DRACULA – 1931. Directed by Tod Browning. It is your grandfather’s favorite scary movie, a cinema classic that has become the standard for the Vampire genre. My father told me he saw it as a young boy and ran all the way home. It was the first Vampire picture with sound and featured a 49-year-old Hungarian actor, Bela Lugosi, whose English was less than polished.
Yet we fell in love with Dracula even though he frightened us.
It adapts the original 1897 Bram Stoker novel of the same name, directed by Tod Browning, a major horror genre film director at the time, and it was the first authorized film adaptation of the novel. Browning had directed Lon Chaney in many pictures and eventually directed the film classic, Freaks. In Dracula, he created an intriguing, captivating atmosphere using cinematographer Karl Freund, who shot the first vampire masterpiece, Nosferatu, directed by F.M. Murnau in 1922. Freund created the arrival scene of unsuspecting businessman R. M. Renfield at the foreboding ruins of Castle Dracula which opens the picture and sets the stage for the tone and style of the movie.
The picture begins with an attack on Renfield by Count Dracula and is followed by their journey by ship from Transylvania to London. Renfield, now a vampire, becomes a raving maniacal servant of Dracula.
After the eerie, terrifying ocean passage, Count Dracula and Renfield arrive in London. Dracula feasts on the blood of strangers, then enters high society by insinuating himself into the box at the London Royal Opera House occupied by Dr. Seward. The doctor owns Carfax Abbey, which adjoins the sanitarium where Renfield has been committed after he feasted on small animals and insects. Dracula befriends Seward’s daughter Mina, her fiance John Harker and her friend Lucy. Vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing is at the sanitarium and senses vampirism is at play. When Lugosi draws close to the sleeping Lucy, it is the final straw. Somehow, he must be destroyed.
Several actors were considered to portray the title character of Dracula, including Lon Chaney who unfortunately was stricken with throat cancer and couldn’t take the role. Bela Lugosi, who had previously played the role on Broadway, eventually got the part.
“Dracula” is terrifying, one of the most chilling, frightening films ever made. It is also interesting for the stylized performances, the photography, the sets, and of course the sound. The movie introduces bats, crucifixes, and mirrors, into the vampire legend. They were not in the book. But the concept that Dracula is one of the “undead” does originate in the book, and in fact, Stoker originally titled the manuscript “The Un-dead.”
In 1995, MCA/Universal released a collection of films on home video under the title “Universal Studios Monsters Classic Collection”. This series included Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and The Creature from the Black Lagoon series.” Dracula, the film, will no doubt live on, as does Dracula the legend in the annals of horror culture.
by Neil Healy
