‘Tis the season: Dracula and Drácula

It’s confession time. I love horror movies - the lousy, the classic, the “elevated” - and monster movies, which may or may not be genuinely horrific. I was raised on the Universal monsters from a child. I watched James Whale’s Frankenstein with Boris Karloff (like there was another?) with my mother and it was truly off to the races. Along with my regular comic book run, I’d also get Forrest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland and this proved to be a boon to the nascent film buff, if also a major element in my confession.

Here it is: I rarely - as in 99% or more - am “frightened” by a horror film. There have been a handful that have gotten under my skin, but for most of my life, I’ve been all too aware that a horror film, no matter how well-constructed, how well executed, is, after all, “just a movie.” 

To be clear, it isn’t just that I’m aware of the machinery that goes into making any movie; much has to do with questioning why we shouldn’t be on the so-called monster’s side. I cried at the end of Frankenstein, that first time I saw it because the villagers were so ignorant and hateful. Sure, he might have drowned the little girl, but that was purely an accident. It irked me that the stupid adults couldn’t see that the Creature was basically a child himself.

Of course, I’ve had an immense distrust of adults my entire life. Early on, I realized that they could be as capricious, bullying, and mendacious as my single-digit peers. My assessment didn’t change as I got older and for an up-to-date report: it still hasn’t.

What other people found “creepy” or unsettling, I rarely did. Fantastical, beautiful, even, but never dread-inducing. Any sense of dread I’ve gotten in a horror picture has usually come from something unseen but looming over the narrative, either pervasive or hinted at or very often, it’s in how much I give myself over to the characters and their plights.

Consequently, The Exorcist, The Haunting, The Blair Witch Project, and believe it or not, The Ring (the US remake of Ringu, just so I’m clear) got under my skin and I still walk out of every screening of Friedkin’s masterpiece disturbed. 

Additionally, the older I got, the more “real life” horrors and tragedies usually caused the filmic ones to pale in comparison. Films that dealt with tragedy or genuine disaster tended to linger longer. 

The success of most films for me depends an awful lot on how I relate to the characters. That isn’t just down to the actors. Does the dialog make sense? Are their motivations reasonable in the circumstances? Is the film organized effectively enough that what they are doing in any given scene seem solid?

In a horror flick, there’s a lot of wiggle room. Of course, there’s the reliable stupidity of going back into the haunted house or doubling back over territory to retrieve some important device or rescue a comrade, but sometimes, even these lapses in reason can be mitigated, if the film is oneiric enough. 

As a budding teenage surrealist, I could subsume rationality and logic to films the more phantasmal they were. Gialli and European horror films were more my cup of tea by the time I was in my teens. Before that, Hammer films had shown me how incredibly sexy and seductive the genre could be.

However, when I returned to the earlier generations of horror masterworks, I was often surprised by how well they held up, despite their staginess and often odd line-readings. Some hold up better than others. The Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy work as just plain good cinema. I’m also of the mind that the latter film gives Karloff a chance to stretch in a way that few of his other films allowed him to.

Indeed, his character, Imhotep, has a longing that transcends time and it might be the first time in a popular film where the idea of a love traversing millennia was successfully shown. Recently, I reprised Coppola’s Dracula and there, too, Oldman’s former Vlad the Impaler is driven by the same impulse and while I love the later film, the concision and economy with which the earlier Universal film of the undead Egyptian portrayed the same theme, trumps the maximalism of vampire’s later telling.

Both films boast remarkable directing, but The Mummy had Karl Freund doing the honors. Freund was more than just a genre director; he was, quite simply, one of the most important cinematographers of the Silent and early Sound Eras. He’d worked with Wedekind, Murnau, and Lang on seminal works like The Golem, The Last Laugh, and Metropolis. His move to the U.S. saw him take on the lending for All Quiet on the Western Front (uncredited) and Dracula, Universal’s first classic “monster movie” of the sound era.

Freund also directed a substantial amount of Dracula as Tod Browning - in the throes of alcoholism and distraught over loss of Lon Chaney, Sr. - was said to have been unreliable and leaving the set frequently. On the balance, that the film is as successful as it is, is something of a miracle (or not, given Freund’s level of professionalism). 

There are other aspects that finished piece was fighting against, not the least of which was that the cast, excepting Lugosi, didn’t really care for the script and I think it is safe to say had little faith in it becoming much of anything. Edward Van Sloan who played Van Helsing, detested the film, and Helen Chandler was dismissive of the film and Lugosi, whom she found egocentric and odd. Mina would be her most famous role and sadly, owing to her incipient alcoholism, her career would fade quickly after, her last role being in Mr. Boggs Steps Out in 1938.

At the center of it all, though, is the star. Bela Lugosi was Dracula and his performance would be the one all others would be measured against. He was a formidable stage actor whose work in front of a mirror while proclaiming “I am Dracula!” had nothing to do with egocentricity and all to do as a method for getting into character. There is likely an entire thesis to be written about comparisons between techniques of U.S. and European trained thespians of the era, but suffice it to say that the Americans didn’t get Lugosi’s.

