"We've All Become God's Madmen"

Dracula and movies were born out of the same world. The novel came out in 1897, just as moving pictures were attracting crowds at fairs and exhibitions all over Europe and America. Given their common background it's no surprise that the legendary vampire has been the subject of countless films since Nosferatu first appeared in 1922. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the first and only movie to openly acknowledge this relationship with lots of creative visual effects and nods to the film industry of yesteryear. Though this movie was probably a big part in the “emo-ization” of vampires, I love it all the same. Sometimes the crazy story of love and Dracula’s on-again off-again relationship with God really hits home for me, other times I have to laugh the whole thing off. But however I’m feeling about the story (or lack thereof) at any particular moment, I will always love this movie as a great achievement in visual filmmaking.

I seem to recall a lot of marketing hoopla around this movie when it first came out in November of 1992, but at the time I was more interested in Aladdin and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. But Dracula provided excellent adult counter programming for that holiday season and did pretty good business at the box office. In my adolescent years boys were always watching it at sleepovers thanks to some generous nude scenes, but I missed it during those years, too. I only finally saw it when I was a junior in high school, after finding it in a VHS bargain bin a few days after Halloween. I was going through a period of life at the moment when a big Gothic love story was right up my alley, plus I’ve always been a huge history buff, so when I finally popped the movie into the VCR and saw the cross tumble from the roof of Hagia Sofia as the Turks conquered Constantinople, it was love at first sight.

This movie is over the top in every way possible, and that only makes it better. In the first four minutes alone you get a Turkish invasion of Romania, a puppet-show battle scene, shots of brutal impalement, a gorgeous shot of Dracula’s bride plunging what appears to be a million feet to her death in the river, statues crying bloody tears, and finally a giant explosion of blood. This movie uses every cinematic trick in the book to create an experience unlike any other.

When movies first started they owed as much to magicians as to actors and directors; some of the earliest film makers were also professional magicians. They saw the medium as a way to expand on the visual illusions they employed in their magic acts, and thus special effects were born. Bram Stoker’s Dracula indulges in these old school effects with fiendish relish, giving the film an antiquated feeling that perfectly fits with the Dracula storyline. It’s almost as if you’re watching an elaborate Victorian era carnival attraction whirl to life with music, bells, and an organ grinder’s monkey. Almost every effect is done live on set, from the aforementioned death of Princess Elisabeta to Jonathan Harker’s carriage ride to Dracula’s castle; even the multitudinous explosions of blood are all happening for real. There’s not a single “location” used in this movie—every leaf, every waterway, every castle and manor house is constructed on a soundstage, allowing the creators to preserve that old-school cinema look.

The story of Dracula is well known enough that I won’t go into it here. What the movie adds to an otherwise faithful adaptation of the book is a love story between Dracula and Mina. I still don’t quite understand whether Mina is meant to be the reincarnation of Dracula’s dead wife, or just look like her enough that the resemblance shocks his soul towards salvation, but like I’ve said the story is really a moot point. Like the book, the best part of the story is Jonathan Harker’s journey to Dracula’s castle in Romania. After that, the book descends sharply into Victorian heroic clichés as Dracula sneaks around London, but the movie keeps on wowing us with new locations, special effects, and montages. The sequence in the final third of the film, clearly modeled after the successful montage that concluded The Godfather, is equally entertaining and a whole lot more fun. On one hand, you have the marriage of Jonathan and Mina Harker in a beautiful Eastern Orthodox ceremony, and, at the same time, poor Lucy Westenra’s neck being torn open by wolf-Dracula. It’s so over the top that in any other movie it might make you laugh, but in this film it’s perfect.

But this movie isn’t about the story, it’s about visuals and raw emotions. Gary Oldman’s performance is so tortured and sinister without creeping into parody that he carries the whole film on his shoulders. We feel for Dracula not because the story gives us a lot of reason to, but because Oldman infuses the character with such a sadness and sense of loss. His expressions and mannerisms are perfect for a man who has been at war with God for 400 years, conveying all the anger, hurt, and betrayal that would fill such a life. Is Gary Oldman the best Dracula ever? I guess that's debatable (though if you argued he wasn't, I think you'd lose the debate.) He is unarguably the best actor ever to play Dracula, so it only stands to reason that he brings far more to the part than any actor before him. If he hasn't replaced Bela Lugosi yet as the definitive image of Dracula, he sure should.

