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Was Dracula, the Bram Stoker novel, based on a real person in the form of Vlad Dracula? Jeb and Blake discuss.

Discussed in this episode:

Update 1/28/2020: Listener Justin Mullis spotted an error which has led to a correction in this audio and will lead to some additional material in another IRO content drop shortly. -B

Bram Stoker's Dracula the novel

John William Polidori's The Vampyre 

Varney the Vampire, a penny dreadful

Carmilla by Joseph Le Fanu

Dan Simmons Children of the Night vampire book

Todd Browning's Dracula & Freaks

Copola's movie Bram Stoker's Dracula 

Hammer's The Horror of Dracula (1958)

Hellsing, vampire anime

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) fictionalized story of the making of Nosferatu (sort of)

Remastered Nosferatu (English, Scored, and free via YouTube)

Dracula (in the novel) goes to The Scholomance to become a vampire.  

What's a Lich?

Why did Hammer set most of its Dracula movies in Germany? It seems likely to be budget related, perhaps having sets ready? You'd have to ask script writer Jimmy Sangster to be sure, but I did uncover this passage in a book titled "Dracula Goes to the Movies," by Lyndon Joslin:

"Due to the budget constraints of this version, Dracula doesn't take a sea voyage to London, not even via footage pirated from another film. Instead, he takes a hearse to the town of Karlstadt, wherever that may be. There is a Karlstadt in Germany, but in order to get there from Klausenburg in central Transylvania, Dracula would have to travel across modern-day Hungary and Austria. The movie depicts the trip as a mere overnighter, so Karlstadt is evidently a fictional town somewhere in Transylvania. There's a border crossing guard in the story, so Karlstadt must be in a neighboring 'state,' province or district. (The border crossing, we're told, is in 'Ingstadt,' itself apparently a fictional town and therefore not much help here.) Karlstadt here compares with the 'Carlsbruck' seen in the same year (1958) in Hammer's The Revenge of Frankenstein, and with the Karlstaad seen in 1964's The Evil of Frankenstein. The creation of a generic German archetypal town is what goes on here, comparable to Universal's having set part of its Frankenstein series in the never-land town of Visaria. It's ironic that in this, the first British adaptation of Dracula, the Count doesn't go to London, or even to England. In Hammer's series, he doesn't turn up in England until Taste the Blood of Dracula in 1970. Still, Horror of Dracula is so very British that articles have been written about it by reviewers who didn't notice that it isn't London Dracula invades. Seems the undertaker's address in the movie - on 'Friederickstrasse' - would've provided a clue." (Joslin, 2017)

Castle Ambras - home of weird paintings and "cabinet of curiosities"

Lot's Wife geological formations 

• Stoker was going to create his character, and then ran into a history discussing Dracula, and used that as the backstory. Also added the vampire bat aspects.
  • Much of this may come from Emily Gerard’s The Land Beyond the Forest. He basically lifts a number of ideas and text from her.
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Gerard

She was a travel writer and novelist.

Radu Florescu (obituary) co-author In Search of Dracula

Vampire lore around the world varies in what the vampires do, and how they are created.

The Order of the Dragon 

Ceahlău Massif

The story of Budu

• http://www.ceah
• laupark.ro/en/legends/ The show calls it a megalith, but it is actually two rock outcrops, one for Budu, one for Ana

Bran Castle

The Hardy Boys (and Nancy Drew) meet Dracula (part 1 and part 2) takes place in "Dracula's Castle" which I'm pretty sure features exterior shots of Bran Castle.  This episode features Lorne Greene (Battlestar Galactica and Bonanza) and also singer/songwriter/actor Paul Williams (The Phantom of the Paradise, Rainbow Connection)

The story about what was found in the church seems to be completely wrong. From Wiki on Vlad Dracula: 

"According to popular tradition (which was first recorded in the late 19th century), Vlad was buried in the Monastery of Snagov. However, the excavations carried out by Dinu V. Rosetti in 1933 found no tomb below the supposed "unmarked tombstone" of Vlad in the monastery church. Rosetti reported: "Under the tombstone attributed to Vlad there was no tomb. Only many bones and jaws of horses."

I think I solved this one. (-B):  

In October 1974, the AP released a news story about Dracula's grave and the island. The story tells that Rosetti investigated then immediately follows with the legends around the remains of Vlad. I'm betting this is the source because it closely matches the episode narrative and would have been easy to find or perhaps remember when this episode was made. "The grave, said to be Dracula's, was discovered by Romania's eminent archaeologist Dinu Rosetti in 1931 after he followed up a folklore story known only to neighboring villagers across the lake." (see attached PDF for full article)

The famous woodcut of Vlad dining in front of impaled victims.

 

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