Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb. Things are a little bit out of
Speaker 1: order this week, but it'll be back to order next week.
Speaker 1: This is going to be our look at nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: one's Dracula. Yes, be Dracula, Todd Browning, Bela Lagosi. This
Speaker 1: episode originally published one, twenty twenty five. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Speaker 3: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House,
Speaker 3: we're tackling a classic. We're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirty one Universal Pictures adaptation of Dracula, directed
Speaker 3: by Todd Browning, starring Bela Lagosi. Now, Rob, this was
Speaker 3: your pick for this week. I had always assumed if
Speaker 3: we talked about Dracula, it would happen in October. But
Speaker 3: I'm not complaining. Happy to talk about Dracula in January
Speaker 3: or whatever month it still is. Yeah, it's we're still January.
Speaker 3: So what's going on? How'd you get to Dracula?
Speaker 1: Well, this is how it went down. So, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a film I had actually never seen before. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes a film I think is so iconic, so genre defining,
Speaker 1: so all present in popular culture that it kind of
Speaker 1: fades into a personal obscurity. You know, you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: but you kind of feel like you've seen it, or
Speaker 1: you know you're just overly familiar with its themes. It's
Speaker 1: cast its place in film history, and therefore, when it
Speaker 1: comes time to watch something, you're like, well, I just
Speaker 1: want to watch something fresh, or you want to watch
Speaker 1: something you really do know, and films like this can
Speaker 1: kind of fall through the cracks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sort of interesting. I might talk more about
Speaker 3: this later. But something I find interesting about this Dracula
Speaker 3: is I've probably seen it at least five or six times,
Speaker 3: but I still forget things about it. And the reason
Speaker 3: is that there are so many different adaptations of Dracula.
Speaker 3: It becomes hard to keep straight which elements are from
Speaker 3: which version true?
Speaker 1: True? Yeah, what deviations are made, what is intensified and
Speaker 1: what is condensed and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I had this realization over the weekend. So
Speaker 1: my kid has really gotten into dungeons and dragons and
Speaker 1: has set their sight so not only dming a campaign
Speaker 1: for Friends, but dming Curse of strawed. For those of
Speaker 1: you who are unfamiliar, The Dark Lord stra of aon
Speaker 1: Zardovich is D and d's take on Dracula, essentially a
Speaker 1: dracula esque vampire lord character, created in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies by Tracy and Laura Hickman and based in part
Speaker 1: on Bela Lugosi's iconic portrayal in nineteen thirty one's Dracula.
Speaker 3: I have no familiarity at all. Basically, all I know
Speaker 3: is that vampires are a big deal in D and D.
Speaker 3: You can confirm this that they're not like your standard
Speaker 3: you know, you're just staking them left and right kind
Speaker 3: of enemies that you might expect from some like horror
Speaker 3: video games or whatever. Like if you meet a vampire
Speaker 3: in D and D, this is like one of the
Speaker 3: most devastating and dangerous enemies you could possibly face.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, especially like a true vampire as opposed to just
Speaker 1: a vampire spawn. But ah, okay, yeah, any rate, I
Speaker 1: told you know, I'm supportive. I'm a supportive dad, So
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, that sounds good. But one doesn't simply
Speaker 1: run Curse of straw without seeing at least one Dracula movie,
Speaker 1: and I think the most they'd seen was Bart Simpson's
Speaker 1: Dracula on Treehouse of Horror.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, which is a take on a lot of
Speaker 3: the jokes on that are tied into the Francis Ford
Speaker 3: Coppola adaptation from the nineties.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yes, yeah, And so you know, I was looking
Speaker 1: at my options, and I was considering the Copola one
Speaker 1: as well, because I'm like, all right, my wife's going
Speaker 1: to be out of town. It's just the two of us.
Speaker 1: We've got to watch a Dracula film. And then I
Speaker 1: started really thinking about It's like, you know, I haven't
Speaker 1: actually seen the nineteen thirty one Assic in full. You know,
Speaker 1: I've seen so many Dracula films over the years, and
Speaker 1: this one has just fallen through the cracks. So given
Speaker 1: that they enjoyed Son of Frankenstein back in October, I
Speaker 1: was like, well, it makes sense to watch another black
Speaker 1: and white horror classic. It's maybe not too scary. I mean,
Speaker 1: they can handle stranger things and aliens at this point,
Speaker 1: so I'm not too worried about that. But you know,
Speaker 1: some of these Dracula movies hit pretty hard. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we watched Dracula. For my own part, I feel like
Speaker 1: absolutely holds up stunning, atmospherically, creepy, absolutely rooted in Lugosi's
Speaker 1: mesmerizing performance, and it's pretty weird in its own right too.
