Dracula

USA, 1931

Director: Tod Browning

Genre: Horror, literary adaptation

Script: Garrett Fort

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

Plot

British lawyer Renfield travels to a remote corner of deep Transylvania to meet an eccentric aristocrat who lives in an old castle. The two must talk business. In the nearby village, the villagers warn the Englishman of the danger that awaits him if he keeps his appointment with Count Dracula. According to the gossip of the locals, the reclusive nobleman hides dark secrets, related to vampirism. But Renfield ignores the warnings, considering them superstitions, and soon after he shows up at the castle.

Dracula wants to buy property in London, and that is why he has sent for the lawyer. At night, Dracula reveals his true nature: he hypnotizes Renfield and attacks him, making him his slave.

Shortly thereafter, the two travel to England aboard the schooner Vesta. Once in London, Renfield turns out to be the only crew member left alive. Completely deranged, the lawyer is confined to Dr. Seward’s sanatorium – a clinic located near the residence rented by Dracula.

Nights later, Seward visits the Count at his London villa. The doctor arrives accompanied by his daughter Mina, her fiancé, Jonathan Harker, and young Lucy, a family friend. Lucy is instantly attracted to the handsome foreign aristocrat. That same night, Dracula visits Lucy in her bedroom transformed into a bat. The Count is a vampire, who bites the girl in the jugular to drink her blood. The young girl wakes up dead, with two strange marks on her neck…

Meanwhile, Professor van Helsing studies the bizarre behavior of the crazed Renfield. The former lawyer, confined in an asylum after his return from Transylvania, feels the compulsive need to eat flies and spiders. In addition, the scientist finds that Renfield has an allergic reaction to a plant used to protect him from vampires.

After Lucy, it is Mina’s turn… Dracula also enters her room at night to suck her blood. The girl does not die the next day, but she becomes weaker and weaker.

When Dracula returns to his residence, he meets van Helsing. He notices that the Count is not reflected in the mirrors, deducing that he is a vampire: the one responsible for Renfield’s illness and Lucy’s death.

The press reports the presence of a mysterious woman who attacks children at night. From the description, Mina senses that it is her friend Lucy… She has returned from the grave as a vampire. Professor van Helsing, who as well as being a scientist is versed in the occult and paranormal studies, sets out to stop Dracula with the help of Jonathan Harker – who by all means wants to prevent his fiancée Mina from suffering Lucy’s tragic fate…

Commentary

Almost a decade after German expressionist filmmaker Murnau filmed “Nosferatu” (1922), American Tod Browning brought to the big screen the adaptation of the gothic horror classic “Dracula” – a novel written by Bram Stoker in 1897. Murnau’s version was filmed without taking into account the copyright of the story (which at the time was held by Stoker’s widow), and therefore had numerous legal problems. That was one of the reasons why the German film would be distributed as “Nosferatu” (synonymous with “vampire”). Also, there the protagonist count is called “Orlok” instead of “Dracula”. Apart from that, the plot line of the first silent version is identical.

At the end of the 1920s, several plays with the story of the vampiric count were staged in England and the USA – this time with the corresponding permits and copyrights in order. In one of these plays, the vampire was played by the actor Béla Lugosi – a Hungarian who, like the character, actually came from Transylvania.

In 1930, director Tod Browning (who two years later would film the interesting “Freaks”) set out to shoot a new version of the novel – this time with sound. Originally, Lon Chaney (“the man of a thousand faces”), a star of silent horror films (who, by the way, would greatly influence Narciso Ibáñez Menta, the father of Chicho Ibáñez Serrador), was the legendary Lon Chaney (“the man of a thousand faces”). Among his best-known roles was one of the first adaptations of “The Phantom of the Opera”. But Chaney died, and Browning decided to turn to the theatrical actor who had played the vampire in the 1927 play: Béla Lugosi. This film would bring worldwide fame to the charismatic Lugosi, making him an icon of classic horror films. The image of the vampire, so different from the one offered by Max Schreck in Murnau’s film, would mark many subsequent directors for future versions of the novel, and vampire films in general (especially those of the Hammer starring Christopher Lee).

Thus, Lugosi’s gloomy image became part of the collective imagination as the archetypal Dracula.

However, it is worth mentioning that the story of Stoker’s vampire has nothing to do with the real historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes (called “Vlad Draculea” because his dynasty had a dragon, “dracul”, in its heraldic coat of arms). He was a prince of Wallachia, a Romanian national hero, who defended his people from the Turkish invaders (using rather expeditious methods). Just as Stoker’s widow sued Murnau for plagiarism and copyright infringement, the Romanians could have sued Stoker earlier for distorting and corrupting the image of one of their national heroes (spreading over the historical Vlad Tepes the false black legend that he was a “vampire”, a “bloodthirsty monster”, etc).

Returning to the film in question, it is undoubtedly one of the great horror classics of the Universal production company, along with the adaptation of “Frankenstein” by James Whale (also from 1931), its sequel “Bride of Frankenstein” (James Whale, 1935), “The Wolf Man” (George Waggner, 1941), or the version of “The Phantom of the Opera” by Arthur Lubin (1943) among other titles.

Béla Lugosi would also participate in the memorable “White Zombie” (Victor Halperin, 1932), one of the first zombie-themed films, featuring the living dead in the Haitian context of voodoo. Towards the end of his career, Lugosi became a recurring collaborator of “B-series” directors, among them the famous Ed Wood.

At the same time that Tod Browning was filming this “Dracula” with Lugosi in English, an adaptation of the same story in Spanish was filmed for the Hispanic market – at the same studios and using the same script, but with different actors. The Hispanic Dracula, directed by George Melford, is very similar but has different nuances. In that version the Count was played by Spaniard Carlos Villarías and the equivalent character of Mina (here called Eva) fell to Mexican Lupita Tovar (who died in 2016, at the very long-lived age of 106). The Hispanic version was considered lost until well into the 1970s.