Dracula (1931) Reviewed

15Sep09

A quick plot summary (in case you didn’t already know): A businessman named Renfield (Dwight Frye) travels to the Transylvania castle of Count Dracula (Béla Lugosi), who is a vampire, to discuss the purchase of a home in London. Along the way, Renfield is warned about vampires, and their propensity for taking various shapes, most often bats and wolves. Despite his disbelief, Renfield is indeed attacked by Dracula, and transformed into a raving lunatic. We next see Renfield and Dracula on board a ship from Transylvania to London, on which Dracula slays the entire crew. At port, Renfield is discovered as the only survivor, and is quickly incarcerated in a sanatorium. Dracula meets some local Londoners, namely his new main squeeze, Mina (Helen Chandler) and her pesky, nosy fiancé John Harker (David Manners). When Mina starts having bad dreams,  her family solicits the help of Dr. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), who discovers that a) Dracula is a vampire, and b) he’s transformed Mina into some sort of vampire hybrid. Van Helsing leads Harker into Dracula’s basement to drive a stake through his heart, and rescue Mina from the clutches of eternal damnation. Meanwhile, Renfield eats flies and various bugs, all the while doing Dracula’s bidding and continually escaping from his seemingly inescapable cell at the sanatorium.

Review: It’s difficult to discuss this film (as I’m sure it will prove difficult to discuss any of these 70-or-more-year-old films) through the lens of time. Béla Lugosi is, in fact, quite creepy as Count Dracula, but I find the overall story to move quite slowly, and the creepiness and tension to stop escalating exactly when they need just a bit more oommph to push the audience over the edge.

Dwight Frye as Renfield

One aspect that of the film that I did find particularly disturbing (and an aspect that I’ve never heard mention of in any discussion of the film, or the Dracula mythos), is Dwight Frye’s genuinely manic portrayal of Renfield. Every moment Frye is onscreen is unsettling, and he steals every scene he’s in (in a good way).

Lugosi is delightfully creepy as Dracula, and I must say I much prefer this earlier incarnation to any lesser (and almost not worth mentioning) future revamp (pun intended), particularly the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola, Gary Oldman-driven Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The way the camera lingers on Lugosi as he stares maliciously at his prey reaches its desired hypnotic effect, though, these moments tend to lose their punch as the film goes on. I also found myself enthralled with the first scene to feature the Count, as his hand slides back the lid of his coffin, and his brides congregate in the tunnels beneath the castle. This scene, I’m sure has lodged itself in the collective unconscious, at least where it intersects with my own unconscious. Really, though, the film’s overall impact tends to stop after the first fifteen minutes or so, in Dracula’s castle. The rest (including Frye’s fantastic turn as Renfield) is extra, all fantastic bits of cinema I didn’t know were coming.

On the downside: I found that the ending came much too easily. The final shot fades on Mina and Harker walking up the stairs from Dracula’s basement, and though Dr. Van Helsing has stayed behind, we know nothing of what happens to him (perhaps this is explored in one of the multitude of sequels?). Also, I understand the censorship restraints of the time, but the off-camera nature of the violence in the film is difficult to get past. At some points, the audience is left with so little visual stimulation to go on that the necessary conclusions can’t be drawn. I found myself scratching my head at times, thinking, I know he did something there, but what?
Overall, Dracula definitely deserves its place in the canon of classic horror movies, if only for its opening Transylvania scenes, Frye’s take on Renfield, and the hypnotic creepiness Lugosi brings to the title character. Despite its shortcomings, I would recommend this one to anyone looking to understand the roots of the modern horror genre.

*Poster borrowed from wikipedia.org. Trailer borrowed from YouTube.com member RoboJapan. Renfield photo borrowed from DVD Outsider.

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Tags: béla lugosi, classic movies, dracula, dwight frye, horror movies, renfield, transylvania, universal monsters