1931's DRACULA with Bela Lugosi

What does the bat possess?

Dracula is good. But Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein really reach the heights of cinema for that Universal horror cycle.

r2 = the ghost of James Whale

[quote] I was wondering what other's think

We think your grammar needs work, toots.

Now watch the 1958 version and Nosferatu and report back, OP.

OP, as you know, the movie is somewhat loosely based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel of the same name. The book was a huge best-seller. Audiences in 1931 would have been familiar with it, so some of what puzzles you is answered by the fact that most people already knew the basic story,

Regarding Van Helsing - Stoker did not invent vampires. Far from it. Vampire myths had been around for many centuries, and fictional tales based on vampires almost as long. For example, earlier in the 19th century, there was a serialized penny-dreadful novel called Varney the Vampire that was quite well-known. In other words, to the 1890s reading audience, there would have nothing odd about a fictional character who was an established vampire expert.

Also, it's been a while since I read the novel, but I seem to remember that Van Helsing wasn't English in the book; he was some sort of Continental - Dutch or German, maybe. To British and American readers of the era, that would make sense because the Continent was seen as exotic and foreign, perfect for an exotic and foreign monster like a vampire.

Thank you R6! That makes sense about audiences already understanding the story so not needing a lot of exposition. I knew the novel came first, assumed it was turn of the century - but I wasn't sure how popular it had been upon its release.

And yes Van Helsing is a Dutch surname, no doubt.

Still don't know why he didn't join Mina and John when they were leaving the abbey after the vampire had been slain or what he intended to do. Why they even put that in at all "Are you coming Doctor?" - "no not presently." It just makes me chuckle that they ended the entire film with that random exchange.

I am currently reading Frankenstein! That is a movie I've seen a couple of times. It's so good, it chokes me up.

I like the mini cum gutter on his chin.

Carmilla predates Dracula by 26 years.

[quote]I cannot believe I managed to sleep on such an iconic (Bela Lugosi!) classic film for the first 50 years of my life.

I can only imagine how uncomfortable the film reels must've been. Fifty years. My goodness.

Whoaaaaaa, R9. I've never heard of this book. Thank you so much! Has the story of Carmilla ever been committed to film?

"Carmilla" was filmed as "Vampyr" by Carl Theodor Dreyer around the same time that Browning filmed "Dracula."

r11....

R7/OP - that abrupt ending is weird. Bad editing, maybe? I have seen other movies of similar vintage where the ending is similarly anti-climactic. Maybe directors hadn't quite yet figured out how to end a movie with spoken dialog.

*Carmilla*

A chamber opera by Ben Johnston and Wilford Leach

Thanks, R14 I didn't know if it was just me, or like...is it a weird ending? But yeah, 1931 - we've come a long way since then. Not all of the progress is even good, in my opinion (CGI). But ending a film on a definitive note, it's satisfying.

I'm thinking of another movie I watched recently, Murnau's "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans" from 1927 and how satisfying that ending is. It's a silent film, so there's no verbal exchange to close out the film, but the music crescendo's the final frame of the young lovers, as their beaming faces transition to an image of a sunrise...it's beautiful.

^^^^from OP^^^^

Btw thank you all for the Carmilla/Vampyr suggestions! Whole new rabbit hole to fall down. Love it.

I love that film! Dracula’s wives still creep me out. I hate that they tried to give the film a score some 20 years ago. What makes it even creepier is the lack of score. Dwight Frye was so hot. OP, you should watch the Spanish version which was shot simultaneously with the same script, same sets, but different cast and director.

The sets were amazing. Google the miniature bat they used. It’s been on display in museums.

The idea that vampires can’t be in sunlight came from the film Nosferatu due to them being unable to shoot at nighttime. It was never in the book. It was just a fluke that people began using for the lore. Nosferatu was a rip-off of Dracula. Some bootleg version ended up changing the Dracula story. Go figure. The story of the Nosferatu film is interesting to. Stoker’s wife won a court case against it and all prints were to be destroyed. It was a missing film for years until someone unearthed a print. I believe that someone is now remaking Nosferatu.

Coppola’s 1992 Dracula is considered the most faithful to the source material.

I loved every minute of it.

Yes, R18, Renfield aka Dwight Frye had me swooning from the first frame!

[quote]you should watch the Spanish version which was shot simultaneously with the same script, same sets, but different cast and director.

You just totally blew my mind here.

WHAT?!

Featuring gay actor David Manners

Herzogs Nosferatu is good too.

[quote]The idea that vampires can’t be in sunlight came from the film Nosferatu due to them being unable to shoot at nighttime.

R19 Did you mean, they were unable to shoot in the daytime, and had to shoot at night? Hence adding in the bit about vampires only coming out at night?

