All Bleed the Same Way That We Do

Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing

Van Helsing as a vampyre is just...frightening. For whatever reason.

I suppose it's rather like what Sherlock Holmes said of the horrid father in The Speckled Band - how that a doctor gone bad (paraphrase mine....) is the worst.

And, it makes sense too! Just as a doctor knows the ways to heal and diagnose and treat and can easily turn such knowledge to darkly serve his turn, so could Van Helsing adapt all of his knowledge of hunting vampyres to protect himself should he be turned.

Although, Van Helsing would probably walk out into the sun rather than remain soulles and undead..... The only way he'd stay a vampyre would be if - as with Buffy's vampyres - his personality was changed too. Or however that works....  I've not actually seen that series.

Of course, there's also the chance that he would continue to exist and still hunt vampyres. Or study them to create a cure for others....  He's a very interesting character, certainly.

Although, on the subject of vampyres, how would that even work? Killing oneself that is....

I'm going to just preface this here and say that I am not Catholic, and know very little about it save what I know from history. So....please forgive my ignorance.

First, the destruction of vampyres has countless ties in with the Christian religion. Quite sensibly, given that the Church dominated most of the civilised world. Holy Water, crosses, prayers, wooden stakes - all have their origins in Christianity. Even the idea of vampyres being soulless and of Satan has its roots in it.

Of course, vampyres (the blood-sucking monsters at least) predate even Rome in some instances, and have been around longer than Christianity has - but the modern vampyre has it's roots in the vampyre of the Medieval ages. Or late Medieval ages as the case may be.

So, if so many other things come from Christianity, perhaps the reason that they don't kill themselves did as well.

Of course, there are the vampyres that are completely evil - Dracula and whoever the son was in Brides of Dracula... - and there are the vampyres that seem to be basically brainless - the Brides that follow the men for the most part - and then there are those that hate what they've become. On that list there's only one certain name - although Harker likely fit as well.

She had tried to keep her son that had become a vampyre, and she never killed him. This ended up being a mistake - of course - and he turned her. And she hated it. And yet, she doesn't do anything about it, really. Tell Van Helsing, of course.

Baron Von Meinster! That was his name. Sorry....

But she reveals herself to Van Helsing, who had come for her son, and she does nothing to him. He kills her, and then she is at peace.

But what if killing themselves didn't work? A suicide was damned eternally - how would a vampyre suicide fare? Hardly any better! But if another killed them, another freed them..... Then perhaps they could be at peace.

If this is true, then it would make sense that the vampyres keep fighting: because letting someone kill you is the same as suicide. More or less.....

"Who is it that has no fear?"

 

"Only God has no fear."

 

"Why have you come hear?"

 

"To find your son."

 

"Then you know who I am?"

 

"I know who you were."

 

"We haven't asked for any help."

 

"You need it all the same."

 

"I have been expecting you.

 

"I rather thought you might."

 

Those quotes aren't all from the same people, nor are the even from the same film. The same series, certainly; and every other line is Van Helsing's - but lines seven and nine are from two different films. Lines seven and eight are from Horror of Dracula, and lines nine and ten are from the film Satanic Rites of Dracula, I think? I don't know - I've not seen it, just read the dialogue from that scene. Lines one through six are from Brides of Dracula. Like I said: same series.

 

Yes. This is going to be yet another rambling musing on things related to Peter Cushing. If you've read anything I've posted up to this? The Reader should not be surprised. Besides, I could be dumping these all in one post instead of spreading them out over several days.....

 

He's an intruiging man. Van Helsing is. or Cushing's at least - I've not gotten around to reading Stoker's book yet.

 

 he's no one important, really - simply a doctor, or a professor. In Hammer's 1958 film, he says that he has studied the vampyres or the 'Undead'. but he is still just a man working alone. He spends his free hours researching monsters in the dark and in the shadows, and then he leaves the safety of his rooms and goes out to meet them on their own ground.

 

He's weak compared to them - and he is wholly aware of it. If he's too tired, if one should catch him unawares, if he is looking away.... There are countless ways they could get the advantage of him. For goodness sakes - he's armed with water, crucifixes, and wooden stakes that are basically useless unless the vampyre is asleep.

