Dracula Synopsis
In the spring of
1893, Jonathan Harker, a young British solicitor sets out from Exeter, England
on what he thinks will be a routine assignment. He is to deliver a deed of
purchase for a London estate called Carfax to Count Dracula, a nobleman of
Transylvania.
Transylavania,
which means "The Land Beyond The Forest" in Romanian was, at that
time, a wild and desolate country carved into the Carpathian mountains where, as
Stoker writes: "... every known superstition in the world is gathered into
the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the center of some sort of
imaginative whirlpool."
Harker is
instructed to reach a border town called Bistritz. From there he will take a
coach to the Borgo Pass, a mountain crossroads where his host will have
transportation waiting to take him to his castle. It is a harrowing journey on
any day, but young Harker is traveling on the Eve of Saint George's Day. As
Stoker writes, at midnight of that day, "... all the evil things in the
world will have full sway."
As Harker prepares
to board the coach that will carry him to the Borgo Pass, everyone at the Inn at
Bistritz is afraid for him. The proprietor's wife implores Harker not to go. She
breaks into hysterics and begs him to take her rosary and crucifix, "...
for your mother's sake," as Stoker puts it.
The coach driver
and Harker's fellow passengers are also afraid. They do not speak, but there is
a common look of sympathy in their eyes for him -- a stranger on his way to the
Borgo Pass.
As evening falls
and the mountain ranges draw nearer and nearer, the other passengers begin to
panic, crying out to the driver to whip up the horses and make haste. Just
before midnight, the coach enters the Borgo Pass. Everyone strains to see out
the windows, but there is nothing there. It is pitch black, windy and very cold.
The only lights are the two small coach lamps.
Out of nowhere, a
caleche, drawn by four jet-black horses, appears. The driver is a tall thin man
wearing a great black hat and sporting a long beard. His features are hidden in
the darkness, except for a pair of red eyes that seem to glow.
The strange driver
helps Harker into the caleche with, as Stoker puts it, "a grip of steel."
With a crack of his whip, the caleche is swept into the night. Exactly at
midnight, dogs and wolves from all over the countryside begin to howl. The
howling becomes louder and louder, as though the wolves are circling the caleche
in the darkness. At times it seems to Harker as though they are driving in
circles. Snow begins to fall.
The trip seems
endless as the caleche ascends the rocky, jagged inclines. In silence, it pulls
up to the courtyard of, as Stoker writes, "... a vast, ruined, castle."
Harker is left on the front doorstep. It is totally dark. Then, there is the
turning of keys and the sound of great chains being thrown to the floor. The
doors slowly open.
In the doorway is
Count Dracula, a strange looking old man. Tall, thin, and extremely pale, the
Count is clean shaven except for a large white mustache. He has very red eyes
and lips. His white hair is profuse except at the forehead.
His ears are
pointed and his long fingernails are cut to a sharp edge. There is hair in the
center of his palms. Even more strange, there are two, sliver-small, brilliant
white canines that peer out from below his upper lip. His courtly manner and odd
intonation of voice belie a smoldering malice.
Count Dracula
introduces himself and invites Harker inside. He offers him food and drink,
although the Count himself neither eats nor drinks. After they conclude their
business, Dracula unexpectedly insists that Harker stay with him for a month so
that he can perfect his English intonation.
Despite the
Count's courteous manner, Harker begins to feel more and more uneasy. He never
sees the Count by day. Worse, the Count does not cast a reflection in a mirror.
He changes moods with great suddenness -- from calm to rage in a heartbeat. And,
although he possesses unusual strength, akin to that of the caleche driver, the
Count appears to be mortally afraid of the crucifix that Harker wears around his
neck.
Though there is
always food and drink and his bed is always made, Harker never sees a single
servant. He slowly begins to believe that he is the only living soul in the
castle.
When Harker finds
that not a single castle door is open to him, he realizes that he is a prisoner.
Horrible events begin to take shape. The young attorney witnesses the Count
emerging from a window below, crawling head first down the sheer wall of the
castle like a lizard!
He sees the
Count's three vampire concubines, who Dracula prevents from attacking him, feast
on the flesh of a newborn infant that the Count has stolen for them.