[quote]Stoker’s wife won a court case against it and all prints were to be destroyed. It was a missing film for years until someone unearthed a print. I believe that someone is now remaking Nosferatu.

I've seen Nosferatu but it was years ago. I had no idea Stoker's wife sued them. Is "Nosferatu" an invention of Stoker's, as well as Dracula? Are they interchangeable?

This is crazy but I wanted to tell you that they already did a remake of Nosferatu starring Willem Dafoe. But then I looked it up and there is a movie coming out in 2024, starring William Dafoe as Nosferatu. But the movie I saw is 20 years old. Turns out, the movie I'm thinking of, "Shadow of the Vampire" was about the *making* of Nosferatu - with Willem Dafoe playing the actor playing Nosferatu. So this new movie will be the second time Dafoe plays the character. Totally crazy. (I recommend Shadow of the Vampire. I was a huge Eddie Izzard fan back in the day and he's in it, as is John Malkovich and Cary Elwes. It's a very entertaining film!)

Is Herzog's Nosferatu from the 70s, R23? Is it Klaus Kinski as the vampire??!? Oooooh. You just answered my question of which movie to watch tomorrow night for Halloween

Lugosi's Dracula is good but the silent Nosferatu leaves it in the dust.

I like to believe that Max Schreck was the real deal!

As tame as these movies seem to us, they truly frightened the audiences of the time. People ran screaming from the theaters when the original Frankenstein premiered. James Whale told a story of a stranger calling him on the phone in the middle of the night and telling him, "I saw Frankenstein tonight and now I can't sleep, so I'll be damned if I'm going to let you get any."

I like to watch movie reactors on YouTube, and something I've been noticing lately is just how much people's capacity for suspension of disbelief is atrophying, at least in the visual sense. They laugh and roll their eyes at CGI that by my standards looks pretty amazing, but to theirs is lame because it doesn't look exactly like the real thing. I grew up watching toy vampire bats on the ends of strings and guys in rubber suits demolishing Tokyo, and even though I knew they weren't real I could watch them with enough wonder that I was convinced in the moment they were what they purported to be. It's sad to see that aspect of the imagination fading away, and no one will miss it in the future because they never needed it.

How funny. I was just switching channels and all of a sudden there was Mr. Palance smack dab in front of my face...

[quote] The concept in popular culture that sunlight is lethal to vampires is based on this film, which depicted such a death for the very first time in film history. F.W. Murnau knew that he would be sued for borrowing heavily from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula" without permission, so he changed the ending in order that he could say that this film and "Dracula" were not exactly the same.*

*From IMDb

Just setting the record straight.

[quote] These are little niggles

Enough with the hate speech.

I'm the rare bird who enjoys Coppola's 1992 Dracula. Mess that it is, it offers up a lot of eye candy, some good creepy vibes, and camp.

I loved this version! I remember when I was about10 yrs old and we would watch the old horror movies on Saturday afternoon with "Sir Graves Ghastly". Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and Dracula. Yeah!

My favorite Dracula is Frank Langella. Hot.

[quote]you should watch the Spanish version which was shot simultaneously with the same script, same sets, but different cast and director.

[quote]You just totally blew my mind here.

[quote]WHAT?!

That was not an uncommon practice back in the day, OP/r21. I'm not sure why.

I had never heard about the lawsuit or that the film had been lost, either. Thanks for that.

Many of these classics looked like crap by the time I got around to watching them in the 70s and 80s. All the German Expressionist movies for example. And we had to go out of our way to find a screening or wait for their occasional broadcast on our CRT TVs.

Now they have been restored and the 4k versions are just AMAZING. I saw the 4K Caligari the other day.

R32 not a rare bird. It’s well loved in horror circles. Yes Keanu’s British accent sucks but I like to think his casting was a nod to wooden male leads of the 1930s. I’m fascinated by the special effects, which involved techniques not used since the silent era. And the shadow puppet battle at the beginning. Coppola is a genius!

R32, I am a fan too. Gary Oldman was the right choice. And Keanu was adorkable in that role. That said , Herzog’s Nosferatu is still the best. Kinski, who was a choleric pervert in real life, is frightening.

[quote]OP:How did Van Helsing come to be an expert in vampires? How does he know they are repelled by wolf's bane and crucifixes? How did he know that vampires don't have reflections in mirrors? How has he ever even HEARD of a vampire? A big plot hole there.

*Ahem*, OP: a 'plot hole' is not defined as 'something you don't understand or otherwise find improbable,' but rather as something which runs contrary to information already established in a work. Your issue with Van Helsing does not constitute that.