The other actors are all fine. Winona Ryder makes a suitably naïve Mina, and Sadie Frost is fun as the vampire-in-waiting Lucy. Anthony Hopkins really seems to find the fun in Van Helsing, and plays him as a man far crazier than Dracula. In the old Dracula movies Van Helsing was always rather stern and humorless—Hopkin’s makes him into a wild eccentric with a twisted sense of humor. Sorry Hugh Jackman, but this Van Helsing has you far outclassed.

And then there’s Keanu Reeves. Sweet, lovable Keanu. His performance in this film might be one of the worst ever recorded. From the moment he utters his first line you’ll be in stitches. It’s as if he was a foreign actor trained to read English for the first time just for this film. He suffers through the only slightly archaic dialogue like it was completely unknown to him, and seeing his bizarre reactions and truly terrible accent is a sheer delight. He’s so out of place, just looking at him is funny. In one scene near the beginning of the film, Mina types in her diary while looking at a framed photo of her Jonathan. It’s not supposed to be funny, but I dare you to look at a 19th century photograph of Ted Theodore Logan wearing period clothes and a blank, emotionless expression and not crack a smile. Keanu Reeves’ performance in this film ranks right up there with Coppola’s other casting disaster, Sophia Coppola in Godfather III, but this one is a million times funnier. Coppola couldn’t have gotten it more wrong if he’d cast an anteater.

But despite that rather gigantic fault the movie is amazing. It’s easily in my top ten of all time, for sheer audacity if nothing else. I know I’ve bad mouthed the story from time to time, but there are definitely days when it does work for me. It’s a story told in images and emotions rather than words, but if you let it wash over you it can raise a lot of questions about God and man and forgiveness and sin and evil. God definitely exists in Dracula’s world, and we’re left with the question of why a divine being would allow Dracula to live so far outside of God’s mercy and allow all the evil Dracula causes. Is it just to teach him a lesson? Or is the movie essentially a retelling of the prodigal son story, but with more blood and vampires? Or is it all about the redemptive power of love, divine or otherwise? It was honestly the hopeless love story element that made this movie so appealing to me in high school. There are moments in everyone’s life when a love so powerful it can survive the grave seems like a mighty entertaining notion, and the romantic sucker in me still enjoys watching Gary Oldman’s Dracula pine away for his Mina.

I’ve watched this movie at least once during the fall for over ten years now—it’s become an essential part of the Halloween season. This is the movie that turned Dracula into a sympathetic monster and unfortunately started vampires on their journey to harmless if sensual romantic leading men. But Bram Stoker’s Dracula still has it all—creepy tombs, haunted castles, obsessive love, a vengeful God, and oodles of impressive special effects and gorgeous cinematography. This is Gothic horror done to absolute perfection.

See it. See it now.

"What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse"--Classic Gaming Meets Classic Monsters

And the Rest (1994-present)

After Super Castlevania IV the series took a hiatus for a few years. As a loyal Sega Genesis owner, I loved the next entry in the series, 1994’s Castlevania: Bloodlines, the first to appear for the Sega. The music and graphics were slightly behind the SNES, of course, but the game made up for it by letting you choose from two characters and amping up the gore levels to Sega standards. Even the plot tied into real world history—on the eve of World War I, an evil sorcerer revives Elizabeth Bathory, who in turn starts a plan to revive Dracula himself. The heroes, John Morris and Eric Lecarde, equipped with the classic whip and a super-deadly spear, respectively, set off across real European locations, such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Versailles Palace on a mission to once again put Dracula to rest. It’s chock full of typical Castlevania action, and many purists consider this the last “true” Castlevania game.

To many, the series achieved perfection with 1997’s Symphony of the Night for the original Playstation. Here the series returned to the ideas in Castlevania II and crafted a non-linear, go anywhere game filled to the brim with weapons, power ups , and unlockable secrets. This time you played not as a Belmont, but as Alucard (get it?), the super emo-goth son of Dracula (who made his first appearance in Castlevania III). Alucard could turn into a wolf, a bat, or mist, and was an all around badass. So much so, in fact, that the game is ridiculously easy. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a blast from start to finish and deserves its reputation as one of the greatest games ever made, but there’s simply no difficulty. By the time you get to the end, Alucard will be so powerful that he could brush off a nuclear war with the wave of his sword. Not even his dad Dracula can stand up to him.

