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'''Dracula''' is a 1931 horror film produced by Universal Pictures Co. Inc. and based on the novel ''Dracula'' by Bram Stoker.

Contents

Cast

Plot summary

Deviations from the novel

Description

Cinematic process

Sequels

1998 score by Philip Glass

The Spanish language version

Notes

See also

External links

Cast

★ Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula

★ Helen Chandler as Mina Seward

★ David Manners as John Harker

★ Dwight Frye as Renfield

★ Edward Van Sloan as Prof. Abraham Van Helsing

★ Herbert Bunston as Dr. Jack Seward

★ Frances Dade as Lucy Weston

★ Joan Standing as Briggs (a nurse)

★ Charles K. Gerrard as Martin

Plot summary

At Walpurgis Night, after a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Jack Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.

Deviations from the novel

This list is not exhaustive, but intended to convey a sense of the differences between the film and the novel:

★ Renfield goes to Transylvania and is victimized. He is found, insane, aboard the ''Vesta'', not the ''Demeter''.

★ Dracula does not "youthen."

★ The characters of Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris are omitted.

★ Dr. Seward is Mina's father, not Lucy's suitor.

★ Dracula does not have multiple coffins.

★ Dracula must sleep by day.

★ Dracula is killed by Van Helsing, with a wooden stake.

★ The film ends in London instead of Transylvania.

★ Van Helsing is portrayed as Dr. Seward's colleague, not his former instructor.

Description

The first official ''Dracula'' film was directed by Tod Browning, with a screenplay based on the stage play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. The title role was played by Bela Lugosi. Also starring in the film were David Manners as Jonathan Harker, Helen Chandler as Mina Murray/Harker and Dwight Frye as Renfield.
Bram Stoker's novel had already been filmed (without permission) as ''Nosferatu'' in 1922 by expressionist German film maker F.W. Murnau, but enthusiatic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle Jr too saw the box office potential in Stoker's gothic chiller. Unlike the German counterpart, this would be a fully authorized version (since Murnau's film had fallen under the wrath of Stoker's widow, who had tried to destroy all prints of ''Nosferatu'') and it would also be a spectacle to rival the lavish ''Hunchback of Notre Dame'' and ''The Phantom of the Opera'', and, like those films, Laemmle insisted it must star Lon Chaney (despite him being under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Tod Browning was then approached to direct this new Universal epic (Browning, incidentally, had already directed Chaney as a (fake) vampire in the lost 1927 silent movie London after Midnight), however, a number of factors would limit Laemmle's plans: Firstly, Chaney himself (who had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1928) had sadly succumbed to his terminal illness. Furthermore, studio financial difficulties, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression, caused a drastic reduction in the budget, forcing Laemmle to look at a cheaper alternative (this meant several grand scenes that closely followed the Stoker storyline had to be abandoned).
Already a huge hit on Broadway, the tried and tested Deane/Balderston Dracula play would become the blueprint and the production gained momentum. However, the question of who would play the Count remained. This would fall to the (then) current broadway Dracula, Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi, but not without controversy. Originally Laemmle had stated he was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of the warm reviews his stage portrayal had received, and instead sought to hire other actors, including Ian Keith. Against the tide of Studio opinion Lugosi lobbied hard and ultimately won the executives over, thanks in part to him accepting a salary far less than his co-stars.
The eerie speech pattern of Lugosi's "Dracula" was said to have resulted from the fact that Lugosi did not speak English, and therefore had to learn and speak his lines phonetically. This is a bit of an urban legend. While it is true that Lugosi did not speak English at the time of his first English-language play in 1919, and he had learned his lines to that play in this manner. By the time of his filming this role, Lugosi spoke English as well as he ever would.
To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi's portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula. Lugosi had a powerful presence and authority onscreen. The slow, deliberate pacing of his performance ("I... bid you... welcome!" -- "I never drink... wine!") gave his Dracula the air of a walking, talking corpse, which terrified 1930s movie audiences. He was just as compelling with no dialogue, and the many closeups of Lugosi's face in icy silence jumped off the screen. Lugosi's speech pattern would be imitated countless times by other Dracula portrayers, most often in an exaggerated or comical way. However, Dracula would ultimately become a role which would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. Despite his earlier stage successes in a variety of roles, from the moment Lugosi donned the cape on screen, it would forever see him typecast as the count.
According to numerous accounts, the production is alleged to have been a mostly disorganized affair, with the usually meticulous Tod Browning leaving legendary cinematographer Karl Freund to take over during much of the shoot. Moreover the despondent Browning would simply tear out pages from the script which he felt were redundant, such was his seeming contempt for the screenplay. It is possible however, given that Browning had originally intended Dracula as collaboration between him and Lon Chaney, his apparent lack of interest on set was more down to losing his friend and original leading man, rather than any actual aversion to the subject matter.
When the film finally premiered on Valentine's Day 1931, newspapers reported that members of the audiences fainted in shock at the horror onscreen. This publicity, shrewdly orchestrated by the film studio, helped ensure people came to see the film, if for no other reason than curiosity. Dracula was a big gamble for a major Hollywood studio to undertake. In spite of the literary credentials of the source material, it was uncertain if an American audience was prepared for a serious full length supernatural chiller. Though America had been exposed to other chillers before, such as ''The Cat and the Canary'' this was a horror story with no comic relief or trick ending that down played the supernatural.
Nervous executives breathed a collective sigh of relief when Dracula proved to be a huge box office sensation, and later that year Universal would release ''Frankenstein'' to even greater acclaim. Universal in particular would become the forefront of early horror cinema, with a canon of films including, ''The Mummy'', ''The Invisible Man'', ''Bride of Frankenstein'', and ''The Wolf Man''.
Today, Dracula is widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre and in 2000 was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Cinematic process