The model for the kind of physician Abraham Van Helsing was supposed to be would have been a combination theologian / philosopher / scientist / mystic, someone like Emanuel Swedenborg, or one of the so-called alchemists / astonomers / astrologers seeking wealthy patronage in the 16th-18th centuries. What they professed was a mixture of empirical science and metaphysics; that these could be fused was a proposition highly attractive to gothic fiction. Before Stoker, J. Sheridan Le Fanu had already created such a literary character, one Dr. Martin Hesselius, an ostensible expert in both science and the occult, which informed similar characters in the works of Stoker, Arthur Machen, M.R. James, and Algernon Blackwood.

Here's a colorized version of 'Dracula' (1931), with additional musical score by Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet.

That's interesting but too bad he used a jerky low resolution source to colorize.

Karloff,,,karloff

The 1931 DRACULA was based on a stage adaptation of Stoker's book, which had starred Lugosi as well. That's why it looks so stagey once the action gets to London. The first part of the film set in Transylvania is the best. The Langella version was also based on the play, which had a successful revival on Broadway with Langella.

My favorite DRACULA is still the 1958 Hammer version, though the original NOSFERATU is fine in its way. I found Hertzog's remake very slow but it did have some remarkable sections.

Carmilla was also adapted into three other films that I know of: BLOOD AND ROSES (1960) directed by Roger Vadim and both THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) and its sequel LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971). The latter two were Hammer productuon and more direct in the depiction of lesbianism.

Count (HAHA, get it?!) me as another "Bram Stoker's Dracula" fan. My early 20s wannabe goth self was obsessed with it and Gary Oldman.

R24 Thank you for reminding me about that movie! I saw it in the theater when it came out, but had completely forgotten it. I remember liking it at the time; should make for a nice meta-Halloween watch.

I saw this 2003 reunion production of Carmilla at La Mama.

I also love Coppola's Dracula. The costumes and set design are gorgeous. Yes, Keanu is wooden as a plank but he was so beautiful at the time it doesn't bother me. God, was he gorgeous.

The armadillos in Transylvania always have been the highlight of the movie for me.

Thank you, R39, that was a truly fascinating read. I wasn't even thinking about that but yeah, exploration of the occult in literature and art (as well as nonfiction works) was all the rage in the late 1800s-early 1900s

OMG, R40. Whoa. Gonna check this out.

It was a real coup for Francis Ford Coppola to get Princess Anne to play the titular lead in his Dracula. It was the only time a member of the BRF was in a popular movie, in an acting role. She was splendid. A lot of people were fooled by her using Gary Oldman's name, but those who know her were not.

I saw the fantastic Langella Broadway production when I was in high school. Edward Gorey designed amazing sets that looked like a giant engraved toy theater. Everything was black or white, except for one bright red prop in each scene.

Oh - Lugosi is HORRIBLE.

All the posters recommending Nosferatu are absolutely right - far superior.

In the original book, Dracula not only had a stake to the heart but was also decapitated. I always figured Van Helsing was staying behind to do just that, but mention of such would have been too much for audiences of 1931.

Thank you, R53! That is the missing piece. Audiences may have well known when he says "no not presently" that he still has a little beheading to do, *wink wink*

You've cracked it. Phew.

R51 That is the coolest, you are lucky to have seen that. Edward Gorey is a genius. The whimsy!

R45, I once met Ellen Stewart. What a wonderful lady!

The atmosphere and sets are fabulous but the screenplay is a bit boring because we all know what to expect.

So I ended up watched the original 1922 Nosferatu film yesterday. Obviously amazing, visually. Count Orlock is legitimately scary! But the soundtrack was this weird free jazz 1960s thing that ruined the experience. I need to find another version of the film with a different soundtrack. I don't understand why they would do that to a classic silent movie.

R58, here's a colorized version of Nosferatu that claims to use the original soundtrack. I hope it's more to your liking.

Never saw the play, but the movie with Frank Langella and Kate Nelligan was really good. It's my favorite Dracula movie.

Colorized Nosferatu! Thanks, R59! That was truly one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. I loved it.

And now I'm on S1 E17 of Dark Shadows.

Trivia about the Lugosi Drac film.

David Manners who played the romantic lead Johnathan Harker was a gay man. In 1948, he met playwright Frederic William Mercer and the two lived together as partners for 30 years until Mercer's death in 1978.

One of the earliest recipients of a Hollywood "Walk of Fame" star, though it was later removed for reasons which have never been formally disclosed.

In the final years of his life, he claimed that he had never seen Dracula (1931) and didn't care to.

----------------------

Even he knew Nosferatu was the better film

[quote]David Manners who played the romantic lead Johnathan Harker was a gay man

He's adorable, R63,

Did they know/believe they were making a "B" grade movie when they shot Dracula? Were they thinking they were making art? True horror? Was it a "hit" upon release? Was it mocked?

So many questions!