Dracula Untold! Let's Talk About It!!!

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog!

I hope you are having a wonderful day!

Now, let's talk about this movie!

It was made back in 2014 directed by Gary Shore. This movie is PG-13 and if they would have made this a rated R movie.....it would've been a 10/10 for me. But still a 9/10 rating from me. This movie is absolutely amazing! I have probably watched this movie a thousand times! It is definitely one of my top favorite vampire movies!

There was a lot of talk for awhile about whether or not there was going to be a second movie following this one but as of January of 2022 there is no update as to when or if there will be a second movie made.

********SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!********

(I will not include all of the details of the movie but will provide a brief summary so there is still some sort of surprise to some of the events that happen in the movie if you decide to go watch it. )

This movie starts off where we learned that Vlad was a young ward of the Ottoman Empire trained to kill anything and everything in sight. He was quickly know as Vlad the Impaler after impaling all of his victims up on spikes. As he grew up he saw the error of his ways and went back to rule his kingdom with his loving wife, who had his son.

One day while patrolling his lands he sees one of his scouts helmets laying in a stream covered and blood with claw marks on it. They go to investigate what could have happened to them and they find a cave and decide to go in. Upon exploring the gave they find human bones and as they decide to leave they are attacked by a black figure that they cannot see. Vlad is the only survivor of the attack and the scrawny figure shows itself to him promising him gifts of great power that he will need to defend his land from the yet to be shown invaders.

Vlad denies the offer and returns home to his family, which soon later finds out that his only son is being taken from him to join the Turkish army: just like he was forced to do as a child. The Turkish leader Mehmed wants to take his only son away from him as an offering to him so that he will not attack Vlad's kingdom. Vlad offers himself up in exchange for his sons freedom but is immediately declined. Not wanting his son to walk in his footsteps and knowing that Mehmed is going to come back, he returns to the caves to accept the dark figures offer to try and save his kingdom. He drinks some of his blood and is told that drinking it will bring him gifts beyond his imagination but they come with a cost...….a thirst for blood. He has three days to drink human blood or he will be changed back into a human. After Vlad accepts the blood the dark figure is able to finally leave the cave that he has been trapped in for centuries.

Vlad returns to his castle with his new powers and destroys every single man single handedly. His wife slowly figures out that her husband is not the same man. The Turkish army attacks again when Vlad is trying to safely get his subjects out. This attack leads army to Vlad's family where his wife is left defenseless and she ends up falling off of their tall tower. Vlad does not reach her in enough time to save her, so she offers up her blood to her husband so he can completely transform into a vampire and save their kingdom. He fights the urge for a bit but then gives into it because he knows that it is what he needs to do to save everyone. His powers transform him into a full vampire and he gets the Turkish army to retreat back to their camp but not before he kidnap Vlad's son.

Vlad, enraged by the death of his wife, the massacre of his people, and the kidnapping of his wife, turns everyone who is left into a vampire with him and they make their way down to the Turkish came to get their revenge. He uses his powers to put a cloud over the Turkish camp so his vampires and move freely. Mehmed knows now what he is dealing with and puts Vlad's son in a tent covered with silver to try and slow Vlad down. Inevitably it works for a short amount of time but Vlad ends up stabbing him through the chest and gets his son back safely. At the end of the battle everyone in the Turkish camp is dead, Vlad has to make a decision though as a group of religious men huddled together with crosses come to get Vlad's son away from all of the vampires. Vlad sends the clouds away and all of the vampires including himself burn to death in the sunlight. But someone saves Vlad just before he is about to die and he gives him his blood.

Fast forward to present day Vlad is in what appears to be somewhere in Europe, he runs into a woman who looks like his wife from the past, he walks away talking to her and right behind Vlad is the vampire form the cave following Vlad. The movie ends with him saying "Let the games begin."

I am a huge history buff and this movie is based off the legend that Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula, was one of the first vampires to reach civilization and use the power to his advantage. I had the chance to do a research paper on him in my last semester of college and it was probably one of my favorite research papers that I did.