 

He's not strong. Once he falls into the grasp of the vampyre, he's soon overpowered. The one time he escaped was because the vampyre stood up and so wasn't holding him tightly any longer. (And if Dracula at any point after thought he had any hope of being victorious over Van Helsing, he should have remembered his actions then...) He also faints under stress (well, in rewatching it, it's possible that he was also passing out from oxygen deprivation. If one assumes that the makers shortened the time necessary for such deprivation to occur by a LOT at least....) and is hardly the champion one would choose to fight off the Undead.

 

 He is a gentleman. He's much better suited for the academic or healing circles. He belongs in the sitting room, or in the street laying out his cloak for a lady to cross a puddle. He's soft spoken, and rather introverted: someone who spends his days reading and his nights dreaming.

 

He's a healer - indeed, he sees his actions as an act of great healing. While that's true, he shouldn't be one to have murder sleeping people - even if they are monsters and undead.

 

What started him on this path? What made him begin to research and learn all he could about Vampyres? Who has he had to kill that he knew? He knew Jonathan, and yet he was still able to kill him.....  And he had to kill Lucy himself too - were there others? Nearer perhaps?

 

Why does he keep going? Why does he go to the ends of the world to find these people? How does he not hate them for what they are?

 

He's much stronger than he looks. Physically, probably - but morally certainly. It's why he can kill them and get their blood literally all over his hands. It's why he can walk out into the night knowing what would like nothing better than to eat him for dinner. It's why he can leave the safety of his rooms and venture out into lonely lands after monsters that could turn suddenly at bay and undo him.

 

"Who is it that has no fear?"

 

"Only God has no fear."

 

And he's terrified. He has researched these creatures. He knows what will happen to him if he slips up once  - and he has had his nightmare fullfilled. He walked away that time, but how does he know it wasn't a one-time thing?

 

Indeed - why did he do that?

 

It's why I think that he would walk out into the sun rather than remain a vampyre. He pressed a red-hot square of iron to his throat to burn out a vampyre bite - and he's not such an idiot to think it wouldn't be agony.

 

He's stronger than he seems, but he does not advertise it. He is content to remain in the background, yet he does not linger when he is needed in the forefront. He cares deeply for those around him, but he does not let sentiment cloud his judgement.

 

He is.... He is a safe man. And he fears God. There's just...something about him. The items he holds, they are not merely instruments that work to destroy the undead.

 

....how else might he have found out they worked? He had to have met a vampyre to know they exist.....



"Even a Bit Mad. It Helps to be Mad."

Peter Cushing

There are very, very few actors I like in all situations. So far, Cushing is almost the only one. Or the only one - I can't recall.

That being said, he's also quite amusing.

And I'm a writer.

And have I mentioned that I quite enjoy mythology?

Well, I certainly do. Usually, I just adapt them to High Fantasy. It negates any complications that may arise from using characters, and creatures, and even plots from mythology. If one takes antiquated folk faery stories and removes them to an original setting and situation, then it is yours free and clear.



Thus what I usually do with mythology. This method also has the added bonus of making it completely possible to write the best mythological creatures sans the....rather horrid bits.

Let us take, for example, vampyres.

Yes, I'm rather stuck on this subject. Well, it was Shakespeare and now it's vampyre's and I'm sure it will change to history or something in the near future. If it's any consolation, but fixations tend to cycle through in semi-regular order, so.....

Vampyres - vampires? I've no idea why I spell it with a 'y' rather than an 'i'. I suspect the same reason I use the archaic spelling of 'faery', but that's beside the point. Suffice to say that by 'vampyre' I do indeed refer to the undead, blood-sucking, soulless creatures of mythology and society.

Vampyres are rather interesting creature. As a monster, they have such elegant, dangerous properties. As a protagonist, they have such potential for redemption - albeit not as much for a happy ending. As a mythology, they lend an aura to the night and to the old places of habitation. As a people, they have a rich wealth of culture and traditions to pull from.

As I said before, modern vampyres just seem...different. Separate. More vicious. More human. Sparkling. Things like that.

This sort of all started out when the vampyre in Brides of Dracula attacked Van Helsing. In Underworld and other vampyre culture, their methods seem more akin to....an animal mauling a victim.

