By Jackson Posey | Staff Writer
A flash of darkness. Stabbing pain. The gush, the scream, the silence. All in a day’s work.
But the rat race, for one Transylvanian businessman, felt deeply unfulfilling. After years of literally racing his peers for rats to snatch and suckle, he gradually became disillusioned with the thrill of the chase. And night after night, as he wrestled unsuspecting passersby into alleyways and bared his teeth, the moment of hesitation grew longer.
It wasn’t that he’d grown tired of adventure. The son of a famous vampire, he’d spent years traversing the world and partaking in the finest dining experiences the homo sapien bloodstream had to offer. It just never captivated him the way it had his ancestors. While his peers anxiously trudged toward the mountaintops of vampiric achievement, he longingly gazed down at the foothills, eyeing a redemption which felt miles away.
Herein lies the fantastic allegorical achievement of the creature who later dubbed himself Count Chocula. Possessing everything he could ever want, he nevertheless chose whimsy over wealth. Happiness over hell-raising. Simple living over lavish luxury. Against all odds, he became what is called colloquially “a man of the people” amid a swamp of bipedal mosquitoes.
In other words, one vampire took on social bitterness that all vampires may discover a sweet tooth.
Christian imagery within vampire movies is nothing new. From Dracula to the were-rabbits of Wallace and Gromit, Roman Catholic imagery — and the sign of the cross in particular — is meant to hold unique power. Dracula himself is held as an anti-Christ, and anti-Eucharistic, figure.
“There is a sacramental intensity which is rarely realized in book or film: vampyrism as the anti-Eucharist,” Catholic supernaturalist author Eleanor Bourg Nicholson wrote in 2015. “The Eucharist is the ultimate transformative and life-giving agent (John 6:58); vampyres consume blood to perpetuate an undead eternity. The blood on the cross was given willingly (John 15:13); vampyre victims do not submit of their own volition.”
If Count Dracula represents an “elaborately developed” depiction of the antichrist, attempting to reverse the spiritual flow of blood and the physical, who stands as his rival? Who will turn wrong things right? Who, pray tell, is the savior of the vampire world?
Enter Count Chocula.
Chocula exists to bridge the material and immortal worlds. He welcomes controversy as he shuns the limelight, preferring to hang around outcasts (including a pink Frankenstein’s monster and a goth zombie) rather than spend time networking with his kind. Most importantly, he reverses every anticipated stereotype.
Jewish anticipation for a Messiah (literally “anointed one”) during the time of the second temple was generally centered around anticipation for a conquering king. Near the end of what is now called the B.C. calendar, a number of messianic claimants appeared, gathered followings and quickly fizzled out. None were as subversive as Jesus, a carpenter conceived out of wedlock who consistently mirrors ancient prophecies of the Messiah as a suffering servant.
This, too, is the story of Count Chocula. Far from a cereal killer, he shuns the sinful lifestyle of his peers in favor of a better way. He embraces nonviolence, counters popular notions of morality and embraces joy in a world of darkness. He charts a sweeter path than his contemporaries could’ve ever imagined.
Jesus “came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). And so it is with the young Count. Rejected as happy-go-lucky, childish, overly optimistic, rabble-rousing hippies whose ideas would quickly fade, the pair have still cemented prophetic roles among their respective audiences.
The pale, spectrous Chocula could’ve coasted on his family’s reputation. Instead, he forfeits temporal renown to dutifully embrace the role of the everyman. Jesus — a poor Nazarene woodworker and rabbi born of a virgin and the Spirit of God — “did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Philippians 2:6). Neither did Chocula see fit to embrace equality with his father, the unrighteous Count Dracula.
It’s an inverted allegory, one where two characters from completely different backgrounds step down from glory to redeem a fallen species. And somehow, 50 years after the story’s inception, it’s stuck.
“I could not ignore their withering glances,” the late SNL comedian Norm Macdonald wrote in his memoir. “They looked at me the way real vampires look at Count Chocula.”
The enduring legacy of Count Chocula as a figure despised for his prophetic message echoes that of Jesus, the last great messianic claimant who was famously hated for telling the truth. Both preach repentance, calling people to engage rightly with life and blood and the mysteries in between. Both call their followers to a sort of “good life,” though Chocula’s is perhaps more short-sighted than heavenly.
For author Tim Powers, the most terrifying aspect of vampire stories is the “enduringly scary” idea that they drain away not just a person’s blood, but also his immortal soul. Breakfast cereal’s favorite monster — a goofy-looking knockoff whose blank smile conceals limitless mysteries— offers a new, redemptive perspective.