Speaker 1: I'm also happy to report that my kid also really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the film, resulting in many a oh my whenever
Speaker 1: Dracula or Renfield made crazy or intense eyes. They told
Speaker 1: me after we were viewing that they half expected Dracula
Speaker 1: to creep out of the shadows in the house.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's what you want. I okay, let's see.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to search my feelings and know and find
Speaker 3: what I know to be true. Have I ever really
Speaker 3: been scared by the Universal Dracula.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: I think maybe I'm just too hardened by horror movies
Speaker 3: that would come later. But I do love it, and
Speaker 3: I appreciate the craft of the horror in it, and
Speaker 3: I feel like I can see how it would be
Speaker 3: scary if I hadn't been so desensitized by all of
Speaker 3: the edgier horror movies that would come later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to be clear, they're fine, they're almost thirteen. They
Speaker 1: were able to handle it, but I was. It did
Speaker 1: bring me much joy that they enjoyed it as much
Speaker 1: as they did, and they weren't bored with it or anything.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't think there's really a boring moment
Speaker 1: in this one. It flies right along, sometimes literally on
Speaker 1: the wings of a bat. So I don't really have
Speaker 1: an elevator picture this one, Joe, other than it's Dracula.
Speaker 1: This is the big one. This is a titan of
Speaker 1: not only cinema enlarge, but also horror cinema specifically.
Speaker 3: Dracula comes to the talkies fully licensed.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Let's see if we're able to.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and listen to just a little bit
Speaker 1: of the trailer audio here.
Speaker 3: I am Dracula.
Speaker 4: Dracula. The very mention of the name brings to mind
Speaker 4: things so evil, so fantastic, so degrading. You wonder if
Speaker 4: it isn't all a dream, a nightmare millions the original
Speaker 4: terrifying story of a maniac and a man who lived
Speaker 4: after death, lived on human blood, took the form of
Speaker 4: a vampire bat, and lured innocent girls to a fate
Speaker 4: truly worse than death.
Speaker 1: You done, he made me drink all right? Well, you
Speaker 1: might be wondering, well, Where can I watch nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: one's Dracula. Well, I watched it on the Universal Dracula
Speaker 1: Complete Legacy Collection Blu ray set. I rented this from Videodrome.
Speaker 1: I think you have the same addition, right, Joe.
Speaker 3: Uh No, I've got a slightly different thing. I've got
Speaker 3: the Universal Classic Monsters Essential Collection Blu ray set, which
Speaker 3: I highly recommend. It's got a lot of great extra
Speaker 3: I mean, all the films look beautiful. It's got a
Speaker 3: ton of great extras, documentaries and commentary tracks and all
Speaker 3: that comes with a nice little booklet. So yeah, I've
Speaker 3: enjoyed this set for years.
Speaker 1: All right, Right, I think we have some of the
Speaker 1: same extras and special features that shared, so definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: Universal Horror release.
Speaker 3: Here might just be a partial repackaging kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because the extras on this day and there's
Speaker 1: some great extras. They're a little bit older, but charming
Speaker 1: in ways that sometimes things from nineteen ninety nine are not.
Speaker 1: But there's a really good document short documentary called The
Speaker 1: Road to Dracula, and it's hosted by Carla Limley who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh nine through twenty fourteen. She was the
Speaker 1: niece of Universal founder Carl Limley and cousin of producer
Speaker 1: Carl Limley Junior.
Speaker 3: And she's in the movie.
Speaker 1: She is she has the first line of dialogue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's just riding in the carriage in the Borgo pass.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. So it's really fun, and you know, you
Speaker 1: got some of the usual suspects of various film historians.
Speaker 1: Some will refer to Joe Dante of course, shows up
Speaker 1: to talk a little about horror films, and it's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. So these Blu rays are great. But
Speaker 1: this is of course a very famous film. It's generally
Speaker 1: available for digital purchase in rental, and it's one one
Speaker 1: of those classics that you will also periodically get to
Speaker 1: see on the big screen, which is a treat.
Speaker 3: While we're on the subject of disc extras, I just
Speaker 3: wanted to say a couple of times I've watched this
Speaker 3: movie with a commentary track that's on the disc version
Speaker 3: I have by the film and horror historian David J. Skall.
