Tod Browning’s “Dracula” from 1931 is a classic and leaves a much needed legacy of Old Hollywood horror as the basis of the myths and lore we carry about some of popular culture’s most favorite monsters. What’s more, Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula still remains the template image for the way people envision the classic vampire (none of that “Twilight” shit) and Dracula himself, in the same way Boris Karloff still is the model for the Frankenstein monster.
And yet the film is horribly dated and overrated. It’s a much maligned classic that is beyond cheesy and feels long even at 75 minutes.
The opening scene is riddled with a bad sense of spatial continuity and painfully thick foreshadowing. The character Renfield (Dwight Frye) hardly even gives a reason for venturing to Dracula’s decrepit castle before blatantly accepting the fact that its riddled with cobwebs and phantom stagecoach drivers. And Lugosi’s iconic line, “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make,” which still remains chilling, comes so soon in the movie I was tempted to turn it off right then.
The remainder of Lugosi’s dialogue is filled with more pauses than Professor Snape’s monologues, and he’s hardly a scary figure because he seems to have no reason to be slinking through London hypnotizing women. The whole movie surrounding him is hammy, and there’s no real tension carrying through the film. The cheap flashlight on Lugosi’s eyes to suggest his powerful gaze is a lame cinematic technique, and it’s not even as bad as the campy bat puppets. The film’s heroes are idiotic, the terrified reaction shots seem endless, and the ending is horribly anti-climactic.
If there’s a reason “Dracula” is so dated, I blame its time period. 1931 was still a testing ground for talkies, which explains why Hollywood would experiment with tried and true horror stories and also why the film’s sound is complete rubbish. Movies from the time periods that flanked it, such as the horror films like “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” “The Phantom of the Opera” or “Nosferatu” from the silent era, or the many horror sci-fi’s from the ’50s, have aged much better.
In fact I can see how “Dracula” would fit well into Cold War era cinema. A human looking monster like Dracula who can walk among people and brainwash them to do his bidding is ripe for Soviet scare mongering.
Hell, Ed Wood could’ve directed Lugosi in a remake of “Dracula.” Maybe it would’ve even been good.