It has been said that the character of Dracula was based off of Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the Impaler was one out of the four sons of Vlad Dracul, and reigned after his father. Their name Dracul comes from the Latin word meaning Dragon and Vlad’s father joined the Order of the Dragon, which was a European religious military group. Vlad and his father were imprisoned when Vlad was just a boy but Vlad was the only one kept as a prisoner. His father and oldest brother were murdered shortly after that. To gain his father’s throne he had to overcome a few obstacles, such as fighting others who wanted it, including his own brother. During this time frame is when he got his nickname Vlad the Impaler for the way that he brutally killed and maimed his enemies. He would impale his victims with stakes from their buttocks till it stuck out from their mouths, stick them in the ground and leave them there to die. He did this not only on the battle field but in the outskirts of the cities that he overthrew to warn people to never cross him. He did not go easy on anyone; men, women, pregnant women, children, the elderly were all his victims. He did this to anyone that he fought, in a battle in 1462, as a sign for the Ottoman Empire; he left an open field filled with thousands of his impaled victims, meant to scare the Ottoman Empire. He even would drink the blood of his dead or dying victims. That same year he was captured then escaped from the Ottoman Empire and then was captured by the Hungarians. He then escaped the Hungarians ruled again in 1476 but then died in the same year during battle. We do not know where he is buried and there is a lot of rumors and debate as to where his body was placed, or if it was even buried at all. With no body to discover or examine, the vampire rumors swarm around his name even more.

In all of the books that I have read they all are going off of Bram Stoker's Dracula and his inspiration from Vlad the Impaler, all of the books agreed that Vlad the Impaler is believed to be the real life Dracula. He impaled his victims on stakes in the middle of fields, drank their blood while he watched them die, and his body was never discovered, thus enhancing the idea that he is an immortal being still walking around even to this day. For all we know vampires could be real and Vlad the Impaler could be walking around among us. He could have changed the way he looks to fit this time period and he could just be waiting for the right time to strike again.

"In search of the real Dracula, The History of Dracula and Vampires and Dracula, prince of many faces: his life and his times." were both written by Raymond T. McNally and Radu R. Florescu. These books look at the same thing, they are looking for the real face of who Dracula really was and if Bram Stoker was accurate in creating the character off of the image of Vlad the Impaler. They look at the history of the Dracula line and how it transitioned all the way down to Vlad the Impaler, believing that he is the true Dracula. They talk about Castle Dracula, the reign of Vlad, his blood thirst in battle, his struggles and strengths against the Ottoman Empire, and his death in battle where there is not one set cause of death from all of the different stories that we have about it. But both books look at Bram Stoker's notes on his inspiration for the character Dracula from Vlad the Impaler’s bloodthirst in battle. Vlad was a vicious warrior who would demolish anything and anyone who got in his way. He did not seem to have a heart towards anyone that was against him.

"Vampire: The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead" written by Manuela Dunn-Mascetti. This book starts off with a history of Vampires; how they came to be, the way they feed and live, how they create other vampires, the legend of Dracula (Vlad the Impaler), how they continued on into today’s society and how to kill a vampire. They also talk about the history of Vlad the Impaler, his life and ruthless rule over his people, demolishing his enemies with horrific ways of torture and murder. They go a little bit more into the actual history of what a vampire actually is and where they come from but they do use literally half of the book just to talk about Vlad the Impaler and why they believe he is to be the real life Dracula. His name is Dracul, Castle Dracula, Vlad’s life and accomplishments in battle. His ruthlessness of the way he killed and tortured his victims. The impalement of his victims and how he drank their blood. His death in battle and the mysteriousness of his grave. We cannot find where he is buried and there are no records to go of what happened to his body. (Just to give short recap of this book itself but if you are into learning more about the history of vampire's I definitely recommend this book.)

If he really is out there walking around I would definitely have a lot of questions to ask him about how history has transformed over the years and why he’s been hiding for so long.

From the ruthlessness of how he killed people, drank his victims blood, and his body is nowhere to be found I could see why Bram Stoker got the inspiration to use Vlad as his muse when creating Dracula. For some reason I have always been fascinated by this man and his life. I have always been drawn to the creepy and mysterious and Vlad the Impaler is the closest you can get to both categories. I like hearing stories that do not make sense and have endings that are not the clearest. It leaves more to the imagination and drives the researcher to want to know answers. I really learned a lot more about Vlad the Impaler that I did not already know before.

Here are the books that I found my research from if you are interested in learning more.

• Dracula, prince of many faces: his life and his times. Back Bay Books, 2009.

• The History of Dracula and Vampires. Sutton, 1994

• Vampire: The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead. Studio, 1994.

So what are your thoughts on this? Do you think he could still be out there somewhere like the movie showed? Could he be immersed in our present day hiding in plain sight since, lets face it, we have drawings of this man but would he stand out in a crowd like the pictures portray? These are the things that keep me up at 3am when I should be sleeping.

As always, I will end this post with a quote, this time from Bram Stockers book, which is one of my favorite quotes in the whole book.

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”