 This is a "masterpiece not only of the genre, but for all time" and they describe Bela Lugosi's performance as "ominous". The DVD also has a version with a new score by Philip Glass (whoever that is). 1931, 75 minutes, DVD
Were this any other horror movie where the characters stood around and unconvincingly spewed forth lines and plot points while periodically swiping haplessly at oversized rubber bats suspended on wires as visible as in any Godzilla movie, I would complain about problems involving bad acting, unimaginative direction, a barely explained villain, and an actor playing the villain with such laughably exaggerated gestures and mannerisms that you wonder if he thought this was a Mel Brooks comedy and file it away as just another low budget terror flick that had neither the talent nor the inclination to be anything else.
But this is Dracula! The granddaddy of the entire horror genre! And that bad actor was Bela Lugosi, a thespian that conventional wisdom would have us believe didn't stink until several years later when he switched from the classic Universal thrillers to abysmal poverty row thrillers. Surely, I'll overlook all this film's flaws because of its place in history. Surely, I'll comment on its significance and its deeper meaning (because these old movies always have deeper meanings that newer, just as raggedy films somehow lack). Surely, I'll explain how Bela was the template for all movie vampires that were to follow and that it was the cruel caprice of fate that led to him ending up being replaced by a chiropractor in his final film. Surely you jest.
I've always gone through life assuming that a pile of crap is still a big stinky gag-inducing mess regardless of whether it came from me, my big sloppy dog, or the Queen of England. This movie is boring, badly staged, and revolves around a guy with a silly accent who actually thinks that waving his hand claw-like in the direction of someone is the very definition of terror. I couldn't wait for it to end and was glad that back in 1931 the only trick Hollywood hadn't yet come up with to further showcase their overheated turkeys was running times longer than an hour and fifteen minutes. Can you imagine how much worse this would have been if it would have gone on as long as Omar Epps' Dracula 2000?
Surprisingly enough, it doesn't really start out like it's going to be the worst experience you've had since the last time you saw a movie starring Bela. A guy named Renfield is travelling in the mountains of Transylvania to the castle where Dracula lives. Inaugurating a long-standing tradition in these types of castle-intensive movies, the locals are asuperstitious and crabby lot that don't want nothing to do with any outsider who's looking for the castle of the local nobleman who is viewed with suspicion for shadowy reasons. (Unfortunately, we would have to wait for Frankenstein to see the other bookend to this - the angry, pitchfork and torch wielding mob. I usually can cut a movie some slack if it ends with some rabble firing up some rich guy's crib.)
Even with minimal help from the villagers, Renfield eventually finds himself at Drac's shack and doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that it looks like Dracula let the housekeeper have the day off - and has since about 1506! There's dust everywhere, giant fake spider webs strung across doors and stairs, and I'm not sure, but I think Drac was still just pulling his TV channels in off an antenna on one of the parapets. Obviously Renfield should have had his guard up, or at least worn old clothes. 
It's at this point that the audience first begins to nod off as Renfield whips out the lease agreement for Carfax Abbey. Let me pose this question to you if you think I'm being too harsh or just trying to be funny: If you think back to your own life and recall all the times that it involved a lease agreement, how many of you can honestly say that those incidents were moments where your adrenaline was pumping, where you were on the edge of your seat, where you were just riveted as you examined the fifteenth clause about how many cats you could have and how often your landlord was allowed to enter the residence to reload his video camera that he has secretly stashed in your bedroom light fixture? Yeah, this scene would be right up there with the scene where Dracula goes to the DMV to renew his driver's license. Simply put: No more real estate closings in movies please!
Dracula's new digs are located in London and it turns out that it's right next to the sanatorium run by Dr. Seward. This works out well for Dracula for a number of reasons. It allows him to be near his new crazy pal Renfield who after a long voyage with Dracula now craves the blood of small bugs and is prone to insane ravings. It also allows Dracula to dole out hickeys to Dr. Seward's hot-for-1931 daughter Mina.
Before he can get around to playing Seward's daughter, he finds her pal Lucy on the streets of London and chomps on her. I think she eventually ended up dead from this, but I kept getting distracted by some of the worst character development this side of Lamberto Bava movie so I'm not too sure. 