Symphony of the Night is worth playing now for the cheesy voice acting alone. You’ve never heard bad acting until you hear Dracula speak the immortal line, “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!” Voice acting aside, the game’s presentation is top notch, and despite my love for old school CV, if you play just one game in the series, it should probably be this one.



I am probably alone in my enjoyment of Castlevania for Nintendo 64. This was the series’ first excursion into 3D, and a lot of the jumping and fighting was indeed awkward. But the game also had a lot of fun adventure elements, the chance to fight vampires other than just Dracula, and many endings and ways to play. Running through a hedge maze while being chased by a chainsaw wielding Frankenstein’s Monster is easily worth fifty bucks, if you ask me. If you bother to check game reviews from the time the game came out, you’ll find that they’re almost universally positive, but today game writers would have you believe they hated the 3D Castlevania from day one. Not so, I’m afraid.
Chastised by the failure (imagined or otherwise) of Castlevania 64, the game retreated to the world of the 2D handheld platforms—the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS. For the last ten years, with the exception of a few mediocre PS2/X-Box games and an ill-advised fighting game for the Wii, Konami has simply copied Symphony of the Night again and again and again for the portable platforms, and the character designs have gotten farther and farther away from their Gothic horror roots. Current Castlevania “men” are designed to look prettier than any girl I’ve ever met—I understand that that’s popular in Japan, but it’s starting to get more than a little weird.

At E3 a few months ago, Konami announced an all new 3D Castlevania game for X-Box 360 and PS3, Lords of Shadow, that promises to be more than another Symphony of the Night clone. With professional voice acting, a gritty medieval setting, and a promise to take the series back to the action oriented roots of Castlevania and Super Castlevania IV, this game is certainly one to watch. (Though it could just be terrible again, resulting in another glut of Symphony of the Night clones and possibly the death of Castlevania on the mainstream consoles. So let’s hope it’s good!)

That got very lengthy, but I’ve been waiting to write about these games for a while. What better time than Halloween to recall the glory days of opening the classic silver Konami box and taking an 8-bit trip to Transylvania?

"What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse"--Classic Gaming Meets Classis Monsters

Super Castlevania IV (1991)

When I was in elementary school, fantasizing about the long distant day when the Super Nintendo would become a reality, Super Castlevania IV was one of those games that kept me up at night with anticipation. I saw pictures in magazines, but I really didn’t believe any game, on any system, could look anywhere near that good.

But it did. It may seem old-fashioned now, but when it came out in late 1991 it was a showpiece game for the Super Nintendo. Some of the extra graphical touches are a little gratuitous—I’ve yet to figure out exactly what I’m inside when the room is spinning like a barrel in the fourth level. It looks cool, but that’s about it. No matter what you think of the some of the graphical bells and whistles, there’s no question that this game is visually leaps and bounds ahead of the NES games. The transition from 8-bit to 16-bit was as revolutionary in its time as the change from 2D to 3D gaming would be a few years later, and one need look no further than Super Castlevania IV for evidence.

It remains unclear exactly what the storyline of this game was supposed to be, but most agree that it is essentially a remake and expansion of the first game. You again play as Simon Belmont on a quest to kill Dracula. This time Simon’s hair is brown both in the game and on the box, plus he’s upgraded his wardrobe to a suit of stylish black armor. For some reason, instead of leg armor he wears a very short armored skirt, but we can forgive him. I guess fighting Dracula requires a lot of flexibility. Thanks to the Super Nintendo’s power the new Simon is also several times taller than his NES incarnation. He actually looks like a human being, his animation is much improved, and he moves less like a bag of rocks. Outside of Simon the game sports great new graphical touches all over. From the ghostly horses in the background of stable level to the eerie dining tables in the first level of Dracula’s castle, the designers put in so many little flourishes that you’ll be noticing something new on every playthrough.

Like the very first Castlevania, this game is completely linear, though like Castlevania II and III some of the stages take place outside of the castle itself. If losing the freedom of Castlevania II and the choices and companions from Castlevania III seems like a step back for the series, Castlevania IV makes up for it with absolutely stellar side scrolling action. This is the only Castlevania game ever where Simon’s whip actually works like a whip instead of just a long stick. You can attack with the whip in any direction, and even, in some instances, swing from it like Indiana Jones (though why Dracula would fill his castle with objects specifically designed for whip swinging is beyond me). All this versatility makes the game slightly easier than the NES classics, but there are still plenty of opportunities for the gnashing of teeth.

