Patterns of reversals of Christ images in "Dracula" recur throughout the movie. Patients in the asylum respond to Dracula's arrival in England. They recognize their master in much the same way that the the demon possessed respond to Jesus in the gospels. Dracula is the master of the supernatural powers of darkness and through them nature.
Dracula's workers place his home earth and coffin in the ruins of Carfax Abbey. The depiction of his new tomb behind a gate calls to mind similar depictions of the garden tomb of Jesus. The abbey is a holy place, once the site of celebrations of the Eucharist. Now the body and blood of Dracula displace the Christ's.
A garden also provides the scene of Lucy's seduction and rape. Mina and Lucy frolic innocently in the garden during the beginnings of the storm brought on by Dracula. They are like twin daughters of Eve, one dark, one fair. The dark one pure, the other over-sexed.
Sadie Frost, who plays Lucy Westenra, the wanton, chose to dye her brunette hair red to differentiate her more strongly from the dark-haired Winona Ryder (Mina Murray). VIEW STILL The choice of red hair coincides with many Medieval depictions of Judas.
Dracula seduces her by magical powers to come to him in the garden. In the appearance of a werewolf, he rapes her. Later, Lucy will report the memory of an "agonizing feeling" about the incident. Dracula makes her his slave by brutal sex followed by the drinking of her blood. Dracula takes blood, feeds on it, makes his followers lead eternal UnDeath. By contrast, Jesus in the garden begins the giving of his own suffering and blood for the world. According to the Gospel of Luke he even sweats great drops like blood.
Professor Abraham Van Helsing appears first on screen in a scene strongly reminiscent of the Sanhedrin trial in other Jesus films. He explains to his students the diseases of the blood as the story of civilization--"syphilization." He theorizes the link between blood, sin, death, and sexuality. Therefore, Dracula commands a power derived from original sin. He represents the inborn condemnation of humans, their civilization, and their children carried as biological necessity.
The movie includes a provocative parallel to the Last Supper. In it Mina and Count Vlad take absinthe. The liquor is poured over a sugar cube. Traditional Mass dips a wafer in wine. The scene reminds the audience of blood and its link with sin. The camera highlights AB and SIN on the bottle. Sin is carried by blood type. The interpretation of Van Helsing has become the camera's.
Allusions to the Last Supper occur throughout the movie. Dracula curses Lucy with words similar to Jesus' own, "I condemn you to living death, to living UnDeath, to blood." Jesus blesses his disciples, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up in the last day" (John 6:54). Indeed Lucy is resurrected to UnDeath as a vampire. She cruises the night, stealing children.
Dracula seduces Mina in a highly erotic encounter. Mina moves from repressed, saintly, pure virgin to passionate love, tragic love that can lead to her own UnDeath.
Mina drinks from the side of Dracula to her own eternal everlasting UnDeath. In the Gospel of John a Roman soldier spears Jesus' side. Blood and water flow out, symbols of eternal life (John 19:34).
Within the movie, these traditional Christian symbols and words spin and turn on their heads. A new myth is created by out of the old. The new is a tragic tale of sensual, ultimate, loving passion driven awry by the powers of Darkness. Dracula recreates with his own eternal mate a mythic world of life and death that both condemns the Christian world order and destroys the mythic Christ himself. He undoes Christ. Yet Dracula himself cannot remain in the realm of UnDeath. Love for Mina overcomes him. He struggles to deny her his blood.
Dracula's destiny in the movie returns to the order pronounced by Christ. As with classical tragedy, the moral order must be preserved, reestablished. Van Helsing prophesies to Mina, "Your salvation is his destruction." To see the significance of the prophecy see Woman in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
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