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This film is a biography of the man whose life is generally considered to have given rise to the legend of the vampire, Count Dracula. Fifteenth-century Rumanian nobleman Vlad Tepes skillfully defended his homeland of Wallachia in 1457 from the Ottoman Turks led by Mohammed II, who had just conquered the last remnant of the Byzantine Empire and large portions of Europe (including present-day Hungary, Bulgaria, and Greece). A Rumanian national hero, stories which depict him as wantonly engaging in cruel feudal practices such as impaling criminals and enemies on stakes, are less widely credited there than in the West. However, Rumanians also believe that his campaign against the Moslems justified some forceful actions which are often too harshly judged by moderns. "Dracul," in Rumanian, means "son of the Devil," and was one of Vlad Tepes' nicknames ("Vlad Dracul"). He is also frequently referred to as "Vlad the Impaler." In this historical war drama, Rumanians seek both to exploit and to clear the medieval nobleman's name.