Speaker 3: Some of the things, like probably a lot of the
Speaker 3: behind the scenes things I know about the movie I
Speaker 3: learned through Skall's commentary, So credit to him. That's a
Speaker 3: source of a lot of my just general information.
Speaker 1: Yes, Skall, who sadly passed away last year, is also
Speaker 1: an important part of the documentary shorts on the disc,
Speaker 1: and among his many books you'll find vas for Vampire
Speaker 1: and a to Z Guide to Everything Undead that was
Speaker 1: published in ninety six. I've already added a used copy
Speaker 1: of that to my cart I think I need that
Speaker 1: in my collection.
Speaker 3: They're all undead, Okay, trying to think what the X is?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this might be a pull. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: well let's talk about the connections here the people behind
Speaker 1: this film. I do have to note that, as usual,
Speaker 1: we can't cover everyone and a film this big. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's been so much written about it and
Speaker 1: explored about the picture. Every little part has probably been
Speaker 1: explored to some degree or another, and we just don't
Speaker 1: have time for all of that. So my apologies to
Speaker 1: anyone whose efforts and talent we left out here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also worth noting that this film is incredibly huge
Speaker 3: and important in Hollywood history, and we're not going to
Speaker 3: be able to explore all of this. This is not
Speaker 3: your complete history lesson on the universal monsters in Dracula.
Speaker 3: We can't do that today. We're not really qualified for that,
Speaker 3: but we're going to do what we can.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right. Starting at the top. The director is,
Speaker 1: of course Todd Browning, who ofd eighteen eighty through nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, American director who was quite successful during the
Speaker 1: silent era and by some estimates less sure of himself
Speaker 1: entering into the talky era. And that's something you'll pick
Speaker 1: up on with this film and its frequent use of
Speaker 1: silence and at times a kind of like stagy ritualistic
Speaker 1: framing that feels very you know, in keeping with this
Speaker 1: film's roots on the stage as a play, but also
Speaker 1: fitting for the silent era as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess we can talk more later about the
Speaker 3: different musical compositions that have been paired with the movie
Speaker 3: over the years, but one thing that will feel kind
Speaker 3: of unusual about it to a lot of modern audiences
Speaker 3: is the lack of music throughout the film. There are
Speaker 3: a couple of scenes with music, you know, with the
Speaker 3: credits and the old version you get the Swan Lake,
Speaker 3: and there's a scene that takes place at a symphony
Speaker 3: performance where there's music in the background. Because it's diegetic music,
Speaker 3: it's supposed to be part of the narrative. But most
Speaker 3: of the scenes it's just kind of silence and the
Speaker 3: characters talking, and some of the most dramatic scenes in
Speaker 3: the film, there's nothing at all to listen to. It's
Speaker 3: just it's utterly silent. Well like you know, the vampire
Speaker 3: creeps up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you almost it's almost unheard off when
Speaker 1: you compare it to modern films, like so many films
Speaker 1: are just non stop blaring music and sound effects and explosions.
Speaker 1: And it depends on the genre obviously, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: can be almost shocking how silent this picture is. But
Speaker 1: you're also you're not missing the cacophony either. It's also
Speaker 1: worth noting that films of this era were also released
Speaker 1: in silent film versions, in part for older theaters, but
Speaker 1: also for international markets since dubbing subtitles were not really
Speaker 1: all that establish yet. So you'll find versions of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one's Dracula that have the full like silent film
Speaker 1: dialogue set up, where you know, the inter titles. Yeah, yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel.
Speaker 3: Like that would there would be so many there's a
Speaker 3: lot of dialogue in this movie, because generally talkies had
Speaker 3: more dialogue in them than silent films. Did I feel
Speaker 3: like that would extend the run time a lot, if
Speaker 3: you had to have an intertie for every line.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they must have. I haven't seen it in full myself.
Speaker 1: I've just seen some clips. I'm not sure if a
Speaker 1: full version exists, but yeah, they would have to cut
Speaker 1: some stuff, right.
Speaker 3: I would think so. Well, I don't know who knows.
Speaker 3: I've never edited a talkie into a silent film, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I would think it would. It would end up running
Speaker 3: really long and they'd have to cut some stuff down.
