Movie Club Week 12

And we're back.  Week 12 of the vampire movie club, late as it is.  I'm going to make it short tonight, but I wanted to talk about  Dracula Rising.  It's one of the cult classics in the vampire genre that happens to be by Roger Corman.


A young woman holds an art gallery fund raiser, and manages to grab the attention of a stranger. He spends the night dancing with her, commenting on her paintings which she admits were drawn from dreams. We find out his name is Vlad, and that he's only passing through.  Before the end of the evening, she lets him know that she does restoration work on old paintings as a day job.
That night, she has a nightmare that everyone at the event had been bitten by a vampire. The next few days at work, she can't think straight and the only thing her and her best friend talk about is Vlad.  Then she's offered a job in Romania, working at an old castle restoring a painting from the 1400's.
Taking the job, she is introduced to Alec, who happens to be connected to Vlad.
Through a series of strange visions, it's revealed that the paintings she's been drawing are not from nightmares but past life memories.  She had been alive in the 1400's, there in Romania living during a plague.  She had fallen in love with Vlad, who in the 1400's was a monk, as was Alec.  The relationship that she had with Vlad during the middle ages, got her burned at the stake for being a witch.
We then learn that Vlad is the son of Dracula. He goes to his father and offers up himself in order to live, so that he can reunite with her after she's been reincarnated. On his first night as a vampire, he gets revenge on Alec by turning him as well.
The two vampires then battle back in modern times over the soul of the woman, with Alec taking them all to an alternate reality.  Vlad defeats Alec, then commits suicide. This we are to assume, frees all three of their souls.


This is not the greatest movie ever produced, but it's one of the most beautiful. Shot in Romania, it's use of the location is perfect, not too mention it's one of the first films to shoot there. (I think Subspecies was the first)
The bulk of the film is done in flashback story telling, with little time given to the modern half. This also came out after the major budget Bram Stoker's Dracula, so it does have a few moments that feel like it borrowed from the love story.
I referred to this movie on the vampire blog, as being like the Star Wars of Dracula films because of the sub-story between Vlad and his father.  There are just too many similarities to the Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader plot.
I think Doug Wert, who plays Alec is the show stealer. I could have watched an entire film just of his character.

till later