Enemy design really shines in Castlevania IV as well, once again owing to the Super Nintendo’s improved capabilities. By this time it was finally possible to have giant bosses that take up the entire screen, and some of the boss monsters, like the giant golem and the twin sea serpents, are particularly memorable. I personally enjoy the bizarre creepiness of the dancing ghosts at the end of level 6. There’s something about a ghostly couple who are equally intent on dancing as they are on murdering the player that’s very effective. Only Dracula himself is a little disappointing. After so many innovative bosses, the fight with Dracula, who has essentially one form (he even gives you life, for the love of God!) is pretty anticlimactic, as is the overused “collapsing castle” ending. At least in Castlevania II and III we got a little bit of badly translated text to go with the scene.

Last but not least, special mention goes to the music. The Super Nintendo’s music chip was one of the big reasons it finally won out against the Genesis, and with the already stellar tunes of Castlevania the system really delivered. “Vampire Killer,” “Bloody Tears,” and “The Beginning” from the previous three games all make their triumphant return here, each one more fleshed out and powerful than ever before. In addition there are plenty of new tracks, each one just right for the level. The standout from this game is probably “Simon’s Theme”—it accompanies the very first level, and puts one in the mood for some cheesy Universal Monster slaying adventures.



Castlevania IV is one of the best games for Super Nintendo, but it was the end of an era. Soon the popular series would go off in a new direction once more, and these classic action games of the past would be forgotten.

To be concluded. . .

"What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse"--Classic Gaming Meets Classic Monsters

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (1990)

This game is widely, and with good cause, considered to be the greatest of the NES Castlevanias and one of the greatest NES games, period. IGN recently voted it 5th in its list of the Top 100 Nintendo Games of All Time. It’s easy to see why. This game took the series back to its level-based, side scrolling roots, then cranked that up to 11. If anything, this game is even harder than the original Castlevania; fortunately, as in Castlevania II, there are passwords to help ease the pain of failure. No longer did you have to leave your Nintendo turned on for hours to beat the game.

Instead you have to leave it turned on for hours to get through the punishing and lengthy stages. Whereas the original game had only six, Dracula’s Curse has nearly three times that many, depending on how you play the game, and they are all much, much longer than in Castlevania. Luckily, and here is where the series took another innovative turn, you don’t play through every level in every play through. After completing certain stages, you are given a choice of where to go next. This isn’t just a matter of picking which order you do the levels, like in Mega Man. By picking certain stages, you effectively block off others, and it might take as many as four times through to see all the game has to offer.

This story takes place 200 years before the original Castlevania and introduces a new member of the Belmont family, Trevor. You wouldn’t be able to tell that from looking at him, though. Trevor’s sprite is almost exactly like Simon’s from the original game. Back is the drab brown costume and brown hair, and back is the inability to jump worth a damn. But in Castlevania III you’re not limited to one character. Depending on which path through the game you choose, you might run into Syfa, a wizard, Grant, a high jumping pirate, or Alucard, the son of Dracula who would later appear in his own game, the classic Symphony of the Night for the PSX in 1997. Each of these companions had their own abilities to help make things a little easier, and since you could only have one with you at a time the feature offered even more incentive to play through the game multiple times.

And you’ll definitely want to play through the game multiple times. Everything is improved from the first game. The graphics are more intense (just check out the stained glass cathedral in the very first level) the bosses are bigger and more challenging, and the music is the best ever—so far. This is one of the most difficult games on the NES (out of the ones that are realistically possible to beat, anyway) and it took me years of trial and error to finally take down Dracula. (This time, you have to fight three of his forms!) What’s great about the NES Castlevanias is that no matter how punishingly difficult they can get, there always is a way out, and you’ll rarely feel cheated. There’re still those rare instances, of course, where you’ll throw the controller at the screen after an unavoidable bat slams you off a platform to your death.

Dracula’s Curse was a great swan song for series on the NES. It took the excellent platforming of the first game, mixed in a touch of the choose-your-own adventure feel of the second, and added a whole lot of little touches of its own to create a classic. Time would tell if the first game on Nintendo’s new Super Nintendo system could fill Castlevania III’s colossal boots.

