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Dracula moves to London and sets his sights on a young girl named Mina. However, the Count may have met his match in Professor Van Helsing.
Like Nosferatu, this movie version of Dracula is important to the history of horror movies. Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Dracula would set the standard of what that famous vampire ought to be. Even Lugosi’s accent has become a hallmark of Dracula. The image of Dracula would have been different if he was portrayed by another actor in this movie. Lugosi didn’t just play Dracula, he help make Dracula into the cultural icon he is today. Lugosi’s performance in Dracula is legendary. But as I watched this movie, I found myself impressed with the other performances in this movie as well. Dwight Frye as Renfield, Dracula’s human slave, is fantastic. His laugh and smile are creepy, and this is done with next to no makeup or special effects. Edward Van Sloan also does a wonderful job portraying Professor Van Helsing. Van Sloan and Lugosi have great chemistry together, and the scene where Van Helsing notices that Dracula has no reflection is one of my favorite in the entire film. A drawback that modern viewers might find with this movie is the lack of violence. However, I think the absence of brutal violence showcases the era that this movie was made in. Back when Dracula was produced, it was scary for things to be implied rather than shown to the audience. For this reason we never see Dracula ever bite anyone on screen because the scene always fades out before he makes contact with the victim’s skin. A lot is left to the audience’s imagination, creating an effect that is lost on most people today. I know it sounds harsh, but a lot of people today have little imagination in them. Leaving so much to the audience gives this movie a nostalgic feel that movies today just can’t imitate.
Part of the timelessness to Lugosi’s performance comes from the pathos his performance of Dracula emits. You get a feeling that he is cursed by his status as a vampire. Unlike Count Orlok in Nosferatu, who looks like a rat, Lugosi’s Dracula looks normal, but you can tell he feels like a rat. I think that’s why Dracula lets Van Helsing find his coffin so easily at the end of the movie. This self loathing may even be the reason Dracula comes to London. He leaves Transylvania, where is unchallenged, hoping to find someone who can stop him. Of course I could be reading too much into this…
The special effects in this movie aren’t anywhere near to what we see in horror movies today. The bats and spiders are obviously fake, and some people might even find that they ruin the movie. When you consider the age of this movie though, it doesn’t seem fair to me to knock its special effects. This movie’s place in cinematic history alone gives it a pass in the special effects department. The ending might disappoint some people. Mina is saved from spending an eternity as a vampire, but Dracula dies off-screen. I guess killing Dracula that way left the character open for a sequel, but it would have been interesting to see Lugosi perform a death scene as the Count. The ending is also a bit weird. Van Helsing tells Mina and David to leave while he stays behind with Dracula’s corpse. They walk down some stairs and some happy music plays, and then the movie is over. I’d like to think that Van Helsing had to stay behind and decapitate Dracula’s body to finalize the killing, but that’s probably just my sick mind at work.
There is also a lack of music that some viewers might find annoying. Personally, I found it added to suspense to the movie. I’m no expert on the history of movies, so I don’t know if the lack of music was commonplace in movies from this time. However, sometimes less is more and a lot of good horror movies know when to utilize silence to add to suspense. Dracula is one of those movies.
I would recommend Dracula to any horror movie fan. However, if you’re the type of person who needs state of the art special effects and hates black and white movies, you should probably not bother seeing this film. However, this movie has something that a lot of today’s horror movies are lacking, it’s fun. I may not have been scared during this movie, but I found that I enjoying ever moment of Dracula.
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