User blog:BeholderofStuff/Pure Evil Proposal: Count Dracula (Hammer series)


 * Original: https://villains.fandom.com/f/p/3179493162221867479/r/3179589320835377681

What is the work?
1958, Hammer adapted Dracula and in some of the best casting choices ever? We got Christopher Lee as the Count himself, along with Peter Cushing as the most badass Abraham van Helsing. The film was a smash hit and spawned a legion of sequels, with Christopher Lee as the Count (in one film, Dracula never speaks, legend has it Lee found the dialogue so bad that he refused to speak any of it)...most notably, Dracula affixed the image of the fanged vampire in popular culture...now, without further ado, I give...the Count of Counts. The man, the myth, the king of the undead...Count Dracula.

Who is Dracula?
The lord of the undead. The king of darkness. In the first film, the evil count is visited by Jonathan Harker in 1885, who is secretly a vampire hunter. Dracula toys with Harker, having one of his past victims infect him, before taunting him and trapping him in his castle, forcing Dr. van Helsing to destroy his ffriend...Dracula begins preying on the innocent, killing and turning Harker's fiancee Lucy. Enslaving her, he has her go after her former friends to kill them. Dracula takes other victims, but in the final battle Van Helsing confronts his nemesis...and when I say confront, there's a scene where Dracula disarms van Helsing of his cross. Van Helsing fucking tackles him in response. Don't mess with Peter Cushing. Anyways, Dracula is defeated when van Helsing makes impromptu crosses from candlesticks and forces the Count into the sunlight, disintegrating him (the films had a bit of a policy to get a bit unique when killing Drac than the typical 'stakey stakey').

Ten years later in Prince of Darkness,Dracula's servant murders a visitor to the castle and uses his ashes to revive the Count, who begins preying on the innocent again, wracking up a newly sizable bodycount. Dracula attempts to kill everyone after vampirizing a few of the women, but is defeated when he is cornered on ice and has it shattered, plunging him into the waters.

Dracula proceeds to awaken in Dracula has Risen from the Grave and enslaves a priest as his servant, forces one local woman to assist him and murders her when that fails. Dracula targets a woman named Maria, killing a few others close to her...and is then defeated when he is impaled on a cross. Then we have Taste the Blood of Dracula, where Dracula is angry when his servant is destroyed and proceeds to kill all the ones who have done so...he gets pretty nasty with this, at one point enslaving one man's son and having him stab his father. After killing a bunch more people, he's destroyed when he flees into a forsaken church that is re-sanctified, crumbling to dust again.

The series then shifts into modern day 1972 in Dracula, AD 1972, but not much of note happens in this one...the final film with Lee was The Satanic Rites of Dracula in 1974. The revived Dracula? Dracula beats down his new nemesis, van Helsing's Identical Grandson Lawrence and imprisons him. Dracula? Wants revenge on humanity now and has been funding the development of a new strain of bubonic plague...while planning to turn van Helsing's granddaughter into his undead consort to spite van Helsing, while infecting him and his other conspirators with the plague and sending them to spread it...giving an agonizing death to all humanity, even having it tested on people to make sure it's perfect and using hypnosis to control the others. The heroes manage to get the better of the Count, though and destroy the plague, with van Helsing trapping Dracula in a hawthorn bush and driving a stake into his heart, finishing him for good.

...except for the one where everybody is Kung Fu fighting in Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, but it doesn't star Lee, so not counting it here.

Heinousness?
Taken as a whole, Dracula kills dozens of people. He's fond of controlling people to kill their loved ones, turning them against one another, and in some of the films? He happily tortures people, enslaves a woman to be his mistress and eventually tries to exterminate humanity with the bubonic plague. Pass.

Mitigating Qualities?
No. We do see some vampires resist their evil urges and many are under his control when they can't. He's the ruler of vampire kind, so no issues with agency here, I don't think. As for any redeeming features? God, no. Now, in Taste the Blood of Dracula, he is initially pissed about his servant dying, but...that's because you don't touch what belongs to Dracula. He always treats servants as expendable tools. he just believes in vicious retribution if you mess with him. He cares nothing for fellow vampires, constantly sacrificing them without a second thought. Lee portrays as larger than life, imperious, and utterly monstrous; a vicious beast under that genteel air.

Conclusion?
Oh Yes. To one of the greatest vampires of all time!