October 22, 2018
Directed by: Tod Browning
Budget: $355,000
Quote: "...I could just see the lamp by the bed, a tiny spark in the fog. And then I saw two red eyes glaring at me. And a white livid face came down out of the mist. It came closer and closer. I felt its breath on my face and then its lips... oh!"
Trivia: Similar to the prologue in Frankenstein (1931), the original release featured an epilogue with Edward Van Sloan talking to the audience about what they have just seen. This was removed for the 1936 re-release and is now assumed to be lost.
I have been watching so many horror movies lately (I think this makes #142 on this journey) that I thought I should read a bit about it. I recently read Easy Riders, Raging Bulls about the film industry in the seventies and Phantasm Exhumed about the making of the Phantasm movies. Now I'm reading Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture. It's a pretty interesting read where the author analyzed ten iconic horror films and how they represented common American fears of that era. The first chapter is devoted to the 1931 horror classic, Dracula, the film that started the Universal Pictures monster movie craze. The book mentions that the movie, coming out at the onset of the Great Depression and during the rise of Fascism in Europe and the first Red Scare, was a product of the times. Cultural implications aside, I thought it was finally time I watched this classic film. I'm going to try to keep in mind that the movie came out almost ninety years ago in this discussion. That being said, the movie starts out strong and Bela Lugosi steals the movie as The Count, but unfortunately, the movie slows to a crawl during the second half of the film. Dracula's offscreen death, also does nothing to satisfy viewers.
Dracula begins with Renfield, a businessman on his way to meet Count Dracula about a business deal. He is however stopped by some Romanian townsfolk, warning him about the Count, who they claim is a vampire. Unfortunately for Renfield, he ignores their warning choking it up to Catholic folk superstition. Upon arriving at Castle Dracula, he is met by the charming count who is working out a business deal with him to aquire land in London. While in the castle, Dracula hypnotizes Renfield into opening a window letting in bats that turn into his three wives. When they attempt to attack Renfield, Dracula waves them off and attacks Renfield himself. Next we see a Crazed Renfield on board a ship about to harbor at a London dock. Everyone on the boat is dead and Renfield is now a raving lunatic who is enslaved to Dracula, obsessed with eating bugs, and is captured and sent off to a Sanitarium where Dr. Van Helsing tests his blood and discovers he's a vampire.
Meanwhile, Dracula is out living the life. His eccentricities are taken as charming or simply foreign by many of the Londoners and he befriends a man named Seward and is immediately taken by his daughter and her friend's beauty. He bites Seward's daughter and then attacks her in a garden later. Dracula has also killed her friend and she becomes one of his vampire brides luring children into the garden to bite them. Renfield, while in the sanitorium sells out Dracula telling others that he is a vampire and is released to help capture him with a reward of thousands of rats. Weird. Dracula, as a bat, convinces Seward's daughter to try to kill her fiance, but she is stopped. However she feels compelled to explain to her fiance that her life is over and she can no longer love him or anyone else again. Dracula then kidnaps Mina, but if forced to sleep because it is now dawn. Van Helsing kills Dracula off screen turning Mina back into normal.
Although Nosferatu had been made a handful of years earlier with a storyline that largely mirrors the one written by Bram Stoker, Dracula is the first movie to officially be based on the Stoker novel. And while it looks tame by today's standards, it is almost a miracle that it could have gotten past the strict censorship laws of the 1930s. Compared to other films of the time, the movie is quite violent with several on screen murders. Also, when the ship docks in London we see a lot of Dracula's carnage with dead bodies strewn throughout the ship. The violence, however, is not what made the movie so scary but the atmosphere the film creates. Dracula's castle is especially creepy. We get a first glance of it as Renfield is riding towards it at the beginning of the film. It is the same iconic look that filmmakers will use in dozens of movies to follow. It was also apparently painted on a glass sheet and put in front of the camera. Impressive visual effect for 1931. The castle itself is dilapidated with fog and cobwebs covering the floors and walls. Throughout the film the howls of wolves, the rolling fog, and the lighting help to carry this atmosphere from Romania to England.
It is also Bela Lugosi's performance that really sells the movie. His Hungarian background helps him to create the foreign character. And his slow deliberate performance and long stares have become synonymous with the character he portrays.
Some other elements just cannot stand the test of time. The main one being the bats. There are several times Dracula is hanging out in bat form or some of his wives and to get this visual element, the filmmakers used rubber bats on fishing lines that they move up and down to make it look like they were flapping their wings. You know, the same special effects you would find at a children's Halloween carnival. It's just too silly to pretend that that is not what I am seeing. The acting is also very stagy. The "talkies" (movies with talking) had just come out a couple years before and the director Tod Browning was uncomfortable with the new type of film. Aside from Bela Lugosi, most of the other actors announce their lines taking the viewer out of the narrative.
Director Tod Browning, who was struggling with alcoholism at this point, would go on to create one of my favorite classic horror films the next year, Freaks. And despite, the acting problems, silly bats, and slow second half, this is a landmark film that has helped to cement into American culture so many of the elements that we associate not only with Dracula but horror specifically.
..what's your thoughts?
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