Speaker 1: They should do that. When the new Nosferatu film that
Speaker 1: came out, they need to do a silent film cut
Speaker 1: of it. You know. People directors keep doing like black
Speaker 1: and white cuts of films. It's like, that's great, but
Speaker 1: let's see, let's see the silent Cut's see what that's like. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to Todd Browning. Browning wrote and directed his first
Speaker 1: full length silent picture in nineteen seventeen, and found success
Speaker 1: with nineteen twenties The Virgin of Stambul. His first talkie
Speaker 1: was nineteen twenty nine, It's the Thirteenth Chair. That was
Speaker 1: a murder mystery that had Legosi in it. And so
Speaker 1: we'll come back to and Dracula of course, followed shortly
Speaker 1: after that. His other films include the notable lost film
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty sevens London After Midnight, nineteen thirty two's Free Weeks,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five's Mark of the Vampire in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six is The Devil Doll. His last film was nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine's Miracles for Sale, and he retired in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two, with Hollywood trends and tastes drifting further away
Speaker 1: from his sensibilities at the time.
Speaker 3: When Browning was younger, he had some experience working with
Speaker 3: circus performers, I believe, and this sort of came out
Speaker 3: in an ongoing obsession that appears in many of his works.
Speaker 3: Certainly there in nineteen thirty two's Freaks, which is a
Speaker 3: ooh man. I haven't seen that movie in many years,
Speaker 3: but I'd be very interested to see what modern critics
Speaker 3: think about that as a retrospective. I mean, it's a
Speaker 3: very surprising film for the nineteen thirties in many ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was his famous for the One of Us song, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a chant. I guess it's a.
Speaker 3: Song Google gobble one of Us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right. Dracula if you're not aware. Original
Speaker 1: novel is by Brown Stoker, who lived eighteen forty seven
Speaker 1: through nineteen twelve, Irish author and theater critic, whose eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven novel was Seeming. You know that a lot
Speaker 1: has been written and discussed about where this novel arises,
Speaker 1: you know, in brown Stoker's life and mindset, but seems
Speaker 1: to have spun out of various accounts and experiences of
Speaker 1: disease in the world around him. And perhaps you know
Speaker 1: he was sick as a child. That sort of thing
Speaker 1: also folklore of Ireland as well as mainland Europe. And
Speaker 1: of course it's also worth noting that in the book
Speaker 1: there's a lot of use of phonographs. It's often crazy
Speaker 1: to realize how thoroughly modern the novel was at its release.
Speaker 1: If he had written it today, Mino would have been
Speaker 1: on TikTok i fee.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wasn't doctor Seward in the book doing like phonograph diaries
Speaker 3: or something? He was? Yes.
Speaker 1: Another detail that we often overlook I was reading about
Speaker 1: this is that the novel was only a moderate success
Speaker 1: at the time, and Merritt's only brief mention in Stoker's
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve obituary. It wasn't until the copyright battle over
Speaker 1: a little nineteen twenty two film titled Nosferatu stirred everything out.
Speaker 1: That's when Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe, gave approval to Hamilton
Speaker 1: Dean for this stage adaptation of Dracula, And of course
Speaker 1: from that we get this film eventually, and all of
Speaker 1: this blossoms. Dracula's cinematic legacy in the novel truly becomes
Speaker 1: a popular classic.
Speaker 3: Now, wait a minute, did bram Stoker not himself adapt
Speaker 3: the novel to the stage. I thought there was at
Speaker 3: least one play version that he wrote, but I could
Speaker 3: be wrong. Well, folks, neither of us knew the answer
Speaker 3: for sure, so I just looked it up to find out. Yes,
Speaker 3: bram Stoker did create at least one version of the
Speaker 3: novel for the stage that apparently debuted before the novel
Speaker 3: was even released, or at least the same year. So
Speaker 3: he wrote the novel then made a stage adaptation, which
Speaker 3: debuted under the title Dracula or the Undead, and that
Speaker 3: was performed in May eighteen ninety seven, the same month
Speaker 3: that the novel was released. And according to an article
Speaker 3: that I just dug up about this. Apparently only two
Speaker 3: people came and showed up in the audience to watch it.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. So yeah, it can be a little surprising
Speaker 1: to realize that the popularity of the novel really rises
Speaker 1: alongside it sent the book cinematic history. And I think
Speaker 1: part of the sort of confusion that can occur, in
Speaker 1: my opinion anyway, is the fact that we often love
Speaker 1: Dracula and Frankenstein together. But Mary Shelley's book was published
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighteen. That's seventy nine years earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So another weird thing to think about is that
Speaker 3: when this movie was made, the movie we're talking about today,
Speaker 3: the Universe versa Dracula, the novel was only like thirty
Speaker 3: three or thirty four years old. Wow, Dracula feels like
Speaker 3: an ancient story to us. But it is the equivalent
Speaker 3: of making a movie today based on a novel that
Speaker 3: was originally published like in the early nineties. I looked up, like,
Speaker 3: what were the big novels on the bestseller lists in
Speaker 3: like nineteen ninety one, So it would be like today
Speaker 3: making an adaptation of the Sum of All Fears by
Speaker 3: Tom Clancy, which that really puts it in a different
Speaker 3: perspective for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that man, that's mind blowing for sure. All right,
Speaker 1: now getting into the various adaptations here, So yes, we
Speaker 1: have the authorized initial stage adaptation of Dracula by Hamilton Dean,
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen seventy nine through nineteen fifty eight. He
Speaker 1: was a family friend. He was brom Stoker's widow's choice
Speaker 1: to make the official stage adaptation. Dean himself initially played
Speaker 1: Van Helsing and in nineteen twenty four play here became popular,
Speaker 1: but some revisions proved necessary before it could really make
Speaker 1: that move to Broadway in nineteen twenty seven. That's also
Speaker 1: when Bella Lagosi comes on board to play the Count.
