In Preparation for Halloween: “Dracula” (1931)

This article was originally published online in Columbia Undergraduate Film Productions Entertainment in October 2018 as the second entry in a series titled In Preparation for Halloween. The original title was “Week Two: Dracula”, and the piece has been renamed and edited to better stand alone.

Finally, October has arrived. It is now time to reveal my number four pick for this year’s Halloween movie marathon. Let me tell you, making such a difficult choice nearly drained the life out of me. There was clearly a lot at stake with everyone counting on me. But I was stuck between a small selection of films from Universal’s Legacy of Horror, and ultimately Dracula (1931) won out.

The major reasons why Dracula takes my number four spot is because it is so historically important to the horror genre, the late Bela Lugosi, Universal Studios as a company, and film in general. For those unfamiliar with its history, I’ll do my best to break it down piece by piece.

Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Cinematic Universe, and series such as the Transformers movies, there was one glorious and lengthy franchise known as the Universal Classic Monsters. Some might even say that this was the earliest and most impactful cinematic universe - sorry, Marvel fans. This franchise officially spanned from the 1920s to the ‘60s, although it has many spiritual successors being produced even today. This franchise has also been colloquially and officially referred to as Universal’s Legacy of Horror, a title which I feel gives it the grace it deserves.

The Classic Monsters include the likes of the Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and, of course, Dracula. These are the most iconic monsters; however, the franchise technically began with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). After initial films such as Hunchback, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, etc., the monsters began to star in crossover battles and encounters. There were even sequels and spinoffs such as Dracula’s Daughter and Bride of Frankenstein. Between the characters it brought to the forefront of pop culture and its role in cinematic history, the Legacy of Horror changed the way horror was both conceived and perceived as a cinematic art.

Here, the Legacy intersects with its actors. The famed monster actors of this era include the likes of Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney Jr., Elsa Lanchester, and, of course, Bela Lugosi. Two of these fine men and women probably stick out the most to a modern audience: Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, whose most iconic roles were Frankenstein and Dracula, respectively. While I narrowed down my selection between Frankenstein and Dracula, I ultimately chose Dracula to shine a spotlight on Bela Lugosi.

Bela Lugosi was born in Hungary before immigrating to the United States from Germany. He starred in a few well-received films and Broadway productions before eventually being casted by Universal Pictures for the titular role in Dracula. Universal continued to cast him in other films, especially against Boris Karloff. However, even when Lugosi was the star, Karloff would be paid better. Furthermore, the Hungarian accent that has since become an iconic part of his performance as Dracula was then was used against him, leading him to be typecast as a horror villain. Karloff, born William Henry Pratt, happened to be a native English speaker from England, which gave him an advantage over Lugosi in that regard. Later, due to injuries he sustained when serving in the military, Lugosi fell into drug addiction, and casting offers dwindled until he made most of his living from stage productions. For a short while before he died, there was a renewed interest in his film career. Since Karloff had the benefit of positive public perception throughout his career, I felt I had to highlight Bela Lugosi. The best way to do that for this countdown was by talking about the film that simultaneous made and destroyed his career.

Dracula begins in the midst of the action with a group of travelers being forced to spend the night in a small Romanian town since their driver is afraid of Walpurgis Night. However, Renfield (Dwight Frye) pushes on to arrive at Castle Dracula, inadvertently giving Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) a means to travel to London.  When the duo arrives, Dracula meets Mina Seward (Helen Chandler), her fiancé John Harker (David Manners), and Lucy Weston (Frances Dade). Dracula begins to prey on the women and the town at large, leading the survivors and Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) to attempt to end his feast.

Exquisite thematic shots and beautiful soundtrack tend to reveal major moments, characters, and places in the story. At times, this soundtrack does overpower the spoken dialogue, but it adds such cohesion to the emotion of the film that I can hardly fault it. It also is entirely in black and white, as it was filmed in the 1930s, but sometimes so much black is used – the color of a costume, or the darkness of the set –  that it becomes difficult to see what is happening. Although this is likely a purposeful choice, I wasn’t raised on black-and-white films, and some of the nuances of old cinema might be lost on a modern audience. Another such nuance is the style of acting and drama. The actors’ performances are fantastic, but they gain an otherworldly, if not understandably old-timey, quality due to the stark differences between cinema of the 1930s and mainstream Hollywood cinema today.

Besides Dracula’s role in history, the film contains (and perhaps led to the codification of) the many Dracula cliches we enjoy and/or loathe today. Bela Lugosi’s prominent Hungarian accent may be the origin of the cliché of Dracula having a pronounced accent. This is the most obvious example, although the majority of the film operates under similar clichés of the vampire genre and Bram Stoker’s Dracula itself. I’ll admit, despite my interest in the topic, I am not a Dracula novel-and-film-history scholar. I am vaguely aware of the fact that the character of Carmilla predates Dracula, although they concern themselves with painting different types of “deviancy” as monstrous. With all this said, it is hard to say whether or not these things were cliché before the film’s release. Regardless of whether the film simply exceled at using these clichés or invented them, Dracula played an important role in cinematic and horror history that is perfect to revisit around Halloween.

Earlier I mentioned that the Legacy of Horror has many spiritual successors, as well as other movies that fall within Universal’s general legacy of horror movies. In 2014, Dracula Untold was released starring Luke Evans as an initial attempt to reboot the Legacy of Horror into a franchise that could become recognizable and even compete against the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When that movie was a critical and box office failure, Universal attempted once more to restart the newly-named Dark Universe with The Mummy, featuring Sofia Boutella. After this also met poor reviews and low box office ratings, the fate of the Dark Universe is in peril. At the very least, we can always watch the classics – the Universal Classic Monsters, that is.