today.

He did not live to see the enormous success

of his novel, but died in near poverty,

according to the death certificate,

"from exhaustion.”

Stoker's description of count Dracula

still evokes a sense of mysterious destiny.

He wrote, "count must indeed have been that

voya vod Dracula

who won his fame against the turk.

If it be so, then he was no common man.

For in that time, and for centuries after,

he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning,

as well as the bravest of the sons

of the land beyond the forest, transylvania.

The Draculas were a great and noble race,

though, now and again, were said to have dealings

with the evil one.

In one manuscript, this very Dracula is spoken of as,

'one peel which we all

understand too well.'"

the vampire has achieved its greatest popularity

as a movie theme.

In the early days of movies,

theda bara, immortalized the term, "vamp,"

which later became a symbol for the roaring 20s.

The vamp was a kind of vampire,

a girl who first charmed her victims

before draining them of their love or money,

rather than their blood.

However, in this scene from the hawk's trail,

made in 1919, our vamp is hired by villains

actually to do in Ace detective Sheldon Steele.

In 1921, Max schreck,

became the first film Dracula in nosferatu.

This classic silent film was directed

by the German expressionist, friedrich murnau.

It drew openly on stoker's book,

and, although murnau gave stoker the credit,

he did not seek permission.

The court ordered the negative and all prints destroyed.

But, somehow, the film survived

and was shown on a limited basis in London and America.

Legal or not, nosferatu captured a mood

which has seldom been equaled.

Like bram stoker, the famous Danish director, Carl dreyer,

was fascinated by le fanu's story, carmilla.

In 1932, he made his classic film, vampyr,

based on the story.

Briefly, a young woman is victimized by a vampire.

After many adventures, the vampire's helper,

Dr. hieronimko, is buried alive,

and the hero drives a stake

through the heart of the vampire,

an old countess.

As always, dreyer obtained fine performance

from his amateur actors.

The first mass audience Dracula film was made in 1931

and starred the Hungarian actor, bela lugosi,

who had also played the role of Dracula

innumerable times on the stage.

The film was an immediate and lasting success.

Lugosi said that 90% of his fan mail

was from women who found Dracula strangely attractive.

He himself was born in the Hungarian town of lugos

and immigrated to the United States.

In the mid-1920s, lugosi starred with Lila Lee

in the midnight girl, a silent melodrama.

His menacing role in this film is very suggestive of Dracula,

the role that was to make him famous several years later.

Although lugosi remained, for most people,

the one and only Dracula,

a number of other Dracula films were produced in the 40s.

In 1958, the Dracula tradition

was revived in horror of Dracula.

The film returned more than eight times

its production costs,

and the producers, hammer films of London,

went on to make 6 more Dracula films

over the next 16 years.

75 years have passed since bram stoker

created his sinister transylvanian count.

However, he still fascinates vast numbers of people,

and will no doubt continue to do so,

for there is yet to be another fictional character

- quite like count Dracula. - John?

John?

Just a word, ladies and gentlemen,

a word of reassurance.

When you go to bed tonight,

and the lights have all been turned out,

and you're afraid to look behind the curtain,

and you dread to see the face appearing at the window,

just remember...

There are such things.