Speaker 3: It's funny that there are so many different versions of
Speaker 3: Dracula before it even makes it to the movie that
Speaker 3: made it so famous, you know. So like you've got
Speaker 3: the original novel, you've got bram Stoker's stage adaptation, You've
Speaker 3: got multiple different other play versions of the play. You
Speaker 3: got the Hamilton Dean play. You've got at least a
Speaker 3: couple of versions you said that went through revisions going
Speaker 3: on to Broadway. And then also you've got No Speratu,
Speaker 3: the the FW Murnau movie, which we said, as we said,
Speaker 3: is an unofficial adaptation of the story making some changes.
Speaker 3: So it's like this novel that is not even thirty
Speaker 3: years old is getting all of these different rewrites in
Speaker 3: different versions before it even reaches its best known form.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, Nosfaratu was not even the first adaptation.
Speaker 1: There was a nineteen twenty one film called Dracula's Death.
Speaker 1: It was a Hungarian silent film that apparently had very
Speaker 1: little to do with the actual plot of Dracula, but
Speaker 1: still there it was.
Speaker 3: But surely once we get the play version on Broadway
Speaker 3: starring Bella Lagosi, then that's exactly what we get in
Speaker 3: the film.
Speaker 1: Right, No, no, not no, probably not so the Broadway
Speaker 1: revision though. That's where John L. Balderston comes in, who
Speaker 1: lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen fifty four, playwright and screenwriter,
Speaker 1: and he'd later work on the screenplays for Frankenstein and
Speaker 1: also in thirty one, thirty two Is the Mummy, thirty
Speaker 1: Five's Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Dracula's Daughter, Gaslight and many.
Speaker 3: Others wrote a lot of my favorites of the era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we've alluded to this already, and we'll
Speaker 1: keep mentioning this. The play is already a notable condensing
Speaker 1: of Dracula, which if you've ever read it, you already
Speaker 1: know that. You know, it's only like four hundred and
Speaker 1: something pages long. It's not a sprawling book in terms
Speaker 1: of length, but it can kind of feel sprawling at times,
Speaker 1: just the way that's it's written. Composed of these overlapping correspondences,
Speaker 1: diary entries and phonograph recordings. The beginning of the novel
Speaker 1: is arguably a lot more exciting than some of the
Speaker 1: latter stretches and so forth. And we should also note
Speaker 1: the other like major influential change that is made in
Speaker 1: the stage adaptation of Dracula. Here is our changes to
Speaker 1: what Dracula is. The way Dracula is presented as a
Speaker 1: creature and a character.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right. I mean, Dracula is the bad guy
Speaker 3: of the movie, but he is much more of the
Speaker 3: Bella Legosi. Dracula is much more charming and interesting than
Speaker 3: the Dracula of the novel, who is a filthy, repulsive demon.
Speaker 3: Just you know, there's not the Dracula in the book
Speaker 3: is just not lovable.
Speaker 1: He's a creature of dust. He's more in line with this,
Speaker 1: he's an grotesque, undead warrior king. And here this is
Speaker 1: the kind of Dracula that can stand shoulder to shoulder
Speaker 1: with London's elite later on and is greeted as an
Speaker 1: equal and is charming and erotic in ways that the
Speaker 1: original Dracula in the script in the novel is not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. Garrett Fort has the screenplay credit who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred and nineteen forty five, American screenwriter, playwright, and author.