To be continued…

"What A Horrible Night To Have a Curse"--Classic Gaming Meets Classic Monsters

Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest (1988)


Alone among my friends, I liked Simon’s Quest more than the original Castlevania, and not just because it was much easier. Like Zelda II and Super Mario Brothers 2, Castlevania II took the series in a completely different direction. It’s my understanding that at the time, companies were still unsure how to deliver sequels—whether gamers were attracted to the style of game itself or to the characters and setting, and so many of these early sequels diverged mightily from their predecessors.

The plot was a direct continuation of the first game. After killing Dracula, Simon Belmont discovers that the power of Dracula is still alive and well throughout Transylvania. It just so happened that Dracula put a curse on Simon with his dying breath, a kind of vampire failsafe if you will, that if Dracula died Simon, along with all of Transylvania, would fall ill and die. The only way to break the curse? Resurrect Dracula and kill him again! So Simon sets off on a quest (get it?) to collect the scattered remains of Dracula, put him back together, and kill him once and for all (or until the next game in the chronology.)


Castlevania II was the first game I ever played without levels. Instead of progressing through a six-stage castle, Simon had the whole Transylvanian countryside to explore. There were forests, caves, villages, swamps, haunted mansions, deserted cliffs, and, only at the end, the ruins of Dracula’s castle. This time around there were more adventure and RPG elements in the mix. You had to figure out where to go and what to do (not a simple task, and almost impossible without a good Nintendo Power at your side. God Bless the marketing geniuses at Nintendo Power, huh?). The actual gameplay might not have been as hard, but figuring out where to go next sure was. The pathetic translation didn’t help either. Townspeople were supposed to give you clues, but they ended up referring to things that aren’t even in the game, when they make sense at all.


But this game had a lot going for it that often gets overlooked by people put off by the change in style. I loved exploring a haunted, storybook version of 17th century Romania. With a little imagination, it was easy to transfer the confusing 2d game map into a full scale world. When you’re a kid, the best games are the ones that provide a great jumping off point for imaginary elaboration. The game had a day night cycle, and every time it switched the music changed and the enemies got tougher. Even the towns were no longer safe, as the once friendly and poorly translated villagers were replaced with putrid zombies. (As a child, I thought the townspeople transformed into zombies, making the game all the more creepy, but it turns out they’re meant to be hiding in their homes while unrelated zombies ravage the city.) Part of the strategy was getting through the game in a set number of game dies. If you took too long, Simon could actually die of his wounds in one of the first instances of a game having multiple endings.


The game had a very limited soundtrack, but it did introduce “Bloody Tears” one of my favorite Castlevania tracks. The graphics are a bit more generic than in Castlevania—all of the mansions look the same, but the forests and mountains of the countryside are appropriately atmospheric. Simon himself has gotten a nice visual upgrade, with a svelte red suit and a new black hairstyle. (Although on the game box he’s a blond, after appearing to have brown hair on the first Castlevania’s box. The series has never been big on consistency. I think in his latest appearance his hair was bright red).



Castlevania II is often considered the black sheep of the NES Castlevanias, but it’s one of my favorites. I love the time factor, the giant world map, and the challenge of having to figure out where to go next. It’s one of the main contributing factors to my love of vampires and Dracula in particular. It might feel quaint now, but at the time this game laid out a huge, haunted, and mysterious world, and left the player free to go where they wanted. It was a design ahead of its time, and though it is quite popular now, Castlevania would return to a more traditional style for Castlevania III.

To be continued. . .

"What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse"--Classic Gaming Meets Classic Monsters

In the days when NES ruled the world, the Castlevania series was the best place to go for slaying ghosts, zombies, and other horrors. Despite their fiendish difficulty, the games are well deserving of their status as classics of the NES era. The plot was fairly simple: A guy with a whip sets out to fight his way through the monsters of Dracula’s castle and finally kill the Lord of the Vampires himself. For a young fan of Universal Horror monsters and all things Gothic and spooky the series was a no-brainer. I have great memories of going down to a friend’s unfinished basement to play the original Castlevania for the first time—if the shiny silver box and the cheesy picture of Dracula on the cover didn’t hook me, the game itself quickly removed any doubts. The atmosphere, the music, the gameplay, and yes, even the challenge made the experience memorable. In honor of Halloween I’m going to take a look back at the three NES Castlevanias, and even discuss the series’ triumphant entry into the newfangled sixteen bit era with Super Castlevania IV before examining where the series has gone since its heyday.

