Movie Time: Dracula

Greetings! It is.... Movie Time!  Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Come closer, Halloween! Closer! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! 

Today's movie post takes us back through the mists of time to 1931 for a film that established the template for what we think of as a vampire movie. 

Sleek, sauve, sophisticated but also mysterious and strange, a threat not only to physical life but to your very soul.

Directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi, this... is Dracula! 

An attorney by the name of Renfield is travelling through Transylvania to the castle of Count Dracula.

The local poor villagers tell him not to do that.

Dracula is a VAMPIRE who will whammy Renfield with his vampire voodoo to place him under the Count's thrall and forever condemn him as Dracula's living SLAVE! 

Renfield's all don't be daft, that just silly hillfolk superstition.  

So Renfield arrives as the castle and...

OH NO!

Dracula IS a VAMPIRE who whammies Renfield with his vampire voodoo placing Renfield under the Count's thrall and poor Renfield is condemned as Dracula's living SLAVE! 

Alas, if only someone not local or poor had warned him. 

Count Dracula needs a wingman to get him from the boonies to the burbs.

Drac is so over the whole Transylvannia scene and is looking to score in a more upscale locale.

Yep, it's London, baby! 

Dracula signs the lease and picks up the keys for his palatial London digs, Carfax Abbey.

No, not THAT Carfax! 

Anyway, being whammied by Count Dracula's vampire voodoo has made Renfield koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs and has been committed to a sanitarium run by Dr. Seward.  

Renfield, Dracula's slave!  

Which is located next door to Carfax Abbey so Renfield can sneak out and do wingman shit for Dracula on account of the vampire voodoo and being a living slave, you know, that stuff.

Dracula meets Dr. Seward, his daughter Mina, her fiancé John Harker, and a family friend, Lucy Weston. 

Lucy is fascinated by Dracula. 

It's the cape.

Chicks dig the cape.

Count Dracula chows down on Lucy's neck for a blood feast and she dies.

Well, it's Mina the Count really has eyes for.

Yes, those eyes. 

Good thing the dude wears a cape.

Chicks dig the cape.

Meanwhile, Dr. Seward is flummoxed by the bizarre behavior of patient Renfield who has a habit of eating flies and spiders. Seward does a consult with Professor Van Helsing.

Van Helsing deduces Renfield has been whammied by vampire voodoo placing Renfield under a vampire's thrall condemning Renfield to be that vampire's living SLAVE! 

Meanwhile, Dracula puts the bite on Mina but not enough to kill her. (He's still full from his Lucy lunch.)  Mina starts acting weird and Van Helsing deduces she has been whammied by vampire voodoo placing Mina under a vampire's thrall yada yada yada.

Professor Van Helsing witnesses Dracula does NOT have a reflection in mirrors which means...

Count Dracula is a VAMPIRE! 

Mina is spiralling further into her infatuation with the Count (because of, you know, the cape) and breaks things off with her fiancé John Harker.  

Dracula declares that Mina is his woman, dammit! And despite various efforts by Seward, Van Helsing and Harker to protect Mina and ward off the vampire, the Count succeeds in spiriting the winsome Mina away to Carfax Abbey. 

Dracula gets in a tizzy of a snit over something and kills Renfield.

By staring at him really,  really hard causing Renfield to fall down a flight of stairs.  

Van Helsing and Harker have rushed to Carfax Abbey to rescue Mina from Dracula's clutches.  

The sun is rising so Dracula retreats to his coffin where Van Helsing stabs him through the heart with a wooden stake which is a surefire way of killing a vampire.

(It is also a surefire way to kill anybody, come to think of it.)  

Van Helsing's attack on Dracula frees Mina from his spell and she returns to the arms of fiancé John Harker even if he doesn't have a cape.  

OK, I've had some silly fun with my recap but Dracula is a seriously compelling film, filled with an ominous atmosphere of sinister dread and other worldly menace.

Bela Lugosi conveys an inhuman aura of malicious intent. From his bearing, his piercing eyes, the strange melodic quality of his voice, he makes you feel uneasy. He is not one of us.  

It may be difficult for a modern audience to take Lugosi as Dracula seriously since it's his performance that informed countless homages and parodies over the last century.

Like this guy.

But if you can put aside all those decades of pop culture influence, you can see why audiences who first saw Dracula in 1931 found the Count to be disturbing and frightening.  

You may notice how quiet this movie is.  There is no official score for this film.  An excerpt from Act II of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake was used over the credits but otherwise, there is no music soundtrack.  

A second version of Dracula was made at the same time. While director Tod Browning filmed during the day, George Melford used the same sets at night to make the Spanish-language version starring Carlos Villarías as "Conde Drácula".

A third, silent, version of the film was also released. In 1931, some theaters had not yet been wired for sound so studios still released alternate silent versions with intertitles.  

Lugosi's performance in Dracula established the pop culture template of what we expect from a vampire.  Next Saturday, we'll take a look at another early film where Lugosi sets the outline for another horror movie trope, the mad scientist.

It's Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Tomorrow is Sunday and it's time to go to church.

Movie Time is back with the Oscar winning Going My Way.