Dracula season 1 premiere recap: The Rules of the Beast

Our story starts in Hungary 1886, announced grandly with a Grimm Fairytale style title card. A diseased looking Jonathan Harker (John Heffernan) sits morose and convalescent in a convent. He looks pathetic and perfectly disgusting. What a fascinating start for Dracula.

A pair of nuns enter: the clever and cynical Sister Agatha (Dolly Wells) accompanied by an unnamed chaperone. Agatha has been studying Harker’s written account of his stay at Castle Dracula, but she would like to hear the story directly from him, including whether he had sexual intercourse with the Count. There is much that is unsettling about Harker, not least of all a fly that lands on his eye and crawls in behind his cornea and then out his mouth. Yeesh.

His tale starts traditionally enough, with a journey into the dark heart of Transylvania, of superstitious villagers and hands pressed with crosses. Harker arrives at Castle Dracula and is greeted first by what seems to a be an impressive vintage of wine and a place set at the dining table. Dracula (Claes Bang) enters sneakily from the stairs above and Harker asks if he can pour him some wine, setting up that classic response: “I do not drink…wine.”

Dracula is old, creaky, and extremely foreign. He’s looking forward to his move to England because he finds the Transylvanian locals to be without flavor. Harker suggests he means “without character.” Despite his advanced decrepitude, Dracula has an odd charm and wit. He and Harker laugh together, although their interactions are somewhat tense and unsettling, Harker’s laughter almost hysterical.

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Things take a dark turn when Dracula insists that Harker is to stay with him for the month in order for him to learn the English ways. No teaching will be necessary, because as long as Harker stays by his side, Dracula can simply absorb him.

The castle is a labyrinth and Dracula warns him to take care in his wanderings. The architect built the castle as a monument to his lost love and died in her cold embrace after its completion. No maps of the castle were ever made and none exist.

Later when Harker cuts himself on some broken glass, the Count chides him to take care. “We cannot return you in any way damaged to your beautiful Mina.” But Harker never mentioned Mina. Sister Agatha suggests a metaphor involving dogs and scent which Harker takes all too literally. “He could smell my thoughts in the air?” But no, that would be ridiculous, and yet we find plausibility in the idea that our stories can be read in our blood. “Blood is lives,” says Dracula. An interesting interpretation of a classic line.

Before bed, Harker hears a scratching at his window, finds a message scratched into the glass and looks out to find a woman hurriedly retreating into a high upper window. Of course the castle wall is sheer and beyond human ability to climb, but what concerns Harker is the message: Help Us. He sets out to find and help whoever left the message.

Meanwhile, as Harker wanders the castle hopelessly by day and grows sickly, Dracula grows stronger and younger as he feeds on Harker by night. Not only that, but his accent, language, and manner becomes increasingly modern and westernized. He is absorbing him. Frustrated in his search, Harker finally asks Dracula if there is anyone else living in the castle. Dracula doesn’t seem to like to lie exactly, so he answers cutely, “No Jonathan, there is no one living here.”

Finally Harker stumbles upon some subterranean chambers filled with boxes of old belongings and photos. How many visitors to Castle Dracula had gone missing over the years? But the boxes aren’t just filled with belongings, they are also filled with the people. They reanimate into these creepy, contortionist corpsey people and swarm Harker. He flees through the tunnels, coming upon a chamber containing an impressive granite tomb engraved with the name Dracula. He’s inside, of course, and Harker becomes cornered between the swarming vampire zombies and the Count himself.

He doesn’t remember any more after that until waking up later in the dining room. He must have passed out. Sister Agatha explains to him that the vampire zombies were undead. Apparently all vampires are undead, but not all undead are vampires. These people are merely undead, an unfortunately common affliction that is somehow passed like a disease between the undead and the living. Some people are cursed to spend their afterlife scratching at their coffin lids. Horrifying! I think Harker must suspect he may be undead, but his story goes on.

Harker awakes in the dining room and is faced with a dashing, charming, and energetic young Count. Wow, what a babe! And just so, so evil. He’s drinking what appears to be a glass of wine, which Harker manages to comment on as an inconsistency. “You said you didn’t drink.” In a perfectly timed moment of camp, Dracula dryly corrects, “Wine,” before moving on to more important things.

