Dracula (1931)

Review

"Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make" - Count Dracula

Renfield, a Real Estate agent, is in the wilds of the Carpathian mountains delivering the transfer papers for a rental a local noble, Count Dracula, is taking in London, England. With the sun falling the locals warn our intrepid Agent that it's Walpurgis Night and there's Nosferatu about or some other superstitions malarkey going down. Not to be deterred Renfield continues on to Castle Dracula and meets the infamous Count, much to his cost. Anyways we know Dracula is a vampire cause he sleeps the day away in a coffin, has vampiric brides, and all manner of critters - clearly fake spiders, opossums, and aardvarks - I kid you not, Ethel is hanging in Transylvania folks. One thing leads to another and Renfield is under the thrall of Dracula, guarding his coffins on a rather troubled voyage to England aboard the good ship Vesta.

In England the Count takes a distinct liking to the Household of one Dr. Seward, and quickly disposes of Seward's daughter Lucy, who is later described as a woman in white praying on children, which is kind of racy for the time in my beguiled opinion. Having started his English Harem Dracula is soon eyeing up Lucy's friend Mina, but due to the death of Lucy a Dr. Van Helsing has taken up the case. Can Van Helsing and the gang save Mina, or will Ethel be making her way to England post haste? An actually striking movie unfolds with some major plot holes; let's drive a stake through it.

Guess this is the earliest horror movie ScaryMinds has reviewed, predating White Zombie by a year, though can't seem to locate that review. One of the things modern horror fans completely miss, or remain stubbornly ignorant of, is the history of the genre and how modern movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Babadock came about. Without a thorough understanding of the history of the genre then you lack the necessary foundations to base any systematic review of the modern penny dreadful. Modern Reviewers, you get paid to be a Critic, unfortunately by and large don't bother with the history of the genre and hence aren't able to determine what exactly a lot of the very talented Directors are trying to achieve.

So to Dracula circa 1931 and the first major cinema production of Bram Stoker's classic novel of Transylvanian mythology, a movie that to a certain degree dispenses with the source novel plotlines in order to appeal to a then cinema going audience. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking the differences between the novel and the film, there are too many to list here, this movie has more in common with other vampire outings than the classic original novel. The characters of Renfield and Harker are pretty much all you need to look at to understand the original novel isn't being adhered to with religious fever in the veins of Director Tod Browning. What we are interested in is how the movie stands up to inspection; clearly this is an early example of Hollywood taking a title for the title's sake, moving along.

Modern audiences are either going to find Dracula quaint or perhaps out of touch with modern sensibilities, for those who want to explore origins and history there is quite a lot to like here. Okay the movie is in black and white, no colour kids, and has painted back drops rather than locations. At the time 100% of movie making took place on sound stages, there was no such thing as locations or in fact location agents, so think in terms of actual stage plays rather than modern cinematic endeavours. Hence you get things like characters explaining the scene they are in to the audience, which is a hangover from more restrictive mediums in the newly emerging visual realm of storytelling.

There are a few plot holes, well okay yawning plot chasms, which I found more amusing than off putting. The classic example is the death of Lucy, you know Dr. Seward's daughter in this ode to the blood sucking mythos. So Lucy dies for reasons unknown and her family and friends scarcely notice she is gone, hey a lot going on in their collective lives or something. Naturally, for no apparently reason, this does allow the introduction of Dr. Van Helsing, and our natural expansion of vampire mythology. So bear in mind while watching this movie that not everything is excellently logical or following cinematic etiquette. Maybe Lucy was simply a bitch and everyone was secretly pleased she had left this mortal coil, just offering a plausible explanation which is more than the screen writers bother with during our current discourse with the Count.

For those who want to get their dark genre cinematic history on, we can actually see the development of some horror tropes already in this early cinematic movie and why in later movies such as Night of the Living Dead and Alien broke those tropes and moved the genre along. We get the normal everyday with horror seeping in to disrupt the ebb and flow, bringing with it chaos and death. None of the victims truly deserve their fates, assuming Lucy isn't a cold stone bitch; no amount of goodness is a shield against dark forces. The Savant who has the arcane knowledge to explain the chaos which has exploded into normal world forcing things into the dark edges of Town. And of course the agent of darkness, who is overwhelmingly powerful and only loosely explained, who seems to want not only victims but to overwhelm those around with the victims with feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. So drape your cape on this one kids, a hell of a lot of fertile horror ground being sown with seeds that will germinate in later years.

Overall I guess the atmosphere is kind of working, wasn't taken out by the painted backdrops or sound stages in use, but the tension is somewhat lacking, as in non-existent. Surprisingly parts of this movie were cut for North American and European release so guess certain concepts must have freaked out the citizens of the time. I got more of a feeling things happened due to the plot requiring things to happen, and otherwise there's a lot of standing around and simply talking. Don't get me wrong this isn't psychological horror, it's just a product of the time, cinema in its infancy let's explain everything and hold off any blood and guts action scenes. Browning does understand the use of light and dark, particularly making the black and white footage work for him in terms of keeping everything just slightly off keel.

On the bright side we do get one of the great horror performances from Bela Lugosi in the titular role, which actually made his reputation. Lugosi manages to look very bat like throughout and I was digging the shear intensity of his eyes. As an early incarnation of the Count, Lugosi has the requirements nailed, except without the sexual undertones later movies would incorporate into the mix.

Actually well out of room here, would just like to mention however that the movie sort of just flops at the end, you get the expected result but it is hardly satisfying for us vampire aficionados. In keeping with the style of the movie, and you should have picked this up by now, nothing overly gory or combative takes places, it's all very prime and proper kids.

There's a certain satisfaction to be had in viewing what is now historic horror flicks that helped to define the genre and the direction it would take. We get a feeling for why certain tropes have developed and why some movies are held in high esteem, they tend to break those tropes. We also get a feeling for why some modern Directors are simply hacks, doing nothing original, and why some are out on the cutting edge of the genre. In terms of the movie itself, solid enough though almost fatally flawed in some aspects, there is a very solid aesthetic that had me humming along to the tune. If you don't mind plastic bats flapping along and languid talking scenes then you'll have a good time with this early horror flick. I'm giving this one three aardvarks out of five.