Later, the Count
demands that Harker write three letters: the first stating that he would be
departing the castle in a few days; the second stating that Harker was leaving
the castle the next morning; the third stating that he had arrived at Bistritz
and was on his way home to England.
Harker now
understands all too well that Dracula intends to do away with him, and that this
is a diabolical means of covering his tracks. He realizes that Dracula is
planning to spread evil throughout England, and has made him his unwitting
assistant.
Abandoning Harker
to his vampire wives, the Count departs for the British Isles. In desperation,
Harker mimics the Count, and himself scales the castle wall "face down"
(don't try this at home!), in a last ditch attempt to escape the castle.
Invasion of the Body Snatcher
The story begins
anew in England. Lucy Westenra, a precocious girl in her early twenties,
communicates by letter to her life-long friend Mina. She tells her of the three
men (all rather wealthy friends: Doctor John Seward, Quincey P. Morris and
Arthur Holmwood) who court her.
Mina wonders to
Lucy why she hasn't heard anything more than "a few hurried lines" as
Stoker puts it, from Jonathan in several weeks.
After Mina joins
her friend at Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, mysterious events unfold. The
Demeter, a Russian flagged schooner, crashes into the Whitby docks during a
hellacious storm that appears from out of nowhere. At the moment the ship
touches land, a huge, fierce-looking dog springs up on deck, leaps to the beach
and races up the hill to a suicide's grave, disappearing into the stormy night.
More shocking
still is the discovery that the ship is abandoned. Not a single member of the
crew is on board except for the ship's dead captain, who is tied to the wheel in
a grotesque death spasm. In his hands are a rosary, a crucifix and a bottle
containing his addendum to the ship's log. It details a dreadful tale of the
crew slowly going mad and, one by one, disappearing without a trace. The only
cargo found is fifty large wooden boxes containing common earth, consigned to a
local carter.
In the following
days, young Lucy begins to sleepwalk. She passes dreamily through the town in
her bedgown one night, mysteriously finding her way to the Whitby graveyard that
overlooks the channel. Mina, not wishing to disturb Lucy's ailing mother, chases
after her. From a distance, through the moonlight, Mina sees Lucy spread out on
their favorite bench, being preyed on by "something" with two gleaming
red eyes.
From that night
on, Lucy continues her nocturnal wanderings. She begins to grow lethargic,
unfocused and pale. Mina and Lucy's mother decide to take her home to London.
There, Doctor Seward, whose lunatic asylum adjoins Carfax, Count Dracula's new
estate just outside London, will be called in to examine her.
But before they
depart, news reaches Mina that Jonathan has been found alive and is at a
Budapest hospital suffering from a nervous breakdown. Mina leaves at once to be
with him, reluctantly abandoning her stricken friend to whatever fate awaits her.
Puzzled by a lack
of medical cause for Lucy's apparent bloodlessness, Doctor Seward takes a
momentous step and contacts his mentor and former medical professor Doctor
Abraham Van Helsing of Amsterdam, who not only is a brilliant physician, but
also a philosopher and a student of religion and the occult.
He Comes From Afar
From the moment Van Helsing arrives it is a race against time and a battle
against an "unknown" foe to save Lucy's life. Van Helsing, worried
that others would not believe his surmise that a vampire is the cause of her
illness, keeps Seward and his friends Morris and Holmwood (Lucy's fiancee) in
the dark.
The Professor uses
all means available, both medical and occult, to cure and protect Lucy. The
Count thwarts Van Helsing and Seward's attempts to protect her by controlling
and manipulating Renfield, a lunatic in Seward's asylum.
During the final
assault on Lucy, involving an escaped wolf who is able to breach the garlic
barriers in Lucy's room that the Count cannot, her mother dies of fright. After
four blood transfusions, one from each of her suitors and one from Van Helsing,
Lucy dies. Frantic at the outcome, Van Helsing formulates a plan to save Lucy's
soul by preventing her from taking a life as an un-dead.
Van Helsing
discovers a letter from Mina to Lucy and contacts her.
Mina returns home
with Jonathan. They have married. In London, they attend the funeral of Harker's
employer. While sitting in Regent's Park, Harker spies the Count, who has grown
young, and breaks into hysterics.