Dracula has Harker write three letters, one saying that he’s leaving Castle Dracula in a week, one says he’s leaving the next morning, and one saying he’s left. He’s meant to address these to Mina, whose face he can no longer recognize. These will of course allay suspicion after his inevitable disappearance. Harker recognizes this and know he’s doomed, but he’s more distracted by the crying of a baby that Dracula insists is not there. As Dracula leaves him to his writing, he picks up the carpet-bag that contains the baby and ascends the stairs. Harker insists he hears a baby but Dracula calls down to him in a delicious aggressively condescending sing-song tone: “There is no baby!” It is honestly indescribable and utterly perfect.

Harker decides he must kill Dracula and that he might have an ally in the castle if he could only find her. In a bit of detective work, Harker works out where a hidden map of the castle is and discovers a secret door that leads to Dracula’s bridal chamber. This is where Dracula keeps his vampire brides, trapped in boxes and fed intermittently. The woman who Harker has been seeking is one of these brides and has recently fed on the baby. He will find no help from her and instead becomes trapped in the box himself.

Dracula frees Harker just as the baby reanimates and threatens to feed on him. Dracula has killed his bride, mostly just to see if he could. He’s been alive for centuries but he’s still working out how this vampire thing works, specifically how to reproduce and the laws governing his offspring. He is hilariously fascinated by the undead baby. He’s never seen it work on a baby before!

Dracula takes Harker up to the tower and asks him to describe the sun to him. He hasn’t seen it in centuries and wants to see it through Harker’s eyes. It’s pretty intimate and almost a little sad. Harker tells him to go to hell, but wants desperately to be spared. Dracula ultimately breaks his neck, but Harker reanimates much more quickly than most. Dracula is impressed, specifically because Harker has retained his spirit and core self. He would love to keep him as his new bride. The sun reflects off of Harker’s crucifix and stuns Dracula long enough for Harker to throw himself off the tower.

So Harker is undead, but not yet a vampire. His body washed down the river and out to sea where he was caught in a fisherman’s net and brought to the convent. Sister Agatha, who has been searching for proof of God for ages, finally finds some sign in the fact that Dracula is repelled by crosses.

Meanwhile, Harker is undead and hopeless. He feels he cannot be redeemed and that Mina would never accept him for what he’s become. He can’t even remember her face anyway. It turns out that Sister Agatha’s quiet chaperone has been Mina (Morfydd Clark) the whole time. Once Harker’s identity had been established it wasn’t any great task to find Mina – especially since Sister Agatha knows a detective in London (sneaky Sherlock reference!). Mina has a heart of gold and immediately reassures Harker that she still loves him.

Their tender moment is interrupted by the arrive of Dracula and violent swarm of bats. Mina is scratched and Harker has a hard time resisting the temptation of her blood. Sister Agatha greets Dracula – in wolf form – at the gate. He messily transforms back into his naked, bloody human form and shamelessly paces the gate like a predatory cat. It is both sexy and terrifying.

Sister Agatha calls the forces of the convent, all armed with wooden stakes and eyes averted from Dracula’s nakedness. Sister Agatha puts a theory to the test and opens the gate, believing that he cannot enter without invitation. Luckily that superstition proves to be true. She taunts him with her blood, which he is helpless to resist, proving his ultimate weakness. It is primal, sexy, and a little pathetic. This series is really beginning to provoke a lot of uncomfortable contradictory feelings.

I would also like to note at this point that there is something in Claes Bang’s performance that I find confusingly reminiscent of Jerry Lewis. There are moments of brilliant campiness where Bang goes just over-the-top, especially when proclaiming “Hello, ladies!” A touch of Jerry Lewis shouldn’t work in this context, but it is absolutely genius. I am here for it and I am delighted.

After Sister Agatha’s mastery over Dracula at the gates he is understandably curious about who she is. From the taste of her blood he’s able to discover what most of us must have been suspecting, that Sister Agatha’s last name is Van Helsing. Oh snap!

Harker, believing himself to be a threat to Mina, stabs commits suicide by stake. While Mina believes him to be dead, apparently suicide doesn’t work on vampires. Dracula is able to tempt him to invite him inside, promising to kill him in return. Dracula attacks the convent, setting his wolves upon the Sisters when their crucifixes won’t allow him to get close (although, he says, not for the reason you think and you’ll never guess why).

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Sister Agatha and Mina retreat to an inner room and create a barrier with communion bread. Harker stumbles in and, against Sister Agatha’s advise, Mina invites him across the barrier. But Harker’s beautiful blue eyes are now black and he tears away his own face (in an awesomely gooey John Carpenteresque hybrid CG/practical effect) to reveal Dracula underneath. Horror screams all around. Bloody brilliant!

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