Dracula (1931)

After driving his solicitor mad, Count Dracula travels from his castle in Transylvania to London where he might meet his match in Professor Van Helsing. It’s the most famous vampire story featuring Bela Lugosi in his most famous role and while it has plenty of atmospheric goodness, it’s not nearly my favorite of the Universal horror films. Some of the acting is stilted in a very 1930s way and the plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I think I’ve been too spoiled by Anne Rice’s vampires that I expect a little more sex appeal in my biting. An interesting note is that as talkies first started up, studios would film different language versions on the same sets to sell to foreign audiences. Some feel that the Spanish-language Dracula is superior to this English-version. The director obviously took advantage of being able to see the English dailies to film some shots in vastly improved way, but Carlos Villarías’s Count is definitely inferior. Regardless, it makes for an interesting artifact of the time and it’s an intriguing exercise to compare the two versions.