Welcome to my insane rant about Van Helsing, in the Dracula Hammer movies (with art)
*Quick* explaination of @quijicroix 's and I headcanons for Helsing, and why we think Lawrence (thought it was Abraham but no it's Lawrence in the Hammer cinematic universe) and Lorrimer Van Helsing are the same person (/!\ spoilers for the Hammer's Dracula movies obviously) :
At the end of Brides of Dracula (the second film in the timeline), we see Lawrence get bitten by a Vampire, not Dracula btw, and to remedy the curse he burns his neck and pour holy water on it. And ig by the power of jesus he doesn't get turned into a vampire (boring Hammer resolution) (and he doesn't even get a cool scar).
But we call bullshit on this ! Van Helsing definetly got turned into a (half) vampire !!
1) Lawrence and Lorrimer are both played by Peter Cushing and have the same face. Now I know what your probably thinking "this argument is lazy af", and if we stopped there, yes it would be. But we see Lawrence's son in 7 Golden Vampires (the last film in the serie, but not the timeline) !! And he looks NOTHING like Peter Cushing. So either the Cushing face skipped a generation (whitch is funny to imagine), or his son, who stays in china and never returns to england, serves as a way to help him hide his immortality by taking the identity of his own son, then his grandson Lorrimer.
2) Time for maths everyone ! In Dracula AD 1972, we learn Lawrence died in 1872. BUT !! In 7 Golden Vampires that takes place in 1904 (because the begining of the film is set in 1804 and these movies are obsessed with the 100 years later trope), who is still perfectly healthy and visiting his son in China more than twenty years after his death ?? Lawrence fucking Van Helsing. The only two explainations I see are either Vampirism or tax fraud.
And that would mean his son (Leyland Van Helsing btw) had to fuck very quickly after the movie for Lorrimer to be in his 70s (?) in 1972.
3) If curing vampirism was this easy, why kill the other people who got turned into vampires later in the timeline (rip a lot of the women and Johnny Alucard) ?? It paints Van Helsing in a way better light if you assume his miraculous cure didn't work *in the second film of this 9 movie saga*, and he doesn't just kill people he could cure.
4) it would be a very interesting take on the character, the renown vampire hunter himself becoming a monster, fighting to keep his humanity (but the Hammer didn't have the balls. And we thought about these movies way more than anyone involved in writting them-).
And the circle of violence theme is not between Dracula and the Helsing family anymore, but between him and Lawrence, whitch is way more personnal. And !! raises the stakes in both Dracula AD 1972 (already the best movie out of the 9 by far btw) and Satanic Rites since Dracula isn't the vampire his grandad fought, but his century long ennemy that keeps coming back.
And the scene at the end of Satanic Rites, where Dracula (for the first time in 9 movies) manage to align two sentences and basicly say he wants to end the world because he is tired of dying and coming back !!!!! Whitch is very heartbreaking already, but if he says it to the man who killed him (nearly) everytime ??? (We don't talk about that time Quatermass got him) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Ok I lied this was not quick but this!!!!!! Is something that has been haunting us for months, and in the words of Quiji : "People need to know."
I'm also working on an illustration in whitch this headcanon of ours is pretty central <3