Speaker 1: His credits include Frankenstein, Dracula's Daughter, the Devil Doll. Both
Speaker 1: of those Dracula's Daughter and Devil Doll were thirty six
Speaker 1: and nineteen forties, The Mark of Zaro, just to name
Speaker 1: a few.
Speaker 3: Okay, well we got to talk about Bayla now.
Speaker 1: Yes, bail Legosi plays Count Dracula, of course, who lived
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six. So we've discussed
Speaker 1: some films with iconic, even career defining performances here on
Speaker 1: Weird House before, but the case of Bella Legosi and Dracula,
Speaker 1: I feel like this is on an entirely different level,
Speaker 1: like even compared to things like Carlofs Frankenstein. It's because
Speaker 1: it's not only career defining its genre defining. He not
Speaker 1: only becomes Dracula in this picture, but defines what Dracula
Speaker 1: is for the next one hundred years and beyond anyone else.
Speaker 1: Playing Dracula in the shadow of this film has no
Speaker 1: choice but to either embrace Legosi's performance or to play
Speaker 1: against it, which is what you often see, but you
Speaker 1: absolutely cannot ignore it like this really sets the tone
Speaker 1: and sets the course for not only Dracula films, not
Speaker 1: only vampire films, but horror cinema in large.
Speaker 3: He brings a lot to the role that I think
Speaker 3: you wouldn't necessarily get about the character on the page.
Speaker 3: I don't know if Bela Legosi is the sexiest Dracula
Speaker 3: there has ever been, but he does bring a kind
Speaker 3: of interesting suaveness and attractiveness to the role. He brings
Speaker 3: a smile and a sense of humor to the character
Speaker 3: that I think was not really there previously, was certainly
Speaker 3: not there in the previous film adaptations. In like in
Speaker 3: nos Feratu, you know Max Shrek no attacking Max Shrek's
Speaker 3: performances count orlock there, but that's a totally different take
Speaker 3: on the character. Does not have the kind of charm
Speaker 3: and sense of humor that Belle Lagosi brings to this
Speaker 3: role that actually makes it much more sinister in those
Speaker 3: rare moments where in this movie you get flashes of
Speaker 3: anger and malice from Dracula, like in the moment where
Speaker 3: he slaps down the after they pulled the trick on
Speaker 3: him by opening the cigarette box and shining the mirror
Speaker 3: in his face, smacks it away, and you see him,
Speaker 3: you know, scowling at Van Helsing and the other men,
Speaker 3: and that moment is quite shocking. And it's because of
Speaker 3: the you know, the calmness and the coolness that Legosi
Speaker 3: brings to this character. He's kind of like it's he's
Speaker 3: in on a joke that only he gets, and the
Speaker 3: joke is that you will serve him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sexiness of Dracula. It brings me back to
Speaker 1: what I said earlier about the about being you can
Speaker 1: be overly familiar with this picture and you can also
Speaker 1: just be more accustomed to stills from it, and maybe
Speaker 1: even stills of an older Legosi playing Count Dracula dressing
Speaker 1: up as Count Dracula. But I feel like you really
Speaker 1: have to see the full performance. You have to see
Speaker 1: him in motion. You have to hear him make every
Speaker 1: little enunciation to the Dracula dialogue, and it all adds
Speaker 1: up to what, especially for the time period, is like
Speaker 1: a very erotically charged performance. Like there is a hypnotic
Speaker 1: charisma to him, and there is I think a strong
Speaker 1: like pan sexual eroticism to him as he you know,
Speaker 1: because he doesn't see gender or anything. He sees blood.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter if you're a if you're a male, female
Speaker 1: or what have you. Dracula is going to come for you.
Speaker 3: There Dracula's embrace. Yeah, I would say that that is
Speaker 3: implicit in the film. It's not explicit like it is
Speaker 3: in a lot of the later Dracula adaptations which make
Speaker 3: him overtly sexual and stuff. But it's a strong subtext here.
Speaker 3: And to emphasize again what we said earlier that like
Speaker 3: whatever sexual themes about Dracula are there in the novel
Speaker 3: or whatever, I do not think there's really much about
Speaker 3: him being potentially like alluring in any way. I mean, dude,
Speaker 3: whatever's there is just purely predatory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, again nineteen twenty two, nos Faratu not really sexy.