Certainly, this would have helped disguise their presence did they exist - but in the first two Hammer vampyre films, it is no where near so....animalistic.

Vampyres have in my mind always held a place of...elegance. It is a fatal elegance, certainly; and deadly, dearly bought beauty - but it is beauty nonetheless. There's a definitely fatal attraction in it - indeed, as there is meant to be.

The world 'vampyre' originates for a word that meant 'seductress'.

 

For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil

But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a towedged sword.

Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell.

Lest though shouest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.

Hear me know therefore, O ye children, depart not from the words of my mouth.

Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house:



2004 Van Helsing Vampyre Brides

Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel:

Lest strangers be filles with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger;

And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed.

 



--Proverbs 5:3-11

Looked at the right way, the excerpt from Proverbs can easily apply to vampyres. And why not? The legend had to come from somewhere.....  Stories and warnings about a 'strange woman', whose house led down to hell and which held the dead? Not exactly something most people would be thrilled to meet in the night. Time passes, parents are misunderstood by young, bored children; and there's a new monster in the night.

Let's explore this for a little bit - what this could mean for the origins of defeating such creatures.

I'll take much of my biology or mythology or what have you from Hammer's First two films as I quite preferred their version over many others.

Brides of Dracula - windmill cross

The primary weapon against the vampyres is actually the Cross. They're probably blessed crosses or something, given that Holy Water is incredibly corrosive to them - but still. The Cross. In fact, it's so harmful to the creatures that putting two normal candlesticks across one another in the form of a cross repulses Dracula, and turning the wings (hands? bars? spinning things?) of a windmill actually kills a vampyre.

And that just negates the necessity for the items to be blessed given I doubt anyone and handily done so that that specific windmill. And if so, then Van Helsing is by far the most fortunate person in all Christendom.

So, we've established that crosses are harmful to even a fatal degree to vampyres. On a side note, why couldn't I use this topic for a school essay? Instead, I have to write about dull things such as authors....

However, still working on the basis - premise? - that vampyres stand for seductresses especilly, and temptation in general; what does this weakness represent?

But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. -- Romans 3:14

 

What then shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? -- Romans 8: 31

 

Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee. -- Psalm 119:11

God is the shield and strength against and from temptation. Depending on him will defeat all monsters in the dark. The Cross is a symbol basically synonymous with God and Christ - little wonder it would be so powerful against vampyres.

It's rather like the times Jesus met demons  - or vice versa. They recognised and feared him. They knew their time was limited, but they also knew that God (and Jesus) held power over them. The vampyres in Horror of Dracula and Brides of Dracula (why is it even called that? I understand the 'brides' part - there were definitely more female victims; but 'Dracula'? He wasn't even in the film!) certainly fit this part, as they are also the damned. They are soulless - unable to be with God or be at peace.

Lee's Count Dracula

 Interestingly enough, I found that vampyres - at least this version. Obviously, there are later versions that sparkle when exposed to full sunlight, and others that at least have no reaction whatsoever - must have contact with their native ground while they are sleeping the day away.

 

Obbviously, the reason for sleeping underground or in coffins is obvious, as they do burn away into ash when exposed to the sunlight. However, when Dracula finds it necessary to leave his native country and go to England, he fills the bottom of his coffin with dirt and brings it with him across the Channel.

 

As long as I'm drawing correlations where none likely exist, this reminds me again of temptation and the circumstances wherein it is moste potente.

 

Yes, I used incredibly archaic spelling - I can't help it. For some reason, it looks better in certain situations..... At least I'm still speaking English.

 

Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, but doeth it not, to him it is sin. --James 4:17

 

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. -- James 4:7

 

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lusts and enticed. -- James 1:4

 

Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. -- 2 Timothy 2:22

 

The verses don't fit quite - but they do to me.....

 

Sin and temptation tends to be rather...limited. If one has a great weakness for robbing banks; don't walk into one with a ski mask, gun, and duffle bag. If one is greatly tempted to shoplift, don't go shopping alone with a wide-brimmed hat and spacious pockets. If one has a tendency to be drawn away into impure thoughts, don't go into a club with scantily dressed performers.

