Harker almost deserved to be bitten. He doesn't realize that Dracula's wife is a vampire and allows her too close to his neck. He shows Dracula a picture of his fiance, putting her in danger. He doesn't wear a cross or carry anything for protection. He comes to kill Dracula in the early evening. He kills the wife first, the weaker of the two creatures, allowing Dracula time to wake up.
Seriously, everything about that guy says "BITE ME PLEASE!!!"
I think he was so afraid of Dracula and nervous about failing his mission that he couldn't even think straight. Because of this he acted first and thought later. Horror movies wouldn't be horror movies without dumb characters.
Come, fly the teeth of the wind. Share my wings.
I always believed that because Harker was a seemingly compassionate man, that he wanted to help this poor woman by putting her out of her own eternal misery as quickly as possible. So I think that his compassion for the woman ultimately overrode his own better judgement and common sense in his main objective to destroy The Count.
share"Dumb characters"
That's the truth! Nobody in these movies ever goes to kill the vampire in the middle of a sunny day. They always wait until the sun is setting before they go down to the crypt. But, if you do things the easy way, you have no movie.
at least in this movie they imply that he was knocked out and didn't recover until sunset, unlike the Lugosi version where Van Helsing spends two days twiddling his thumbs.
How you can make the world a better place:
Don't shop at Wal-Mart.
Good point mister ehh?
,,Now this is good... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9HvXMnfwmk
It's called *beep* scripting.
But everyone's too much of a slavish fanboy and movie snob to admit it.
It's simply awful writing.
They stupidly made Harker a vampire hunter, they then found the film was going to end 10 minutes after it started by having him stand over a helpless Dracula with a stake, so had him.....walk away!
They had him IGNORE the VERY REASON he was even there.
So it was crap writing (and messing with Stoker's perfectly plotted set-up) but they could have salvaged it by simply having the Bride wake up and stop him OR having Dracula sense he was there, wake up and stop him.
ANYTHING other than have him....walk away!
www.beardyfreak.com
I picked up on that on my first viewing.
He stands over Dracula in his coffin, but instead of staking him, he goes over to the woman to stake her first.
And I'm tried of the old excuse "If he did kill Drac, there would be no more story."
Thankfully, Cushing carries the rest of the film.
And I agree that Sangster was second-rate. At times, he was trying to imitate Nigel Kneale (CRAWLING EYE), but couldn't come up to his first-class standards.
And why didn't he bring along a crucifix? That's like John Wayne forgetting his gun.
And why didn't he make a crucifix with the stakes he had when Drac approached him?
SIMPLE- There would be no more story.
"If I want to be executed, I'll make damn sure he is my lawyer"
Exactly.
But if Sangster had left Stoker alone (and just made Harker a friend of Van Helsings) & kept him as an unknowing, unprepared, amateur none of that would have even be an issue.
I can't even see (like I said, just making them close friends would quickly link Harker to Van Helsing) how making Harker a vamp hunter streamlined the story.
It just made holes that weren't there in the story they already had!
www.beardyfreak.com
Something else occured to me, and I wonder how I initially missed it:
Why didn't Dracula lock the door to the basement tombs before retiring to his crypt, so no one could get in there to stake him?
Instead, Harker is able to get into the crypt, but naturally blows it, by being the dumb Galahad who "saves" Drac's mistress's soul from his demonic powers.
And didn't I just hear someone say, "Yeah, but don't you know, if he did that, the film would have been over."
Or maybe I was just dumb, and too smart to admit it.
There (catches breath) . Now I feel so much better.
oh my god, dude!!! you're totally spot on!! I love this movie, LOVE IT!! but I too was almost glad when harker bit the dust and van helsing stepped in to elevate the awesomeness of this film.
share
Yes, he is careless/dumb/thoughtless/incompetent... you name it. But he had to be, in order to give us a few minutes of tension down in the crypt and to bring later the Van Helsing character into the scene.
Well, Harker has already been bitten, so is under a vampiric influence, and hardly likely to make logical decisions. And as to Dracula locking his crypt - well what about Artistic Licence? Stoker himself does exactly the same sort of thing when he has Dracula bite Lucy at Whitby - who, out of the teeming millions in England is Harker's fiancee's best friend!!!!
"Pardon me my ear is full of milk."
Thank you for posting that. Being unduly influenced by the bite... may not be the most convincing explanation, but it's just plausible enough (within the reality of the movie) to make it acceptable. I prefer to be able to see some sort of logic behind the less explicable events in a movie.
Now I just need an explanation as to why Harker didn't look for Dracula when he first arrived at the castle. It was daytime and he clearly had enough time to eat a meal (served up by the vampire he was there to hunt!) and write in his diary. Maybe some sort of need to make face to face contact first... but I can't imagine why.
I agree with that last part. He even calmly wrote in his diary that he was going to take care of Dracula tomorrow....apparently unconcerned about the evil lurking just outside his room. That seemed rather fantastical or unbelievable. "Oh there's a bloodthirsty vampire in the house? Ah that's tomorrow's problem, guess I'll get some shut-eye!" Yeah not so much!
shareNever do today what you can put off until tomorrow. He died from chronic procrastination!
shareIt was his maiden staking. We can't all be top quality first time round.
My impression is that Dracula has a psy force shield creating a mental block on Harker when he is in the inner sanctum. Harker probably wants to stake Drac first but this psy block makes him unconsciously choose to stake the wench instead, giving Dracula a layer of defense. I am wording it strangely perhaps, but the basic concepts aren't unheard of in the Hammer Dracula reality.
An unknown time passes because Dracula not only has time to rise from his coffin, but go out of the sanctum and come back in. Perhaps Harker is out of it for several minutes, as we are when viewing it. Dracula has put this mental block on us as well!
What I don't get is why van Helsing would let Harker go it alone while being obviously inexperienced. If that was addressed, I don't remember it.
.
If you believe in vampires running around, you got to look the other way when stuff happens that doesn't make sense.
Oh dear, now more than ever we can use you in our sadly depleted organization.
The way it was 'addressed' was that Harker was there under false pretenses....he was supposedly some sort of librarian or bibliophile, who was going to arrange or rearrange Count Dracula's library. So if you had two guys show up, it could be suspicious. But I suppose that if the collection was large enough, you can make the argument that two people are needed. We can only assume that Dracula put out some sort of advertisement, though, and was only looking for one person. But if that's the case, then send Van Helsing and not the new guy. So yeah, a little weak there.
shareHarker should had been awarded the Darwin ward.
Its that man again!!