Speaker 1: And as we were discussing off Mic earlier twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: nos Faratu maybe perhaps sexy. I haven't seen it yet,
Speaker 1: but if that Nosparatu is sexy, it's because that Nosparatu
Speaker 1: stands in the long shadow of Bella Lugosi's Dracula, because.
Speaker 3: That one is remixing different themes that have come through
Speaker 3: in all the different interpretations of Dracula over the years. Yes,
Speaker 3: I would argue that the new Robert Eggers knows Ferrautu,
Speaker 3: which I have seen and I greatly enjoyed. In fact,
Speaker 3: I was talking about this with Rachel and we were
Speaker 3: trying to say, like, is Dracula sexy in that? I
Speaker 3: think the goal, actually, the specific thing they were trying
Speaker 3: to accomplish was to go for maximally disgusting and revolting
Speaker 3: and sexy at the same time. It is kind of
Speaker 3: an oxymoron. They were trying to accomplish something that should
Speaker 3: be impossible to do. Is like polar opposite kind of
Speaker 3: qualities to the character. But I think they did a
Speaker 3: pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing it at some
Speaker 1: point here.
Speaker 3: And if you look up fan reception on the internet,
Speaker 3: definitely there are a lot of people who find this
Speaker 3: this rotting, decomposing plague corpse somewhat somewhat exciting for some reason, right,
Speaker 3: I'm not knocking to you know.
Speaker 1: Well, back to Legosi again, an immortal performance, no two
Speaker 1: ways about it. Now. We've talked about Lagosi twice on
Speaker 1: the show before, in our episodes on The Devil Bat
Speaker 1: and Son of Frankenstein. He's wonderful and Son of Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: and even in Devil of Bat, as with many of
Speaker 1: his other, like later lesser roles, he still finds a
Speaker 1: way to shine through it all. But here he is
Speaker 1: at the height of his powers, and it is a
Speaker 1: thing to behold, richly charismatic, frightening, erotic, and above all hypnotic.
Speaker 1: I was asking my kid about how this one stacked
Speaker 1: up to Son of Frankenstein, and they told me that
Speaker 1: Dracula was definitely the scarier of the two, and the
Speaker 1: scariest moments were Dracula's gaze. Oh he's looking right at
Speaker 1: the camera.
Speaker 3: But they do, and actually I meant to bring this
Speaker 3: up in the plot section. If you know anything about
Speaker 3: this shot they do. It's a recurring visual theme where
Speaker 3: we come in on Dracula's face. Maybe the camera is moving,
Speaker 3: zooming in on him, or it's just still on Dracula's face,
Speaker 3: but the most of the shot is dark and there's
Speaker 3: sort of a beam of light falling over his eyes.
Speaker 3: It's just the eyes and it's just there scowling with
Speaker 3: the eyes wide. I don't know if you knew why
Speaker 3: they selected that, like the beam on the eyes only,
Speaker 3: but I always thought that was interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really adds to this like otherworldly hypnotizing power
Speaker 1: of the character. And Yeah, on top of that, Legosi's
Speaker 1: performance is just one thing that's pointed out by by
Speaker 1: some of the Dracula experts is that there are no
Speaker 1: small moments at all in it. Every annunciation, but every
Speaker 1: even like subtle movement feels very calculated and essential. Some
Speaker 1: have chalked this up to the possibility that Legosi memorized
Speaker 1: his parts phonetically, at least at the stage of his career,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure where the truth falls and all
Speaker 1: of that at any rate, the finished product, the actual performance,
Speaker 1: like the way that he stresses words in each line,
Speaker 1: like it seems to bring across like cryptic meaning to things,
Speaker 1: like even some of the lines you think, you know,
Speaker 1: like like children of the Night, what music they make?
Speaker 1: You know, it's what music they make, you know, like
Speaker 1: the choices there are so absolutely cryptic, and it feels
Speaker 1: like perfectly the perfectly calculated way that this cold, immortal
Speaker 1: being would be, you know, cutting through to our fear
Speaker 1: and desire with every word and every movement.