The film/negative format used in the creation of this film was 35 mm. The cinematographic process used was the ''Spherical'' film format. [1].

Sequels

Five years after the release of the film, Universal released ''Dracula's Daughter'', a direct sequel that starts immediately after the end of the first film. A second sequel, ''Son of Dracula'', starring Lon Chaney, Jr. followed in 1943. Despite his apparent death in the 1931 film, the Count returned to life in three more Universal films of the mid-1940s: 1944's ''House of Frankenstein'', 1945's ''House of Dracula'' and 1948's ''Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein''. While Lugosi had played a vampire in two other movies during the 1930s and 40's, it was only in this final film that he played Count Dracula onscreen for the second (and last) time.

1998 score by Philip Glass

Due to the short-lived limitations of adding a musical score to a film's soundtrack, during 1930 and 1931, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. In 1998 minimalist composer Philip Glass was commissioned to compose an original score for the classic film. The score was performed by the Kronos Quartet under direction of Michael Riesman.
Of the project, Glass said:
:''"The film is considered a classic. I felt the score needed to evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th century — for that reason I decided a string quartet would be the most evocative and effective. I wanted to stay away from the obvious effects associated with horror films. With [the Kronos Quartet] we were able to add depth to the emotional layers of the film."
The film, with this new score, was released by Universal Studios Home Video in 1999 in the VHS format. Universal's DVD releases allow the viewer to choose between the unscored soundtrack or the Glass score.

The Spanish language version

Main articles: Dracula (Spanish Version)

In the early days of sound, it was common for Hollywood studios to produce Spanish-language versions of their films using the same sets, costumes and etc. Unfortunately, many of these versions no longer exist. The Spanish version of Dracula is an exception.
The Spanish version was included as a bonus feature on the Classic Monster Collection DVD in 1999, the Legacy Collection DVD in 2004 and the 75th Anniversary Edition DVD set in 2006.

Notes

★ The documentary on the Legacy collection points out that there were a number of scenes which were cut from the film, the most famous being an epilogue which only played during the films initial run. In a sequence similar to the prologue from Frankenstein, and again featuring Universal stalwart Edward Van Sloan, he appeared as a narrator to re-assure the audience that what they’d just seen wouldn’t give them nightmares. However, Van Sloan would then calmly inform those with a nervous disposition that… "There really are such things as Vampires!"

★ In an interview with author and horror historian David J. Skal, David Manners (Jonathan Harker) told him that he was so unimpressed with the chaotic production, he never once watched the film in the remaining 67 years of his life.

★ In various scenes set in Castle Dracula, several armadillos are seen wandering around the set. The already mentioned documentary states that this is an in-joke on the part of director Tod Browning, who insisted Castle Dracula contain armadillos (an animal much beloved in his place of birth, Texas), regardless of the fact that they don't occur naturally in Central Europe.

★ In 1935, Tod Browning would go on to direct Bela Lugosi once more in another vampire thriller, ''Mark of the Vampire'' (which is in fact a remake of his now lost film ''London after Midnight'').

See also

★ ''Dracula (1979 film)'' which is based on the same Deane/Balderston play

★ Universal Monsters

★ Universal Horror

External links

★ EOFFTV - The Universal Dracula series

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★ 1998 score by Philip Glass

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