"I am... Dracula."
Classic horror film, released in 1931 by
Universal Pictures. It was directed by
Tod Browning, based on the
novel by
Bram Stoker and the play by
John L. Balderston and
Hamilton Deane. It starred
Bela Lugosi as
Count Dracula,
Edward Van Sloan as
Professor Van Helsing,
Dwight Frye as
Renfield,
Helen Chandler as Mina Seward,
David Manners as Jonathan Harker,
Herbert Bunston as Dr. Seward,
Frances Dade as Lucy Weston,
Charles K. Gerrard as Martin,
Joan Standing as Nurse Briggs, and
Geraldine Dvorak,
Cornelia Thaw, and
Dorothy Tree as Dracula's brides. Browning provided the voice of the harbormaster, and
Carla Laemmle, the niece of
Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, played a young passenger in a coach.
Dracula: "The spider, spinning his web for the unwary fly... The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield."
If you've read Stoker's novel, the movie is quite a bit different. At the beginning of the movie, it is a sane Renfield, not Harker, who travels to
Transylvania to meet Dracula. Dracula makes him into his
insane, bug-eating assistant, and they travel to England, where Renfield is incarcerated at Dr. Seward's
sanitarium and Dracula takes up residence next door. After that, there's a lot of cat-and-mouse, as Dracula tries to
vamp Mina, and Van Helsing, Harker, and Seward try to save her. In the end, Dracula kills Renfield, and Van Helsing kills Dracula.
If you want to watch a
scary movie, skip this one. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination,
frightening. It may have been state-of-the-art fright material in the 1930s, but it has not aged at all well. Lugosi's mannerisms seem
goofy, the acting is often
bizarre, and many scenes look like they were taken directly from the
play, with long,
static scenes where very little happens.
Dracula: "This is very old wine. I hope you will like it."
Renfield: "Aren't you drinking?"
Dracula: "I never drink... wine."
But you should see it anyway. Yes, Lugosi is
corny, but he's also absolutely
mesmerizing, even when merely staring into the camera. He is able to whip from courtly,
charming Old World aristocrat to
feral beast and back again in the space of seconds. His
voice and
accent, so easily
impersonated by everyone from stand-up comics to schoolchildren, commands
attention, imparting
menace into every line. Lugosi's
performance transformed him into one of the leading cultural
icons of the 20th century, while damning him to a lifetime of
typecasting and
failure.
Renfield: "Isn't this a strange conversation for people who aren't crazy?"
And Lugosi's isn't the only outstanding performance. Frye's Renfield is simultaneously
wild-eyed and
erudite,
bloodthirsty and
childlike. And his
laughter is the
creepiest Hollywood has ever devised -- he laughs like a man who wants to
scream, but instead muffles his
anguish behind his toothy, forced smile.
Dracula: "For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you're a wise man, Van Helsing."
The popular image of Van Helsing is firmly rooted in Van Sloan's performance. His
quirkiness and
wisdom amplified by his thick accent, Van Sloan always looks like he's
thinking. He's
calm in the face of every
danger, he always has the right answers, and he's the most perfectly
competent scientist and
crusader we've ever seen. Even Chandler's performance as Mina is remarkable. While she spends most of the movie as the
helpless love interest, she gets to cut loose a bit when she's under the
vampire's spell. The look on her face as she starts to move in on Harker is all the stifled
lust and
carnality of Stoker's novel, neatly packaged and delivered in about five to ten seconds of screen time.
While the setting of most of the movie is uninspiring, the beginning of the film, with Renfield strolling in the "broken
battlements" of
Castle Dracula, should not be missed under any circumstances. The
squalor of the castle, Dracula's stately stroll through the
cobwebs, and all those classic lines -- if only they could've set the rest of the movie in Transylvania...
Dracula: "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."
Every night, after production had wrapped for the day, a second crew would come in. Using the same sets, they filmed a
Spanish version of the movie. The directors were
George Melford and
Enrique Tovar Ávalos, and the writers were
Baltasar Fernández Cué and
Garrett Fort. Dracula was played by
Carlos Villarías. The other actors included
Lupita Tovar as Eva,
Barry Norton as Juan Harker,
Pablo Álvarez Rubio as Renfield,
Eduardo Arozamena as Van Helsing,
José Soriano Viosca as Dr. Seward,
Carmen Guerrero as Lucia,
Amelia Senisterra as Marta, and
Manuel Arbó as Martin. Most critics who have seen both films believe that the Spanish version is a better film than the English one. They say the
acting is better, and the film is much more
suspenseful. I haven't seen the Spanish version, so I couldn't tell you.
Dracula: "To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious."
Mina: "Why, Count Dracula!"
Dracula: "There are far worse things awaiting man than death."
Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)