Continuity mistake: When Van Helsing forces vampire Lucy to go back into her coffin using a cross, as Lucy lies down in the coffin, he lowers the cross gradually. In the next shot, he is still holding it up. For the next few shots, the cross alternates between being lowered and being held up. (01:27:00)
Revealing mistake: When Dracula flies into the room to stop his brides from devouring Jonathan, the board carrying him is visible. (00:34:10)
Revealing mistake: When Jonathan closes the transactions in Dracula's castle, as Dracula's shadow is shown trying to strangle him, you can see Gary Oldman's real shadow on the right-hand side of the screen, standing in front of the shadow of Keanu Reeves. Also, in the final shot of the scene, as Dracula turns around and walks away, Dracula's shadow appears directly behind Jonathan, but Gary Oldman's own shadow can be seen on the right-hand side of the screen, moving in accord with the actor as he leaves the room. (00:17:26)
Revealing mistake: When Dracula looks up toward the door as he hears Jonathan and the others about to walk in on him and Mina, if you look at his left eye, you can see the edges of Gary Oldman's purple contact lens. (01:41:45)
Continuity mistake: During the chase at the Borgo Pass, there are several shots of Dracula inside the wooden box, buried up to the neck in the earth of his homeland. However, when Dracula bursts out of the box outside the castle, the box falls apart completely, but hardly any earth falls out. (01:53:10 - 01:56:50)
Revealing mistake: When Dracula is standing on the bed, transformed into a giant bat, the red wound from Jonathan's gunshot can be seen on his chest before Jonathan actually shoots him. It is first seen as he says, "Look what your god has done to me", and more in the next two shots of his bat form, before Jonathan fires his gun. (01:42:30)
Continuity mistake: When the great doors to Dracula's castle open, an ornate table with a statuette and two large candle holders is standing inside the castle. When Dracula's shadow appears, the statuette is still there, but the candle holders are gone. (00:12:35)
Revealing mistake: During Lucy's funeral scene, if you look at her abdomen as the camera pans through the shot, you can see Lucy breathing when she's supposed to be dead. Very obvious on a big screen, not as much on a small screen. (01:21:15)
Other mistake: When Dr. Seward first goes to see Renfield, he gets bitten on the right side of his neck, but then grabs the left side as if in pain. (00:26:00)
Revealing mistake: When Mina and Dracula are at the restaurant, when Mina says, "Tell me, Prince... tell me of your home", they are sitting at a dinner table positioned very close to the wall with the frosted windowpanes, with hardly any room between the wall and the table. However, when Mina says, "With gowns flowing white", she is standing in front of the same window, and the chairs and the table are now sitting much further away from the wall, so that when Dracula walks away from the table to stand beside her a few shots later, he has to take several steps to reach her. (01:04:22 - 01:06:23)
Revealing mistake: After Van Helsing's lecture, there is a quick scene showing Jonathan as the prisoner of Dracula's brides. At the start of the scene, there is a close-up of one of the brides' eye, where you can see the edges of her contact lens. (00:56:57)
Revealing mistake: When Dracula escapes from Mina's bedchamber, he transforms into a figure of rats. If you look at the waist area beneath the humanoid rat figure's right arm, you can see one of the metal rods of the armature that was used to create the rat dummy. A couple of other rods are glimpsed as well. (01:43:05)
Revealing mistake: When Dracula enters Mina's bedroom in the form of green mist, at the end of the first shot, as the mist begins moving across the floor, a vertical beam of the green light that was used to color the mist appears beneath the chair that is sitting by the window (as stated in the film's official behind the scenes book, the effect with the mist was accomplished by using dry ice smoke which was lit green and superimposed on the set with a 50/50 mirror). (01:35:35)
Character mistake: At the beginning of the scene where the vampire hunters leave London in pursuit of Dracula, Jonathan narrates, "By train we can reach the Romanian port in Varna in three days." However, Varna is a Bulgarian seaport. This can even be seen on the map showing the Turkish invasion of Eastern Europe in the movie's prologue, and on the map that Jonathan studies aboard the train at the beginning of the film. (01:45:35)
Revealing mistake: When Jonathan is being seduced by Dracula's brides, right before their first bite, there is a close-up of one of the brides' eye, where you can see the edges of her purple contact lens. (00:33:45)
Continuity mistake: When Jonathan enters the brides' bedchamber, the bed is covered in white mist. In the next shot, the mist has vanished. (00:31:55)
Factual error: At the cinematograph, Mina says to Dracula, "How can you call this science? Do you think Madame Curie would invite such comparisons? Really!" The movie takes place in year 1897, but Marie Curie's works weren't published until 1898. (00:49:30)
Revealing mistake: Dracula has no reflection, as seen when Jonathan is shaving, and when Dracula buys the newspaper in London. But when he assists Jonathan with the shaving, every time he dips the blade into the water bowl, his red robe can be seen reflected in the bowl. (00:26:40)
Continuity mistake: When Van Helsing and Dr. Seward prepare to perform the blood transfusion on Lucy, as Seward asks, "You perfected a procedure?", in the background, you can see Van Helsing take off his scarf. In the next shot, he takes it off again. (00:59:45)
Continuity mistake: As Dracula pours Jonathan wine in the castle, the arm-shaped, wall mounted torch on Jonathan's right is lit. A few shots later, as Dracula remarks, "That relationship was not entirely successful", the torch is unlit, but in the following wide shot where he draws the sword, the torch is burning again. In the shot where an angry Dracula says, "We Draculs have a right to be proud!", the torch is once again unlit. (00:14:15)
Answer: It's unlikely they were falling in love with Harker: they are sadistic, baby-eating monsters who regarded Harker as food and a temporary plaything. As for them sleeping in the open, the local populace dreads and avoids Dracula's castle, so there's hardly any fear of intruders. Van Helsing did enter and kill them, but they reckoned, mistakenly, that he too would be too afraid to do so, especially after their horse-mauling escapades the previous night.
Jukka Nurmi