All of this said, his turn as the Count is what keeps the picture afloat. I disagree with Christopher Lee who dismissed Lugosi’s interpretation as completely wrong for the character. There is an otherness to his rendering; even though it isn’t addressed as overtly in other adaptations, Count Dracula does seem a man or creature out his time. It’s not his line readings that feel stage-bound; it’s in the blocking and the cutaways to his eyes that feel cheesy to us almost a hundred years later. 

At the time, his performance and the film itself were unnerving. To be sure, there were contemporary reviews that found the film creaky even then, but it was a box office success and shored up Universal’s fortunes, paving the way for their run of horror/monster movies through the 1930s and ‘40s. 

Even with the passage of time, there is an atmosphere that pervades the film that while anodyne to me, is still palpable and I can imagine that to audiences upon its release might well have proven disconcerting. It’s also a fleet work, clocking in at 74 minutes, and yet, there are moments of stillness that set the viewer up for the next critical passage. 

There is, of course, moments that don’t work, at least, on the face of it. Why - if Van Helsing was so convinced that Dracula was lying in state during the day in boxes of soil from his homeland - didn’t he mount an investigation into Carfax Abbey and nail Dracula in a more robust manner. Not necessarily sooner, but there is a lack of dynamism toward the denouement that I find confounding. My assumption is that this is owing to the play’s structure that the film was based on.

I also wonder if the blasé attitude of some of the other principals in the cast didn’t hurt the pacing of film a bit. Helen Chandler’s Mina is a drip and I can see why she’d be merely another meat puppet for Dracula; Lucy, Mina’s friend, is more vivacious and alive. It’s a peculiarly written role since Lucy seems to take to the Count’s strangeness and that in itself makes her more interesting than Mina. 

David Manners as John Harker, Mina’s beau, is also a sketch more than a character. Apparently intended to be the “harsh voice of reason”, he comes off as remarkably thick and uninteresting in a way that later versions of the character are not. Van Sloan as Van Helsing is almost fun. His interactions with Lugosi are when he seems most alive and you kind of feel the rapport the two actors might have had in the roles on stage. 

And what of Dwight Frye, Renfield himself? Oh, my. He gets the second most delicious part after Lugosi. His Renfield is a fully fleshed-out psychopath. Frye doesn’t play Renfield for laughs; this is a man whose soul is on the precipice of the abyss, but he’s in such thrall to his master Dracula, that he is whiplashed from fear and the desire for the life that feeds on life for eternity. 

Renfield is the first of Dracula’s victims, as we see the count descend on him in his quarters at Castle Dracula in Transylvania. This might well have disturbed viewers in 1931; it could be read as homoerotic, but even if not, it remains a violation of the most intimate kind. 

Unlike the more feral Max Shreck of Murnau’s Nosferatu — a work that we could assume informed Dracula via Freund — Lugosi’s advances are far more seductive and perhaps more transgressive, since he is presented in a more “civilized” aspect. The man in formal wear with the mysterious Eastern European accent stands in stark contrast to Shreck’s Count Orlock. The one is still readable and relatable as a human being, albeit one capable of destroying souls. There is no room for such subterfuge with Shreck’s creation.

It would be an oversight to not mention the sets and the minimalist effects. Dracula himself inhabits crumbling, decaying buildings and travels through (and as) mist. The ruins of Castle Dracula are a massive, web-ridden cathedral-like interior and a handsome matte painting exterior. The underground crypt of Carfax Abbey reeks of dust, age, water damage, and you can almost feel the damp subterranean chill seeping into your bones.

By contrast, the drawing room scenes, Mina’s bedroom, and Dr. Seward’s house feel vapid, and hardly able to stave off the intruder in the night. The operating theater where we see Lucy’s autopsy is eerily lit and feels like a liminal space between the depths from which Dracula arises nightly and the luminous, harmless domesticity of the Steward house.

We don’t get much of a sense of the Seward Sanitarium where Renfield is held, but for the grounds that abut the Abbey. It feels less a place of its own than an outgrowth of Carfax and Dracula’s assault on the collective sanity of all within his purview.

As I mentioned, the effects are minimal. There are no great innovations here; Dracula’s metamorphoses into wolf or bat happen offscreen and if there is a fault, it’s the movement of these rubber bats, bobbing up and down in place. Nevertheless, as with any act of imagination, we superimpose those transitions in our minds or project onto the rubbery flyers more appropriates motion.

While Dracula is hardly a “scary” or even disturbing film for today’s audiences, the stylized acting, directing, and set design still cast a spell, something like a dream, now half-remembered, that lingers over one’s day, almost melancholy, but unique as the first among the Sound Era horror films.

While Browing, Freund, Lugosi, et alia, were filming during the day, George Melford was helming a Spanish-language version for export to Latin America. Carlos Villarías stars as Conde Drácula and Lupita Tovar as Eva Seward. Pablo Alvarez Rubio is Renfield, Eduardo Arozamena is Van Helsing, and Carmen Guerrero is Lucia.

