As the world grew increasingly hooked on the Dracula films, the Romanian government, culturally sheltered behind its iron curtain, remained quite oblivious of how easily its own forested hills could be transformed into the world capital of horror-tourism. When this film appeared in 1974, they'd only just woken up to it, possibly alerted by the recent formation of a UK Dracula Society. One glimpse of a few paid-up members on the steps of a Transylvanian castle tells you all you need to know, both about the society in particular and the cult of vampirism in general. To put it tactfully, they are for people who share a powerful need to believe.
The very vagueness of the mythology means good news for the tour operators, with everyone trying to get in on the act. Yes, historically there was a 'Dracul', also known as Vlad, whose title could loosely translate as 'the impaler', and his castle still survives as a scenic backdrop. But neither he nor anyone else became a vampire, or anything resembling one. Those midnight blood-feasts and creaking coffin-lids all came from the fertile imagination of an Irishman in the British Museum who had never set foot in Transylvania, and who never did learn what a legend he had given birth to. He was Bram Stoker.
It is Stoker's great-nephew Daniel Farson who hosts this show, tending to skate around his nebulous subject, interviewing whoever he can find, not always comfortably. Michael Carreras, founder of Hammer Films, reminds us of the impact of the Dracula stories bursting into colour for the first time. A society member, deserted by her husband, wants to destroy him through an evil spell, rather than actual violence. And the second half devotes too much time to a couple of exorcists, and the popularity of occultism in general that was peaking just then.
Personally I can see the appeal of Transylvania as the next Ruritania - so near, yet so far from civilisation, only a day's ride from Austria, yet still deeply medieval in its bare hill-village lifestyle. What I don't relish is the Disneyland Gothic hotel they've built, to bolt-on some spooky atmosphere to your stay, or the look of the people who stay there. On the whole, I think I'll just take my Dracula in smaller doses, whenever he happens to pop-up on the set!
The very vagueness of the mythology means good news for the tour operators, with everyone trying to get in on the act. Yes, historically there was a 'Dracul', also known as Vlad, whose title could loosely translate as 'the impaler', and his castle still survives as a scenic backdrop. But neither he nor anyone else became a vampire, or anything resembling one. Those midnight blood-feasts and creaking coffin-lids all came from the fertile imagination of an Irishman in the British Museum who had never set foot in Transylvania, and who never did learn what a legend he had given birth to. He was Bram Stoker.
It is Stoker's great-nephew Daniel Farson who hosts this show, tending to skate around his nebulous subject, interviewing whoever he can find, not always comfortably. Michael Carreras, founder of Hammer Films, reminds us of the impact of the Dracula stories bursting into colour for the first time. A society member, deserted by her husband, wants to destroy him through an evil spell, rather than actual violence. And the second half devotes too much time to a couple of exorcists, and the popularity of occultism in general that was peaking just then.
Personally I can see the appeal of Transylvania as the next Ruritania - so near, yet so far from civilisation, only a day's ride from Austria, yet still deeply medieval in its bare hill-village lifestyle. What I don't relish is the Disneyland Gothic hotel they've built, to bolt-on some spooky atmosphere to your stay, or the look of the people who stay there. On the whole, I think I'll just take my Dracula in smaller doses, whenever he happens to pop-up on the set!
