Throwback Thursday is a thing. Since it is, my Thursday blog posts will be about true classics, like today's entry, 1931's Dracula from Universal pictures. Arguably, the film that started the era of the great monster movies on the Silver Screen, and definitely the one that started the Universal Monsters legacy that continues to this day. After over 80 years, the Universal Monsters still resonate with audiences and the images made immortal in those early films are still the images people's minds bring to the fore when names such as Dracula are mentioned. My first four Throwback Thursday posts will be in homage to those films and the Big Four: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and the Mummy. As Universal begins to create a new Universal Monsters film universe, it seems only fitting to look back to these original classics.
A few years ago, I read an article about the most popular characters who have been adapted from literary source for movies. If I am recalling correctly, Sherlock Holmes was the most popular, with the first filmed version of the character being in a 1900 adaptation, a 30 second short called Sherlock Holmes Baffled by Georges Méliès. Not surprisingly, the sanguinary count created by Bram Stoker was in second place. Both characters have spawned over 200 filmed versions over the decades. Both continue to remain hugely popular in the world today, as well.
The purported first version of Dracula was a 1920 Russian film called Drakula. However; no copy of this film remains, nor do productions stills, script, etc. It is widely believed this film never existed. Another lost film, 1921's Hungarian title Dracula's Death is likely the first adaptation. Of course, most readers here will know the first true adaptation of the novel was 1922's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror by F.W. Murnau starring Max Shreck as Count Orlock. The adaptation was unauthorized, though, and Stoker's estate sued to have all copies of the film destroyed. Luckily for the horror fans of the world, a few copies survived and have since entered the public domain. So, the film we are reviewing today is the first authorized version of the film, and first that had sound.
Although adaptations have often diverged from Stoker's novel in many ways, the basic plot usually remains the same. A young Englishman named Jonathan Harker (in this version, the character is Renfield) travels to Transylvania to meet with Count Dracula to finalize a real estate for an English property. The young Harker falls prey to Dracula and his vampiric brides. After the deal is completed, Harker is left to confinement in Dracula's castle while the Count travels to England. Once Dracula arrives in England, he starts to spread his curse of vampirism, and it is the close friends and loved ones who take to the hunt for Dracula, led by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. After a long pursuit that leads back to Transylvania, and the Count is destroyed. That's the basic gist of the novel, and Tod Browning's movie adaptation follows it pretty closely. There a few changes, but they are minor in the overall story.
Browning's version of Dracula was based on the stage play from 1927, which was authorized by Stoker's estate. Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderstone wrote the play, which was very popular onstage. Both Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and Edward Van Sloane as Van Helsing had starred in the play, and were brought into the film. Helen Chandler was cast as Mina and Dwight Frye brought to life the part of Renfield.
Some may not know that there was a second version of the film that was shot using the same sets in Spanish. In that version, Carlos Villarias played the Count, Lupita Tovar as Eva (Mina), and Eduardo Arozamena as Van Helsing. The George Melford directed Spanish version actually had a couple of extra scenes that American censors wouldn't pass. The Spanish language version is available with several DVD and BluRay releases of Dracula from Universal. Another thing many people may not have noticed is the lack of music in Dracula. Other than the opening and closing credits, plus a scene at an opera, there is no musical score. It wasn't until 1999 that a score was commissioned for the film, written by Phillip Glass. Originally available on VHS, the score is also on the digital releases.
Dracula made a star of Bela Lugosi (born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugos, Kingdom Of Hungary in 1882) and is the role he is most associated with. Ironically, he only played Dracula twice, and the other time was in Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein. Dracula wasn't even billed in the title! And that is kind of the story of Bela's carer. After Dracula, his roles actually got smaller, and he was often cast alongside Boris Karloff. He rarely got first billing, even getting second billing in their co-starring roles in The Raven, even though Bela was the lead. The parts became fewer and farther between, and, after developing sciatic neuritis, Lugosi became addicted to morphine and methadone. His downward spiral due to the drugs led to Ed Wood Jr. being the only person who would cast him. The universally panned Plan 9 From Outer Space became his last film. Bela Lugosi passed away on August 16, 1956 at the age of 73. At the time of his death, Bela had been acting in motion pictures for nearly 40 years, having appeared in The Colonel in 1917 (Az eredes). He had been appearing on stage for more than a decade in Hungary before his first film role, having dropped out of school at the age of 12. Lugosi himself would make a great subject for a bio-pic.
Dracula's director found a great team in van Sloane and Lugosi, but other actors DID audition for the parts before they decided on the two who made the roles famous. Browning himself had started out in silent films, acting in over 50 films, and started directing while acting. He then was involved in a car accident, receiving serious injuries. While recovering, he started writing scripts. After recovering, he went back to acting, directing and producing. Browning eventually was introduced to Lon Chaney by Irving Thalberg, and they made the first of ten films together in 1919, The Wicked Darling. Two of the films they made together went on to be famous, The Unholy Three (1925) and London After Midnight (1927). The Unholy Three was so popular that it was remade in 1930 and was Lon Chaney's final film and only talkie before his death. Sadly, London After Midnight is a lost film, with the only known remaining copy destroyed in a fire at MGM in 1967. Another collaboration between Chaney and Browning was The Unknown in 1927. That film foreshadows Browning's Freaks (1932) in that it features Chaney as an armless knife thrower (or is he?), a carnival girl played by Joan Crawford, and Norman Kerry as the strongman Malabar in a love triangle. Browning's first talkie was The Thirteenth Chair featuring Bela Lugosi as a police inspector.
Even though Browning had worked with Lugosi, and Lugosi had played the Count numerous times onstage, Lugosi was not his first choice for Dracula. Browning wanted to find an unknown European actor who play the Count and be played mostly offscreen. Browning's vision was not shared by the studio, though, and they insisted on Dracula being pretty much a remake of the play. And, so, a legendary film was born.
In many ways, Dracula is a film of amazing simplicity. The sets are gorgeous, even in black and white, the actors have a great background to work against. The dialogue, while somewhat stilted in Lugosi's English-as-a-second-language, is a master class in dialogue that sound almost poetic. Some of the lines have become some of the most quoted in movie history. Just look at some of these:
Van Helsing: The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.
Dracula-"Listen to them. Children of the night. what music they make. The spider spinning his web for the unwary fly. The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield."
Lucy- "Lofty timbers, the walls around are bare, echoing to our laughter as though the dead were there... Quaff a cup to the dead already, hooray for the next to die!"
Mina-"I heard dogs howling. And when the dream came, it seemed the whole room was filled with mist. It was so thick, 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!"
Oh, I could go on an on. I could talk about how Browning used light and shadow to set the mood perfectly. I could talk about the actors all seemed to be perfectly cast for their roles. Dwight Frye's Renfield is probably just as famous as Lugosi's Dracula. His insane laugh is chilling. And he gets awesome dialogue, too.
Renfield: He came and stood below my window in the moonlight. And he promised me things, not in words, but by doing them.
Van Helsing: Doing them?
Renfield: By making them happen. A red mist spread over the lawn, coming on like a flame of fire! And then he parted it, and I could see that there were thousands of rats, with their eyes blazing red,l ike his, only smaller. Then he held up his hand, and they all stopped, and I thought he seemed to be saying: "Rats! Rats! Rats! Thousands! Millions of them! All red-blood! All these will I give you! If you will obey me!"
Dracula is just one of those films I have watched so many times I know it by heart. If you haven't seen it, I have to ask, what is wrong with you! This is a film that was groundbreaking and became iconic in so many ways. I think I will go watch it again right now.
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