Category: 1930s

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.   

Ship’s manicurist Jean Arthur can’t wait to get back to the United States, but her Greek citizenship prevents her from leaving ship. She coerces a newspaperman on board into a quickie marriage in exchange for a story for which she claims to have exclusive details. The details are a bit ridiculous with gangsters thrown in for good measure. Arthur is spunky and adorable as usual but she’s doing all the work here.

Ten years after he was brought back from the dead, Boris Karloff manipulates a pair of archeologists into uncovering his long-dead lover. As far as the classics go, it’s a fairly standard 1930s monster movie. The fully made-up mummy is only on screen for a few moments. Karloff not in makeup is on for only a little more than that. Like many movies from the era, they unfortunately take a backseat to the reincarnated female and her modern love interest.  

When the bus they are in crashes, Hungarian physicist Bela Lugosi and honeymooning newlyweds David Manners and Julie Bishop make their way to the nearby home of Lugosi’s friend Austrian architect Boris Karloff. The honeymooners are mostly secondary characters as the home has actually been built on top of a fort where Lugosi and Karloff served during the war and the visit is an opportunity for the two to hash out various indiscretions that have occurred over the history of their relationship. Firmly ensconcing it as a Pre-Code film, there’s also touches of Satanism, torture, drugs, and incest. Obviously that’s a lot to work with in a movie that’s barely over an hour, but it is great to see these masters in the first of their eight films together.