Returning to
Exeter, Mina meets with Van Helsing, who, upon reading Mina's diaries and
Jonathan's journal, connects their experiences with the events chronicled on
Doctor Seward's voice recorded journal and Lucy's own diary.
All at once, it
becomes shockingly clear that Count Dracula of Transylvania is responsible for
Lucy's death. Van Helsing researches the Count's "mortal life" and
comes to understand that, Stoker writes, the Count is in fact: "... that
Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk."
Van Helsing
requests that Mina and Jonathan return to London to meet with him, Seward,
Morris and Holmwood. He travels to London ahead of them and confronts the three
men with his beliefs, explaining the cause of Lucy's death and the ultimate
remedy that lies ahead.
Incredulous and
angry as they are, Seward, Morris and Holmwood agree to go with the Professor to
Lucy's tomb in the Hampstead cemetery and wait. Lucy appears as a streak of
white amongst a long avenue of Yew trees -- a phantom, with hell in her face and
an innocent child in her arms from whom she is feeding. The men confront her.
Holmwood, her
mortal betrothed, falls under her spell. She is about to attack him when Van
Helsing, holding a small crucifix before her, stops her in her tracks. In a rage,
she dissolves before them into mist and seeps back into her crypt. Van Helsing
locks her in by applying fragments of The Host, which he has been given an
Indulgence to use, to the tomb door. At dawn, Van Helsing and his men enter the
tomb and perform an exorcism.
The Professor
presides, reading the prayer for the dead as Holmwood drives a stake through
Lucy's heart. Van Helsing then fills her mouth with garlic and decapitates her.
Her soul is freed from Dracula's curse.
After Mina and
Jonathan meet with the rest of the vampire hunters, they make a solemn, secret
pact to each other to destroy Dracula at any cost. The Count, spying on them
from outside Seward's study window, gains access into the house through
Renfield's cell.
Mina is
subsequently attacked by the Count. Later he visits her again, killing Renfield
gruesomely when he protests. During this second attack, Dracula puts Jonathan
into an unconscious stupor. The Count forces Mina to drink blood from a wound in
his chest, thus not only "raping" her, but putting her in league with
him against her will.
Sailing for Home
After a decisive
assault by the band of vampire hunters on the Count's London strongholds,
Dracula flees England. He attempts an escape by sea back to Transylvania in his
one remaining earth chest. The vampire hunters take Mina and chase him over
land.
First they ride
the Orient Express. Then, once inside Transylvania, they implement a
three-pronged pursuit. Van Helsing takes Mina by carriage over the route
Jonathan traveled to Castle Dracula, while Harker and Holmwood steam up a
strategic river in a launch. Morris and Seward pursue the Count on horseback,
following the launch at river's edge.
At night, when Van
Helsing and Mina prepare for dinner and sleep, Dracula's three vampire
concubines materialize out of the forest around them. Van Helsing quickly casts
a protective circle and drops within it pieces of The Host. Mina, cursed with
Dracula's blood, cannot move outside the circle, and the vampires cannot breach
it.
In the morning Van
Helsing leaves Mina in the safety of the holy circle and goes on foot to the
castle. He finds the vampire women asleep and decapitates them, though he is
stopped at first by their haunting beauty and sexual attractiveness. He then
leaves parts of The Host in the castle doorway, banishing the Count from
entering it forever.
Just as he does
this, gunshots can be heard down in the valley. It is the vampire hunters
closing in on the Count, who is being conveyed to the castle in a horse drawn
cart as he lies in his earth chest. By now the sun is beginning to set. If the
Count escapes again, he will be beyond their grasp.
Van Helsing frees
Mina from the protective circle and they rush together to help stop the Count.
Van Helsing puts Mina into a safe cave overlooking the battle, protecting her
again with more of The Host, and leaving her a revolver. Down in the valley the
battle rages. The men rush the cart and fight hand to hand with the gypsies who
are protecting their Count and bringing him back to the castle.
Morris is mortally wounded as he and Harker rip open the Count's earth chest and plunge their knives through his neck and through his heart. The Count crumbles into dust, obliterated. Morris dies witnessing the scar on Mina's head vanish as a sign that God has purified her once more and that she is free of Dracula's curse.