History Literature / TheDraculaTape

* ReligiousHorror: Turned on its head. Dracula is a somewhat lapsed Orthodox Catholic, and considers transformation into a vampire to have no spiritual implications whatsoever. With this in mind, Van Helsing's constant invocation of this trope comes off like the gibbering of a fanatic. Dracula is unsurprised that he thinks crosses will work, but is shocked at the sacrilege of crumbling Communion Hosts into his boxes of earth, a solution that not only does nothing but that Van Helsing apparently made up himself.

* VampireBitesSuck: Usually averted, the exchange of blood is sexual in nature for both parties and he doesn't take much. Played straight in ''The Holmes-Dracula File'', where he catches an enemy that had been torturing him while starving to death and just rips her throat out.

* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Played with; both the main female characters of ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' display a healthy interest in Dracula, ''the'' vampire... except, of course, the whole point of this book is that Dracula ''isn't'' a 'bad boy' (or, at least, isn't the bad guy you thought he was). In fact, it's heavily suggested that the real reason they're interested in him is because, unlike pretty much all the other men in the novel, he treats them respectfully and like they're actual people.

** In a "mainly a jerk from Dracula's point of view" case, Dracula is (grudgingly) willing to concede that maybe, after some very stressful weeks in a terrifying castle with a very strange and apparently supernatural host who doesn't actually explain what his deal, Jonathan Harker was maybe not just being entirely unreasonable when he snapped and ended up trying to kill Dracula a couple of times under the conviction that he was some kind of horrific monster.

* JerkassHasAPoint: Dracula isn't exactly nice, but he does raise some more-or-less good points about why he's not the monster everyone thinks he is -- and how, if he ''was'', he could have had a much easier time against the 'good' guys than he ended up having.

** ''An Old Friend of the Family (1979)

* ReligiousVampire: Dracula is [[RaisedCatholic Catholic, but a lapsed one]]. He still finds sacrilegious when Van Helsing uses communion hosts against him.

%% * GoOutWithASmile: The original novel's use of this is cynically lampshaded by Dracula, who points out that few things must look as peaceful and relaxing to a bunch of scared vampire hunters than ''a dead vampire''.

* ReverseMole: [[spoiler: Mina Harker was plotting with Dracula and feeding Van Helsing's group misinformation through the latter parts of the book.]]

* UnreliableNarrator: The premise of the novel is essentially arguing that large chunks of ''Dracula'' suffer from this. Most dramatically, everything from Mina's perspective or said by her in the original book from her first encounter with the Count on are claimed to be outright fabrications the two cooked up together. On the other hand, the Count's not exactly a saint, and it's suggested that he can be as prone to presenting himself in the best possible light as he accuses his enemies of being. Of these the most glaring is the massacre on the ''Demeter'', where Dracula's version rings much less true than in the rest of the tale (he claims that one of the crew snapped and murdered the others more or less by coincidence). Likewise Dracula's justification for Lucy's death, poisoning from improper blood transfusions, feels like an excuse he cooked up much later since blood types were only discovered a after the novel's events and nobody would have known anything about them at the time.

* UnreliableNarrator: The premise of the novel is essentially arguing that large chunks of ''Dracula'' suffer from this. Most dramatically, everything from Mina's perspective or said by her in the original book from her first encounter with the Count on are claimed to be outright fabrications the two cooked up together. On the other hand, the Count's not exactly a saint, and it's suggested that he can be as prone to presenting himself in the best possible light as he accuses his enemies of being. Of these the most glaring is the massacre on the ''Demeter'', where Dracula's version rings much less true than in the rest of the tale (he claims that one of the crew snapped and murdered the others more or less by coincidence).

* VanHelsingHateCrimes: Dracula lays this charge squarely on the TropeNamer; while the Harkers are just misguided and misled, Van Helsing is actively malicious.
* VirusVictimSymptoms: The original novel's use of this trope is subverted, with many of the original examples of this explained away as being a result of misinformation, hysteria or complete fabrications. Most of Lucy's are due to the attempts at treatment.

* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler: Dr Seward in ''The Holmes-Dracula File'' is planning to release a plague on London.]] Absolutely ''no'' explanation for this is given. It is at one point hinted that [[spoiler: he's bitter about being rejected by Mina himself]], but that's about all we get. Strangely, he's still under the delusion that Dracula is a villain himself, and posits forming an alliance with him.

* GoOutWithASmile: The original novel's use of this is cynically lampshaded by Dracula, who points out that few things must look as peaceful and relaxing to a bunch of scared vampire hunters than ''a dead vampire''.

* [[IdenticalGrandson Identical Sort-Of Cousin]]: When Dracula and Holmes meet in the first sequel they are mistaken for each other a few times, although by the second meeting Holmes has aged and it is no longer the case. In fact the descriptions of each in the original sources are almost identical, which Dracula-as-narrator points out. It turns out they are related, but not closely.

A 1975 comic-horror-adventure novel by Creator/FredSaberhagen, which offers an [[PerspectiveFlip alternative perspective]] on the horror novel ''Literature/{{Dracula}}''. Specifically, it hinges on a fact about the earlier work that is both glaringly obvious and yet easily missed; of the many testimonials provided to record the battle between the vampire Count Dracula, his nemesis Van Helsing, and Van Helsing's allies, one important perspective has been notably omitted -- that of Count Dracula himself. ''The Dracula Tape'' thus revolves around Dracula, several decades later, deciding to finally address this imbalance by hijacking a car belonging to descendants of the Harkers, his old enemies, and by recording his memoirs of the event in question into their tape recorder.

A 1975 comic-horror-adventure novel by Creator/FredSaberhagen, which offers an [[PerspectiveFlip alternative perspective]] on the horror novel ''Literature/{{Dracula}}''. Specifically, it hinges on a fact about the earlier work that is both glaringly obvious and yet easily missed; of the many testimonials provided to record the battle between the vampire Count Dracula, his nemesis Van Helsing, and Van Helsing's allies, one important perspective has been notably omitted -- that of Count Dracula himself. ''The Dracula Tape'' thus revolves around Dracula, several decades later, decide to finally address this imbalance by hijacking a car belonging to descendants of the Harkers, his old enemies, and by recording his memoirs of the event in question into their tape recorder.

* ReligiousHorror: Turned on it's head. Dracula is a somewhat lapsed Orthodox Catholic, and considers transformation into a vampire to have no spiritual implications whatsoever. With this in mind, van Helsing's constant invocation of this trope comes off like the gibbering of a fanatic. Dracula is unsurprised that he thinks crosses will work, but is shocked at the sacrilege of crumbling Communion Hosts into his boxes of earth, a solution that not only does nothing but that van Helsing apparently made up himself.

* ReligiousVampire: Dracula is Catholic, but a non-practicing one. He still finds sacrilegious when Van Helsing uses communion hosts against him.