 

"Flee also youthful lusts." 'Lust' is almost synonymously associated with 'seduction' - thus, with 'vampyres'. Just as the weakness for impure thoughts or robbing banks (with probably isn't so likely - but it was an obvious example) is going to be strongest in a Red Light District (or around Ladies of the Night. I rather refuse to be more explicit....) or in a poorly guarded and heavily stocked bank vault, so are vampyres going to be strongest in their native land.

 

On native soil, they have the ability to sleep in daylight anywhere; while if they leave, they must return to their crypt before dawn. If day is breaking, on has only to run out into it - to flee the vampyre - and they will not (cannot) follow.



I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

Yes, it's a weak connection - I don't care.

Another interesting thing that I'd borrow from the films and lore is that Vampyres are soulless. That their soul 'dies' but their body and consciousness lives on. To a Christian this is.....Hell, in a way. To be eternally damned - ever separated from God and any peace he might offer.

Oh, look....  Another correlation or analogy....

The victim is trapped. At first, it is enticing, alluring. It appears beautiful and safe. But then, once the victim is ensnared, then it sheds its beautiful coating and becomes the monster it truly is. Likewise is sin. Temptation is beautiful, lovely - something to be had.

Immortality is something that has always been thought longingly of - hardly anyone has not at one point in their life mused on living forever rather than dying. The entire basis of vampyres is surviving death - to then live forever, unaging. Granted, that isn't so pleasant a prospect for the aged that are converted - but rarely are vampyres seen as such anyway. Probably some sort of deficiency in the blood or whatnot....

And so, vampyres lure their victims in. They promise them love, strength, immortality, protection, whatever.....  They enthrall and mesmerise their victims so their victim continues to return to them each night or each time until it is too late! And they die and rise again soulless. Rise again forever separated from God.

That would be a hopeless prospect. I mean, on one hand, right now, it would be a relief - to not have to think of what would come should I become too weak and fall. But on the other hand..... To be unable to communicate with God or anything? that would be a nightmare, especially as time passed. Goodness, the years so far have seemed both too fast and too slow - were I immortal? Simply horrid...

And yet.... "But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above all that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." --1 Corinthians 10:13

And, of course, what is the way by which all vampyres may be killed? A wooden stake through the heart. sunlight too - but a stake is usually more...utilised, and still persists to this day while the burning to ash from sunlight has been replaced by....sparkling.

Just.....whyyyyy???? This will never cease to irk me.... Perhaps I would have considered reading them at some point out of boredom perhaps - but SPARKLING? I. Think. Not. So apparently it was written by a Morman and so probably safe and appropriate to read - do I care? Nope. Make a proper appropriate vampire, thank you.

Sorry - digression. Again.

Nope. You shan't ever be free of them.

But! Vampyres! And the obvious way to kill them!

In neither of the films - Brides of Dracula or Horror of Dracula - did Van Helsing nor any other character stake a living vampyre. The only living vampyres killed (or awake vampyres, giving they're all undead) were either burnt to ash by the sun, or killed by the massive sign of the cross.

Of course, the speed and strength  necessary to drive a wooden stake through the intercostal muscles, serous membrane, possibly a lung, the sack around the heart, and finally the heart itself is an awful lot, especially if the victim of such an injury is strong and fast and undead. Assuming, of course, that one doesn't hit bone, or stab up through the diaphragm. In any case, unless one is a Slayer, or highly trained in martial arts or fighting, or is a superhero, it would be a bit difficult and likely to fail.

So Van Helsing simply carried a mallet and drove the wooden stake through the front of the chest. Usually with more than one required strike as well. Dying, the vampyres would scream - but once the deed was done, every single face was at peace.

Dracula's wasn't - but he was burnt to ash by the sun; so his circumstances are different.

So while the vampyres are undead, they are not eternally damned. They can still be released. It isn't completely hopeless and bleak.

On a side note, originally, there were qualifications for the wood used for stakes - as long as we're drawing parallels between the undead and Christianity. Ash, Hawthorn, Oak, Holly, and I heard of Dogwood once - all woods that have been said (somewhere.....) to be used for the first Cross of christ, or are associated in some other way with his birth or death. Thus? Again through Jesus' birth or death we are freed from sin.

Please, bear in mind that I am no expert. I merely appreciate the past and enjoy extrapolating....

My apologies to all who think this subject is sacreligious or something....