Continuity mistake: When Van Helsing carves the steak at the restaurant, there is food on his plate, but in the next shot, his plate is empty. (01:27:55)
Continuity mistake: When Elisabeta is lying dead in the chapel, the neck on her dress and the top of the bodice keep alternating between being pale green/yellowish and having a dark green color. For example, when Vlad picks up her suicide letter, the collar area is dark green, but after Vlad drinks from the chalice, the collar area of her dress has a pale yellowish color. (00:03:20)
Continuity mistake: When Jonathan backs away from Dracula after the latter sees his crucifix, there is soap on Jonathan's neck from his shaving, but in the next shot, his neck is dry. (00:28:15)
Character mistake: When Jonathan is closing the transactions in Dracula's castle, there is a close-up of Renfield's card, which says "R. N. Reinfeild." However, the end titles spell the character's name as "R. M. Renfield", like in the novel, and Dr. Seward also refers to the character by this name in the first scene where he is recording his diary on the phonograph cylinder, just like he does in the book. (00:16:30 - 00:23:20)
Revealing mistake: In the scene where Lucy is done in by Dracula in wolf form, as she dies, blood is exploded into the room by "supernatural" forces. If you look in the torrent of blood, you will see the gas, I assume carbon dioxide, from the special effect cannon appear and evaporate. (01:21:00)
Revealing mistake: In the close-up where Dracula first bites Lucy, the puncture wounds can be seen on her neck before he sinks his teeth into it. (00:40:35)
Revealing mistake: In one of the first scenes, Winona Ryder (as Vlad the Impaler's wife), is lying on the floor, dead. Gary Oldman's Vlad falls to his knees, heartbroken, right next to the "dead" Winona, who flinches. (00:03:34)
Continuity mistake: When Mina is asleep in Dr. Seward's quarters, Dracula enters her bedchamber in the form of green mist. In the first shot, a black chair is sitting by the window, in front of Dr. Seward's wardrobe. When Mina is on the bed with Dracula, the chair is sitting directly beneath the window, next to the wardrobe (this is best seen when Dracula embraces Mina after they exchange blood). In the shot where Jonathan helps Mina out of the bed after the vampire hunters walks in on her and Dracula, the chair is once again sitting in front of the wardrobe. (01:35:30 - 01:42:45)
Continuity mistake: When Van Helsing fends off Lucy in the crypt, he forces her to lie down inside the stone coffin and fall asleep. However, when Arthur and Van Helsing proceed to kill her, you can see that she is no longer lying inside the coffin but is lying on top of it, on the stone lid; this is best seen in the overhead shot where we see the stake go through her heart and the shot where her head is sliced off. There is no way that the vampire hunters took an angry and dangerous vampire out of the coffin, proceeded to push the heavy stone lid back into place and then placed her on top of the lid before they proceeded with their grisly work. (01:27:15)
Continuity mistake: When Elisabeta commits suicide by jumping into the river, her suicide letter is lying on the floor (it is definitely the suicide letter and not the false message from the Turks, because the words and handwriting are 100% identical to the suicide letter that Vlad finds - the actual message from the Turks can be seen in a brief flashback during the scene with Mina and Dracula at the restaurant later in the film). However, when Vlad picks up and reads the letter, it is a different piece of paper: The frayed edges at the top have disappeared and the parchment itself is longer, with more distance between the bottom lines of the message and the bottom of the paper. (00:02:50)
Continuity mistake: When Lucy tells Mina that she's accepted Arthur's marriage proposal, we see the garden pond at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Lucy's bedroom, which has a pedestal in the middle, topped with a tall, pointed pyramid sculpture. When Dracula enters Lucy's garden maze after the Demeter docks in London, the camera pans up the stairs and back again, and the pyramid has a different shape and is much smaller. When Lucy walks down the stairs in a trance, the large pyramid is back. (00:36:40 - 00:40:20)
Continuity mistake: When Dracula drops Mina off the coach, and in the establishing shot of the scene where Van Helsing tasks Quincey with guarding Lucy, there is a giant fence outside Hillingham, Lucy's estate, with considerable distance between the fence and the estate. However, the opening wide shot of the scene where Dracula arrives in London shows that the building is facing the edge of a giant hill, with no fence outside (it is definitely the same side of the building, because the architecture is identical). (00:40:00 - 00:54:39)
Factual error: When the Demeter comes to London, there is a wide shot of the ship docking, with Hillingham sitting on top of a hill overlooking the city of London - you can see Big Ben, the House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. However, when Mina opens Jonathan's letter earlier in the film, there is a close-up of the envelope and the address of Hillingham Estate is not London: It states that Hillingham is situated in Faversham, Kent, a town located approximately 50 English miles away from London. (00:35:30 - 00:40:05)
Continuity mistake: When Dracula flies into the room while the brides are drinking Jonathan's blood, Jonathan's boots are still on, but when two of them tangle up in each other and crawl away, he is barefoot. (00:34:10)
Continuity mistake: When Renfield blurts out to Dr. Seward "I need lives for the master", he puts his right hand over his mouth, but in the next shot, he's holding his left hand over his mouth. (00:25:30)
Continuity mistake: After Monica Bellucci rises up from the bed, the bedding instantly changes from pink, to a shiny fabric of many different colours. When Dracula flies into the room, the bedding goes back to pink, before becoming shiny again. (00:32:30)
Continuity mistake: After Dracula slits his chest so Mina can drink his blood, his hair alternates between being over/behind his shoulder, depending on the camera angle: In the shots facing Dracula, his hair is hanging over his shoulder, but in the shots from behind him, facing Mina, his hair is behind his back. (01:40:10)
Revealing mistake: When Mina and Dracula are at the restaurant, as Dracula says, "The most beautiful place in all creation", there is an extreme close-up of his eye. If you look at the left side of the purple iris, you can see the edges of Gary Oldman's contact lens. After Mina describes Transylvania's beauty, there is another close-up of Dracula's eye (this time with a different color) and you can once again see the edges of the contact lens on the left side of the iris. (01:04:35 - 01:05:05)
Revealing mistake: When Jonathan is shaving, there is a close-up of the back of his head, where Keanu Reeves and his body double are unsynchronized: As Keanu's reflection shows him beginning to lower his hand with the razor, the hand of the body double standing in front of the mirror is still up by his neck, before the body double lowers the razor a split-second later. (00:26:20)
Continuity mistake: When Van Helsing performs the blood transfusion on Lucy, her dress keeps changing position; most noticeably, she keeps alternating between having one breast exposed and being fully covered up. (00:59:35)
Answer: For protection from the inmates.
raywest ★