Castlevania (1987)


It started with Dracula, a castle, and some dude with a whip. If you read the instructions, you learned that the hero’s name was Simon Belmont, scion of a long line of vampire-fighters, and the whip was actually an enchanted artifact designed for one purpose—the eradication of vampires everywhere. Konami was already on my radar in a big way in the late 80s/early 90s when I first played this game. As the makers of Contra and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle arcade game, they were, as far as I was concerned, the only major 3rd party developer in town. Here was a game that had everything. Zombies? Check. Ghosts? Check. Medusa? Check. Dracula? Of course. The first Castlevania was only six stages, and if you’re a pro it can probably be beaten in about half an hour. But most of us were not pros at age 8, and in those early NES days six stages was more than worth the game’s fifty dollar pricetag. I was no terrible Nintendo player, but it took me years (years!) to finally beat the Grim Reaper and move on to stage six, and that’s when I was lucky enough even to get that far.


The game had no passwords, so if you turned off your Nintendo you were stuck going all the way back to beginning. Cheap deaths were common: Many times, fully powered up and charging through mighty enemies left and right, Simon Belmont found himself knocked off a platform by a run-of-the-mill bat, at which point he would plummet like a rock to his death. That’s right. Simon Belmont must have weighed somewhere in the vicinity of 500 pounds, because even a fall from a low platform would send him hurtling to the ground as though sucked there with a vacuum.


But aside from the punishing mechanics, the game was a blast to play. In addition to the whip, Simon could grab four subweapons—the useless knife, the axe, the cross shaped boomerang (I guess the cross helped put some added hurt on the legions of the damned), and the all powerful holy water, a weapon so mighty that proper use of it could even render the impossible Grim Reaper boss helpless. The levels themselves, all of which took place inside different parts of Dracula’s castle, were appropriately spooky, with ruined statues, crumbling walls and faded curtains making excellent use (for the time) of the Nintendo’s capabilities. Only Simon, who was a squat, all brown little blob, got less than stellar treatment from the graphics folks, but he serves his purpose well enough. Then of course there’s the wonderful music. Konami went all out with this, and it remains one of the series’ hallmarks. Sure, the Mario and Zelda themes were more iconic, but Castlevania managed to evoke the sound and fury of a full on pipe-organ into the tiny NES cartridge, and that’s just during the first stage. The music is evocative even today, and I’ve heard plenty of full orchestral soundtracks that don’t come close to matching its 8-bit simplicity.


If you somehow managed to climb through Dracula’s castle and defeat the Count himself in both his forms, you were treated to one of the most anticlimactic endings in an era of anticlimactic endings. The castle just falls down. That’s it.

That’s okay, though. Castlevania II was on its way.

To be continued. . .

Places I'd Love to Visit: Sighisoara, Romania

In Los Angeles, everything has a sort of depressed sameness. Unlike even east coast cities, everything is relatively new and sprawls out in every direction without any semblance of a plan. I’ve always wanted to travel more (so far I’ve only been out of the country once) and when sitting on the 405 in hour two of a twenty mile trip it’s easy to start fantasizing about better places to be.

I’m sure I first heard about Sighisoara in reading about Vlad the Impaler years ago, but I’ve only recently come across some photos. You can almost picture the dirty medieval streets filled with assorted craftspeople ambling about in the shadow of the clock tower, or a horseman riding through the dark Transylvanian forest at night towards the imposing citadel. Being the birthplace of Dracula sure doesn’t hurt the coolness factor, either.
Most of the town is essentially unchanged since the 15^th century, and like any good medieval town Sighisoara has its origins in a Roman fort that originally stood on the site. There’s a lot of great medieval German and Eastern European architecture here, which gives it a slight feeling of otherness that even similar Western European towns lack. So few sites in America have anywhere near the history of your average European town (especially on the west coast), and there are probably at least twenty I hope I can get to sometime in my life. There are countless other Dracula-related or otherwise interesting sights just in Romania alone.
The Middle Ages is an easy era to romanticize (in reality, things were probably pretty gross), but looking at some of these photos it’s not hard to imagine that life without endless traffic and a Starbucks every block might be a nice change of pace.