THIS PLACE REALLY BITES

California has Disneyland. Georgia has Six Flags. And, if some folks in Romania have their way, they’ll have…Dracula World?

It seems that the government of Romania plans to build a vampire theme park near the unpronounceable town of Sighisoara in Transylvania. That town, some people believe, was the actual birthplace of the real-life nobleman whose grisly reputation provided author Bram Stoker with the inspiration for his novel "Dracula."

It may surprise you to know that history’s most famous bloodsucker (no lawyer jokes, please) was based on a real individual. While there’s no evidence that Count Vlad III actually drank human blood, it wouldn’t have surprised anyone. Even by the standards of a brutal place and time (Medieval Romania), Vlad was one seriously off-center individual.

While he was sometimes known as Vlad Dracula (literally "Son of the Dragon"), his more common nickname was Vlad Tepes, which translates as Vlad the Impaler. This charming epithet was given to him because of his favorite method of doing away with enemies, criminals, or even tradesmen caught cheating customers—by skewering them alive on a sharp stake driven lengthwise through the body. Estimates of people killed by this method range as high as 100,000. As a method of crime control, it was crude but effective; it was said that Vlad placed a valuable solid gold drinking cup by a fountain in the middle of a public square. Passersby, rich and poor, could drink from the cup, but no one was allowed to remove on pain of execution. No one did. If Ol’ Vlad were in power here today, this whole Enron mess would never have happened, you betcha.

Vlad’s methods of social reform were equally creative. One legend about him tells how he invited all the poor people in his realm to a great feast. When everyone had finished their meal, Vlad casually asked them "would you like to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world?" The diners (who apparently forgot for the moment that they were dealing with a homicidal maniac) allowed as how yes, sir, that would be mighty fine. So Vlad nailed the doors shut and burned the castle down with them in it. "I did it so no one would be poor in my realm," he later explained. No one argued with him.

Despite all of these shenanigans, Vlad is actually something of a hero in Romania, due to the fact that he, at least briefly, managed to unify that unhappy country and drive out the Turks. When the Turks came back with an army three times the size of Vlad’s, he met them in his own trademark fashion. The Sultan and his army rode up over the hills surrounding Vlad’s capital to find a veritable forest of stakes, some 20,000 in all, each one topped with a Turkish prisoner, many of whom were still alive and screaming. The Sultan said, "Hmmm…maybe we really don’t want Romania that bad after all. I hear it’s lovely in Constantinople this time of year," at which point he went home.

Unfortunately for Vlad, the Sultan left a good-sized army in the command of Vlad’s better-looking and considerably less maniacal brother Radu. The Romanian nobles apparently decided that a puppet of the Turks was a better deal than a guy who spent his spare time thinking up new and painful places to stick sharp objects. They defected en masse to Radu, who drove his brother out of the country. Vlad seized the throne again a few years later after Radu’s death, after which the Turks invaded yet again. Vlad fell in battle against his lifelong enemy. His body was supposedly entombed at a local monastery. Later, however, no one could find the coffin. Thus, the legend was born that Vlad Dracula, Son of the Dragon, still walked the earth.

Fast forward to 2002, when the Romanian version of the Chamber of Commerce apparently decided, "hey, we have a vicious, bloodthirsty lunatic as a national hero, we might as well make a buck marketing it," thus showing that they’re really catching on to this capitalism thing. And so, the Dracula theme park was born. The place is expected to feature a horror castle (complete with torture chamber!), a "vampirology" institute and restaurants serving "gory dishes" such as "Scary jelly, blood pudding and brains". Let’s just hope they don’t sell any of that chicken teriyaki on a stick. That would be tasteless even by the standards of this project.

The United Nations cultural organization UNESCO stuck their nose in, protesting that the project would destroy the medieval atmosphere of Sighisoara. For their own part, some residents fear an invasion of the town by drugs, Satanists, and vampire groupies. Nevertheless, the city fathers noted that neither UNESCO or the concerned citizens were coming up with any plan to supply the 3,000 jobs allegedly created by the park, jobs sorely needed in an area hit by high unemployment.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. What better way to still the unquiet spirit of Dracula than by making him look silly? Why shouldn’t the memory of the monster be exorcised by putting his face on postcards, cheap souvenir mugs, and flimsy clothing with slogans like "My Parents Visited the Birthplace of Vlad the Impaler and All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt"?

Too bad our modern monsters can’t be laid to rest the same way.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.