How To Make A Horror Film
The film opens in 1897, with Count Dracula’s voyage to England on the Demeter and his arrival in London. The narrative then moves forward to present-day London, with a group of thieves infiltrating the antique shop Carfax Abbey. Penetrating into its innermost vault they expect to find a fortune in treasure. Instead they encounter a sealed coffin. Upon attempting to move the coffin, some of the treasure-hunting party are gruesomely killed by the vault’s security system, leading the survivors to believe the coffin is the treasure they have come for. It is no surprise when the coffin is later revealed to contain the dormant body of Count Dracula. We learn that Carfax Abbey (also the name of Dracula’s London residence in Bram Stoker’s original novel) is owned and operated by Dracula’s nemesis, Abraham Van Helsing, who, after trapping and subduing Dracula a century before, has been keeping himself alive with injections of the vampire’s blood filtered through leeches until he can find a way to destroy Dracula forever.
While flying the coffin back to the United States one of the thieves manages to open the coffin, releasing Dracula. The count proceeds to feast on the blood of the thieves, one of whom happens to be flying the airplane, causing them to crash in the swamps of Louisiana. Surviving the crash, he heads to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Van Helsing’s estranged daughter Mary and her best friend Lucy live. Meanwhile Van Helsing and his assistant Simon head to the U.S. to recapture Dracula.
The one significant twist this film brings to the Dracula legend is its explanation of his origin. In this film, Dracula is established to be Judas Iscariot, cursed to walk the earth as an immortal for his betrayal of Jesus, being denied admission to both Heaven and Hell. This explains some of the vampire’s best-known weaknesses, primarily Christian iconography and silver, as Judas was paid in silver for betraying Christ to the authorities. Although Bram Stoker makes no reference to a vulnerability to silver in his novel, it is a part of some examples of European vampire folklore.
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