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Lucy Westenra is the character in the novel Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker. This article is about the character in the movie adaptation Bram Stoker´s Dracula (1992). Lucy Westenra is a flirty Victorian socialite turned to a vampire by Dracula and killed when she attacks a child victim. Lucy is played by actress Sadie Frost.

Appearance[]

Lucy is a young woman in her early twenties, with long red hair. Her clothes are opulent, her accent posh, and she doesn´t care about the standards of behavior for young women in Victorian England -- for example, she likes to show her shoulders in the daytime. As a vampire she is dressed in the sumptuous wedding dress she was buried in, mixing Victorian and Elizabethan fashion. Oddly (unlike the other vampires seen in the movie), her skin displays total pallor, completely emphasizing that she is now the walking undead.

Personality[]

Unlike the virginal heroine of the novel, Lucy is much more eroticized and wild. She speaks frankly and often about sex, shocking her repressed friend Mina (Winona Ryder). This may have been a reason why Dracula was so attracted to her. When we first encounter her, Lucy is juggling three suitors: Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), Dr. John Seward (Richard E. Grant), and Quincy P. Morris (Bill Campbell). She is flighty and fickle, teasing each man and making each one think they have a chance at marrying her. She finally chooses Holmwood but remains on good terms with the other two.

Synopsis[]

Dracula first encounters Lucy at her manor home, Hillingham, during a storm while she is sleepwalking outside. He ravages her but is interrupted by Mina. Using his powers of illusion, he convinces Mina "Do not see me!" and disappears, leaving Lucy half-naked on a pedestal. Mina bundles Lucy and returns her to her room. Lucy languishes for days due to blood loss and Dracula's influence. However on the final night of her humanity, Dracula, spurned by the breakup note Mina wrote, goes to finish her. With Van Helsing gone that night, Dracula easily knocks out Quincy. Sensing him coming, Lucy reacts lustfully to his presence, a sign she's accepting her vampirism. Arthur notices this too late before Dracula uses an invisible force to send him flying into a wall, knocking him out. With no guards left, Dracula utters his final words to Lucy...

"Your foolish men and their pitiful spells cannot protect you from my power. I condemn to living death, an eternal hunger for living...blood!"

With that Dracula changes into a wolf and smashes through the window. He leaps onto Lucy's bed and proceeds to drain the rest of her blood. Lucy screams out in her final moments as she is killed. Her body is shortly after discovered and soon after set for burial, with Lucy dressed in the wedding dress she was meant to for Arthur's and her's wedding. Helsing however knows with her death, things have only just began. The blood spews all over the bedroom.

That night he leads the men to her crypt and has them open the coffin, only to find her body missing from the glass coffin. Arhtur holds Helsing at gunpoint demanding to know where Lucy is. Helsing explains of her transformation into a vampire and how she is now out searching for blood and, if not stopped, will turn more victims into vampires as well. They hear someone humming outside and hide as a figure in white desends the stairs, the candles turn alight on their own as the figure hums softly, holding a crying child in her arms. Just as she reaches the coffin, Helsing calls out to her and the being turns to them promptly droppping the child. The men instantly recgonize it to be Lucy only much more pallor in skin color and now sporting fangs.

She focuses on Arthur, talking in a rather hyponotic tone that seems to mesmerize him as she requests Arthur to come to her. Just as it seems he about to fall under her power. Helsing shove a cross in her view and Lucy instantly recoils, screeching inhumanly. Helsing forces her back toward the coffin and forces her to lay back into it. For a moment it seems she has went back into her dormant state. However she suddenly gets back up and spews blood all over him before receeding in her coffin for good. With Lucy subduced, Helsing has Arthur drive a stake into her heart, killing her before Helsing cuts off Lucy's head. Her death felt by Dracula as he rests in his boxes of earth. The men say a prayer for her before Helsing stuffs Lucy's mouth with garlic to prevent Dracula from re-claiming her.


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