Dracula

Tod Browning's version of Dracula for Universal Studios probably shouldn't be underestimated in terms of influence on later films about vampires. It's easy to be underwhelmed by its adherence to Bram Stoker's uneven horror classic, the way Dracula disappears and reappears from the plot or the lack of an easiy defined hero. A lot of cliches (or tropes) have their origins in this horror classic however, and Bela Lugosi's creepy and unsettling performance as the Count echoes through the ages as an icon of cinema history. I found it hard to divorce myself from the impact this has had on pop culture, but I tried to imagine I was watching it for the first time back in 1931.



We start Dracula's story with the transformation of Renfield from a regular guy into a pathetic and crazed wretch. Through Renfield we witness the horror of Dracula's power - a man able to reduce people to this regressive state, and Renfield becomes the European Count's emissary as they both travel to England. It was a little hard for me to grasp why Dracula wanted to go to England at first, I think (but I'm not sure) that he went to get himself a new wife - which is pretty funny when you think about it. "Hi, I'm Dracula, I'm going to travel all the way across Europe to get myself some lovin!" That can't be right, can it? As you can see, there are a few points in Dracula where I was less than sure what exactly was going on. How did Van Helsing know so much about Dracula anyway?





As with all eras, horror has always been an easily-achieved form of film entertainment for the masses. Director Tod Browning became one of the early masters of the genre, in this case pursuing an interest in the macabre and bizarre to bring forth ideas of boxes filled with earth, and a man's preoccupation and consumption of bugs and other small creatures. Browning brings a number of elements together to help synergise a series of visually arresting ideas that help build an atmosphere of foreboding. Here are some examples:

• An animal motif. In Dracula's castle we see rats, bats and even armadillos (!)
• Dracula's ability to transform into a bat. This is one vampire tradition that's disappeared in more recent years, and it's strange (as a modern viewer) to see it used so seriously and frequently in Dracula.
• Renfield as Dracula's messenger. This seems to be used as both a practial AND stylistic necessity. It helps minimalise the amount of dialogue spoken by the non-English speaking Lugosi, and also serves to make the taciturn monster more menacing and unknowably inhuman.
• A hand snaking out of a coffin. This image has since become synonymous with the undead, juxtaposing an object associated with the dead (a coffin) with a living hand to invoke feelings of horror due to unnaturalness.
• Ominous fog, and howling wolves used to signal danger.
• A limp body tumbling down a long flight of stairs.
• Superstitious villagers whose Old World beliefs turn out to be founded. This taps into ideas of horror associated with the gap between history and the modern world.
  
  

Of course, the majority of the film's success can probably be attitributed to Lugosi's breakout performance as Count Dracula. Lugosi is the cinematic origin-point of the cliched view of Dracula, an urbane monster who sinisterly hides his evil behind manners and sexual allure. Lugosi's line delivery is carefully enunciated in his thick Hungarian accednt, making each line sound odd and demonically alien (EG. When he hears the howl of a wolf he rewnarks in gleeful appreciation, "Children of the night... listen to them, what music they make"). We never get a real explanation of who or what Dracula is, or how he has these powers, only that he's an "undead creature whose life has been unnaturally prolonged", and Lugosi's best moments come in the moments where Dracula's well-mannered facade drops away due to a mirror or a cross, and he hisses or recoils like the base animal he really is. Modern viewers will probably be upset by the fact that the monster's death takes place just off camera, and the ending feels a bit like an anticlimax as a result. But there's no denying the power of the film's iconic villain or the creepy collusion of so many atmospheric ideas to create a dozen tropes and cliches that are now almost inseperable from vampires in fiction.



DIRECTOR: Tod Browning

WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Garrett Fort. Based on the play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John F. Balderstone, which was based on the famous novel of the same name.

KEY ACTORS: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan



RELATED TEXT:

- The novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker.

- The only earlier film version of the tale that still survives is Nosferatu, a silent film from 1922.

- Other famous early vampire films: Les Vampires and Vampyr.

- Other famous film versions of Dracula include: the Hammer production Dracula, made in 1958 and starring Christopher Lee; Dracula, a late 1970s version starring Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier, and Dracula, a version directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1992 and starring Gary Oldman.

- Universal studios sequelised their Lugosi-starring version of the story with Dracula's Daughter, Son of Dracula, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Lugosi only reprised his role in the last of these.

- Tod Browning's other horror classics include Freaks, The Unknown and the lost film London After Midnight.