Dracula (1931)
Directed by Tod Browning, Karl Freund

Film Review

The film that launched one of Hollywood's biggest band wagons and has the distinction of being one of the best known films ever made is one that continues to divide critical opinion. Universal's 1931 production of Dracula is the seminal monster movie, one of the most influential films of all time, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would describe it as a masterpiece, even in jest.  Universal's subsequent monster films featuring Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolf Man (to name just three) are far more highly regarded, but Dracula is where the phenomenon of Gothic horror in sound cinema had its spine-tingling beginning.

The film was directed by Tod Browning who, going by his past record, must have seemed the ideal person for the job.  Through his collaborations with "man of a thousand faces" Lon Chaney, Browning had become one of the leading film directors in Hollywood during the later years of the silent era.  Unfortunately, Browning, like many of his contemporaries, had difficulty adapting to the introduction of synchronised sound and not long after having made Dracula his career would fall into a rapid decline.

Lon Chaney was the original choice for the part of Dracula, but he was diagnosed with terminal cancer before the contract could be drawn up.  Many other actors were considered as Chaney's replacement, including Paul Muni, Chester Morris, John Wray and William Courtney, before Bela Lugosi was finally given the part after a long and intensive period of lobbying.  Universal's executives were reluctant to hire Lugosi because he was not an established film actor, even though he had played the part in a highly successful Broadway stage play, a loose (in just about every definition of the word) adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston.

Lugosi had started out as a stage actor in his native Hungary, but he left the country in 1919 to avoid political persecution following the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.  After a period in Germany, where he appeared in a number of films, he moved to America, where he resumed his stage career.  He had difficulty speaking English, and so had to learn his lines phonetically in his early roles.   One of the reasons why Lugosi landed the part of Dracula in the Broadway production was because he was an unknown actor (and therefore cheap) and virtually all of the budget had already been committed by the time the producers got round to casting the lead role.

When he saw the stage play, Universal's Carl Laemmle Jr. (the son of Carl Laemmle. the man who owned the studio) immediately saw the potential for a film version.  At the time, Hollywood studios were cautious about making horror films, fearful of the public reaction and censorship difficulties, although the two previous forays in the genre - The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - had been notable successes.

Previously, there had been two unauthorised screen adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula novel.  The first was Dracula's Death (1921) a short Hungarian film whose only connection with the novel was the use of the title character.  The second was Nosferatu (1922), which was faithful to the novel except for the cunning renaming of all the characters (Dracula, for example, became Count Orlok).  This latter film was directed by the great German filmmaker F.W. Murnau and is regarded both as a masterpiece of German expressionism and one of the most frightening horror films ever made.  Like one former British monarch, Bram Stoker's widow was not amused and, after an acrimonious lawsuit, insisted that Nosferatu be taken out of circulation and all prints destroyed.  Carl Laemmle Jr. was not going to repeat this legal faux pas and ensured that his company owned the rights to the novel before work began on the film.

At the outset, it was intended that Universal's Dracula would be a prestige production, the definitive adaptation of Stoker's novel.  However, with the studio's finances looking ever shakier as the Great Depression took its toll, these ambitions were quickly rolled back and what ended up on screen was much closer to Deane and Balderston's cheap and cheerful stage play than to Stoker's sprawling novel.   This is most apparent in the portrayal of the Count himself.  In the film, he is a suave, elegant showman, just as he was portrayed in the play, and not the antisocial monstrosity with lethal halitosis that Stoker had envisaged.

Lugosi's is widely regarded as the definite incarnation of Dracula.  With his powerful screen presence and mesmeric, heavily accented voice, the actor dominates every scene he is in and leaves a lasting impression, chilling the audience's blood with his cold inhuman stare and creepy theatrical gestures.  Although Lugosi would forever be associated with the role of Dracula, he would only play the part in one other film: Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).  However, try as he might, he would never be able to escape from the part that had brought him stardom; he would play similar roles for most of his subsequent career.  The same fate befell Lugosi's co-star, Dwight Frye, who plays Dracula's insect scoffing servant, Renfield.   When he made this film. Frye was one of Hollywood's most promising young character actors, but his portrayal of Renfield would forever typecast him in the role of the freaky henchman, in such films as Frankenstein (1931) and The Vampire Bat (1933).

The film's cinematographer was Karl Freund, one of the great pioneer's of German expressionism.  He had worked on such classics as Murnau's Der Letzte Mann (1924) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), although his contribution to Dracula is far less impressive than on these earlier films.  There are reports that the production was highly disorganised, with Browning expressing less than enthusiastic interest in the film and leaving Freund to direct several scenes.   This can be seen in the end result.  Much of the film is sloppily directed, with little coherence of artistic vision and a number of obvious production errors.  

A Spanish version of the film, Drácula, was shot in parallel, with the same sets but with a completely different cast and crew.  This is considered to be the superior film, mainly on the strength of its more imaginative camera work and optical effects, although it lacks Lugosi's star presence.  The film was directed by George Melford and stars Carlos Villarías as Dracula.

Just as Carl Laemmle Jr. had anticipated, Dracula was a huge box office success, one of the highest grossing films of 1931 and one of a handful of productions that helped Universal through the Great Depression.  The film's popularity encouraged the studio to make other horror films in the same vein.  Dracula was quickly followed by Frankenstein (1931), and then a spate of monster movies, including The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and many more.

Today, Dracula is considered a classic horror film, fondly regarded despite its apparent failings.  The film's opening sequence is particularly effective, with atmospheric expressionistic sets and skilful use of tracking shots to draw the audience into the story.  Alas, these inspired artistic touches are pretty much absent from the lumbering middle section, which is weighed down by stilted performances, tedious dialogue and static camerawork.  For all its faults, the film did introduce much of the iconography that we now associate with Gothic horror films, some of which continues to exert a strong influence on modern films in the fantasy horror genre.

As every canny film producer knows, every successful film deserves to have at least three sequels, and Dracula is one of the films that started this regrettable trend.  The first sequel was Dracula's Daughter (1936), followed by Son of Dracula (1943).  Dracula himself would appear in three more Universal films: House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and the aforementioned Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), with John Carradine taking over from Lugosi in the first two of these films.  Dracula would be remade several times, including one by Universal in 1979, and a notable production by  the British company Hammer in 1958, which introduced Christopher Lee in the title role and gave the vampiric legend a new lease of life.  But that's another story...

Film Synopsis

Real estate agent Mr Renfield travels to Transylvania to conclude the purchase of a house in England with his client, Count Dracula.  Renfield is foolish to ignore the warnings of the local peasants and he ends up as Dracula's willing servant.  A short while later, a ship drifts into Whitby harbour.  All the crew are dead and the only passenger, Renfield, is completely unhinged.  As the madman is taken off to a sanatorium run by Dr Seward, no one notices the coffin-sized boxes in the ship's hold...  Upon his arrival in London, Dracula acquaints himself with Dr Seward, in an attempt to recover his servant Renfield.  The Count's attention is drawn to Seward's daughter, Mina, and her equally attractive friend Lucy.  When the latter dies a few days later from loss of blood, Seward's colleague Professor Van Helsing diagnoses that she is the victim of a vampire.  Little do they suspect that Mina is to be Dracula's next victim...