Another thing I wasn't too sure of was what this Dracula character was all about. It was a good thing that he's kind of like Mickey Mouse or Superman and is just someone you know from being alive, because if everything I knew about him came from this movie I wouldn't have known what to make of him. He was a vampire and could change into a bat or wolf and didn't like wolfsbane or crosses. He also couldn't be seen in a mirror. There was also his taste for human blood. I don't recall there being any actual explanation for any of this and once Dr. Van Helsing was introduced to hunt him down, I don't remember much in the way of background on Van Helsing to explain how or why he would know any of this. The story as presented in this movie really did a poor job of laying out the mythos we've all somehow become accustomed to.
The real problem Dracula has as a character in this movie though is that he's entirely one dimensional. All the great Universal monsters - from the Mummy, Invisible Man, and especially the Frankenstein Monster have some element of humanity in them, something the audience can grab onto and identify with even as the creatures play out their various rampages. The Mummy is about trying to reunite with a true love, the Monster is simply someone trying to find his place in a world that rejects him, and the Ivisible Man is a naked dude running around in the snow. All of them have something to offer the audience to invest themselves in. Dracula has a bad accent and sneer. There's no reason to care about this puffy, pasty-faced, middle-aged loser. He's even creepy to look at, but not in a scary way, but merely in a "go away you icky old man" way. I'm not sure if Universal ever nailed down why we should give a crap about Drac which is too bad because there was all that "I can't ever die" pathos they could have played on.
Back at the sanatorium Mina has a fiancee named Jonathan Harker and he does very little other than stand around with looking like an absolute hick with his sport coat buttoned with the bottom button! Egads! Was this kid raised in Scotland or something? You never button the bottom button of your sport coat! He also has a really unfortunate scene where Mina is under Dracula's spell and she's trying to bewitch him or something and he's waving furiously at that big rubber bat that director Tod Browning seemed overly fond of. Tod also had a possum running around near Dracula's coffin once, but the best scene was when all these armadillos appeared for no reason! Where was Dracula staying? London, Texas?
The ending was as jarring as the rest of the film was tedious. Renfield accidentally leads the good guys to Dracula's hideout and takes a very unimpressive fall down a very impressive flight of stairs (Rule of thumb: If I watch you fall down the stairs and think to myself that I would feel comfortable letting my four year old step son do that stunt, then you need to reshoot it.) 
Once Van Helsing and Harker rescue Mina, Van Helsing tells Harker to leave with her and that he'll be there in a minute and then he stakes Dracula in the heart (off camera of course) and that's pretty much it. It felt like there was supposed to be another scene where everyone could stand around and wrap it all up, but I was probably just so used to scenes where characters stood around emoting that it was a conditioned reflex. I also was confused about Mina's fate. Wasn't she bitten? Is there any cure for that? If she wasn't, then what was her problem? And since I just watched all of this, why can't I remember important details like what was going on with the heroine?
No one in this movie distinguishes themselves with the exception of Bela and he does it in a way that he probably didn't intend to. His comic stylings are always a welcome slice of cheese when teamed with folks with names like Abbott or Costello, but he's surrounded by a bunch of straight men in this one, so I don't suppose you can fault him for this movie not being terribly funny since he's doing his darnedest to eek laughs out of a script as creaky as the coffins in his armadillo-ridden basement.
Tod Browning, of Freaks fame, doesn't do anyone any favors with a cinematic eye that can only be charitably be described as "stagebound". Uh, Tod, this is a movie, not a high school play. You can let the action breathe a little bit if you want. You can move the characters out of the two or three sets you had built and you can also tell some of them to tone done the vocal and facial expressions. Since this is going to be projected on a large screen you don't have to worry about the freshman class being able to see the actors in the back of the auditorium.
One of the most overrated movies you're likely to run into, it really is a chore to sit through and would be a shame if it was your introduction to the Universal horror canon when you've got legitimately great movies like Frankenstein, Bride Of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man , and The Mummy out there still standing unbowed after all these years. Seeing this one will make you appreciate the fact that Bela turned down the Frankenstein Monster role. And also that John Carradine eventually ended up playing the vampire in the forties. This one should've been buried with Bela and his moth-eaten Dracula cape.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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