The film is a scene by scene version of the Browning version, but different in its own right. The performances across the board are more lively and there is a greater degree of explicitness and sensuality. Withal, there is more of an almost electric charge to the film, one that is lacking in the U.S. movie.

Tovar said in an interview that the cast used the same marks as the American cast but I think she was far more invested in her film than, say, Helen Chandler was in hers. “Once you went into that set, it was a different world. You became under the spell of Dracula….I was frightened. I really felt scared of Dracula, you know?”(Del Barco, 2022)

Tovar echoed what many have said; that the Spanish version was the better film overall. Having just seen it, I’m not sure. Its virtues and advantages are the aforementioned engagement of the cast. Their scenes pop; the dialog is pretty much the same, but there is a vivacity here that, had it been present in the English language version, would have rendered it a completely different film.

Melford and Villarías would watch the day’s shooting and make improvements (Del Barco). I found this amazing. Imagine having access to Browing and Freund and being able to craft your own work and yes, improve on it.

The set-ups are more dynamic and there’s a greater sense of narrative agency based on camera movement and use of perspective. Also, because they were filming for international distribution, they didn’t have to deal with the Hays Office. While 1931 is still pre-Code, it was nearing the end of relative cinematic freedom in the U.S.

The actresses in Melford’s version wore more revealing clothes, Renfield bleeds like a stuck pig when he nicks his finger in Castle Drácula (or Castillo, if I’m going to do this right); his demise is also pretty gruesome. More than that, this version takes its time. With an additional almost thirty  minutes, there’s a more expansive sense of expectation. 

Rubio’s Renfield is about as unhinged as Frye’s, but Tovar is a living human being as Eva compared to Chandler’s Mina. Tovar also outlived everyone from both versions, passing away in 2016 at the age of 106. She was a remarkable actress and lived quite a life; she is well worth looking up and her two grandsons - Paul and Chris Weitz - are both filmmakers in their own rights.

But — and I don’t like writing this — I have a knock, and its a big one. Villarías is no Bela Lugosi. If anything slows the picture down, it’s that our man doesn’t quite capture the otherworldliness of the Hungarian actor. If Lugosi’s turn comes off as stylized, Villarías’s reads as quite hammy. Honestly not throughout the entire film, but in certain moments, I really don’t understand why he made the choices he did or why Melford went with some of them. 

That said, in the non-hammy moments, Villarías is a commanding presence, but earthier and more human than Lugosi. In some ways, this makes his vampire more of a threat. 

George Robinson wasn’t Karl Freund, but there are no flies on his body of work, either. He would go onto shoot a ton of remarkable movies for Universal and interestingly, would wind up filming Bela Lugosi in several films. A number of his films are among my favorites and it should be noted that he was cinematographer for Dracula’s Daughter, a direct sequel to Dracula (that begins right after Van Helsing drives the stake through the Count’s heart).

I’m not quite willing to say that Drácula is the better film; but I’d be willing to say that it is at least as good as its English version, which by extension, makes it as great a film. Consider this; Dracula was unlike just about any other film at the time. It’s been argued that it is the definitive vampire film from which all others derive. Murnau’s Nosferatu was almost erased from cinematic history by Bram Stoker’s litigious estate and while I’d argue that film is greater and of more historical importance than even Universal’s versions, we encounter a kind of film and filmmaking that would have lasting effects on its successors for decades to come in a way that Murnau’s was denied from having.

Interestingly, Drácula is also imbued with an overall dreamlike quality but of a different sort. As lively and earthier as I found it, there was more of a fairytale of folktale nuance that seemed present. Perhaps it was listening to it in Spanish where I associate Catholicism more readily with the material. Yes, it is still set in the Carpathians, but it could have just as well have been the Pyrenees and the switch might have made it even more gripping. 

One thing is certain. Drácula should not be seen as a footnote to Dracula. What Melford produced was no less groundbreaking than Browing’s and I hope that the historical record someday comes around to correcting this bit of “Hollywood exceptionalism”.

Seeing both versions on the big screen was enlightening and I could appreciate them far more as cinema than had I watched them on even a 52-inch screen in the privacy of a living room. Plus, nothing beats the communal aspect of watching in a theater, even if some people (and I’m guilty) did find themselves laughing at inopportune moments. 

I’ll end with a second confession. There’s are two moments in Drácula where I laughed despite myself. One where a reaction shot on Van Helsing just struck me funny and the other where the maid faints. It’s two shots; the first is a close shot where she begins to swoon and looks as though she might collapse, sprawling, and then it abruptly cuts to a wide where she is laid out perfectly supine. Oh, and no disrespect to Villarías, but I did snicker at a couple of close-ups where he is more bug-eyed and grinning maniacally than appearing terribly threatening. If the choice was made to have him appear more psychopathic, that makes some kind of sense, but the actual execution doesn’t come across as such.

Reference

Del Barco, Mandalit. Spanish 'Dracula' finds new blood, more than 90 years after its release. NPR. 

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1122120454/spanish-dracula-finds-new-blood-more-than-90-years-after-its-release. September 19, 2022. Retrieved October 27, 2026.