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. I've really loved that. Yeah, the
Speaker 3: enunciation of the lines does add this mystery to the
Speaker 3: intended meaning of them, which lends itself well to something
Speaker 3: that is here in Legosi's performance. And actually I noticed
Speaker 3: in all three of the movies we've covered of his,
Speaker 3: two of them much better than the other one. I mean,
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed all three. But Son of frank and
Speaker 3: Dracula are much better movies than Devil Back. But in
Speaker 3: all three, the thing that's common is bell Leegosi has
Speaker 3: this way of delivering lines that he understands in a
Speaker 3: different way than the person he's talking to, you know,
Speaker 3: like double meaning, kind of sinister irony lines. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of that in Dracula. There's a lot of that.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of that in Son of Frankenstein,
Speaker 3: you know, and they're what's that part where you know
Speaker 3: they're talking about like bringing the creature back, healing him up,
Speaker 3: and the other you know, the son of Frank is like, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's if he's well enough yet,
Speaker 3: and and Igor is like, well enough for me. Oh,
Speaker 3: And it's just he has a lot of that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, these dry, threatening, humorous little ironies in that
Speaker 3: are often expressed exquisitely in the way he inflects words
Speaker 3: in an unexpected way.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. As we discussed in the previous lego see episodes,
Speaker 1: he started out in Hungarian theater in silent films before
Speaker 1: making his way to Germany and finally America via New Orleans.
Speaker 1: He's made his way to New York. He became very
Speaker 1: active in the theater scene there. He did some silent
Speaker 1: films and eventually lands that lead role in the Broadway
Speaker 1: played Dracula twenty seven, ends up moving to la in
Speaker 1: twenty eight part of the tour, and this kicks off
Speaker 1: his Hollywood career. The next year, he appeared in Todd
Speaker 1: Browning's The Thirteenth Chair, and the Interesting thing is Bella
Speaker 1: was clearly the obvious choice for the film adaptation of
Speaker 1: the play. He'd been performing it to rave reviews, and
Speaker 1: yet he was not the first pick for the film.
Speaker 1: The producers considered the likes of Laon Cheney, who ended
Speaker 1: up dying before the film could be produced. Conrad Vitt,
Speaker 1: the Man who Laughs, was also considered, but he had
Speaker 1: moved back to Europe, and I think the idea is
Speaker 1: like he wasn't He didn't really, it wasn't as comfortable
Speaker 1: with English language, and so eventually they're like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: Legosi's there, will hire Legosi. And they got him somewhat
Speaker 1: on the cheap. It's a role that made him an
Speaker 1: undying legend, obviously, but as has been covered in many
Speaker 1: a biography, it also typecast him. It was the high
Speaker 1: point of a life and career that didn't always maintain
Speaker 1: an even trueject.
Speaker 3: But I want to be clear again, not his only
Speaker 3: great performance. I mean his turn as Igor and son
Speaker 3: of Frankenstein is fantastic, hilarious, is so good in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are a number of other ones that
Speaker 1: are often cited. Is like strong Legosi performances, So we
Speaker 1: may have to come back to more Legosi in the future.
Speaker 1: All right, getting into the rest of the cast here,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna spend less time with the remainders here. But
Speaker 1: Helen Chandler plays Mina. She lived nineteen oh six through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, American actress of stage and screen, best
Speaker 1: remembered for Dracula. David Manners plays Jonathan Harker. He lived
Speaker 1: nineteen one hundred through nineteen ninety eight, Canadian born leading
Speaker 1: man here, completely overshadowed by stronger character performances and also,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss in a very reduced Jonathan Harker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just as shadowed by the script.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he's just he's overshadowed by yeah, other
Speaker 1: performances and also the writings. He's not sent to the
Speaker 1: castle in the he does not have the Keanu Reeves
Speaker 1: version of Jonathan Harker here.
Speaker 3: No, we need to talk about this later in the plot.
Speaker 3: But it's almost like, why is this character even in
Speaker 3: the story exactly?
Speaker 1: He's best remembered for his roles in Dracula nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two is the Mummy and nineteen thirty four is the
Speaker 1: Black Cat.
Speaker 3: Now Rob again. I was surprised to find out that
Speaker 3: you'd never seen Dracula in its entirety before, but it
Speaker 3: caused me to remember back back to the first time
Speaker 3: I saw Dracula. Like you, I grew up, you know,
Speaker 3: knowing bits of it, seeing bits of it on TV
Speaker 3: and things like that, especially in clip show type things.
Speaker 3: But when I finally saw it in full, honestly, one
Speaker 3: of the things that made the biggest impression on me
Speaker 3: was Dwight Frye as Renfield.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, this is a just bonker's performance by the great
Speaker 1: Dwight fry lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: American character actor of stage and screen with broad range,
Speaker 1: but be member for his outlandish horror roles and certainly
Speaker 1: typecast to those. After a while, he went on to
Speaker 1: play Fritz in thirty ones Frankenstein, Carl in thirty five's
Speaker 1: Bride of Frankenstein, and smaller often uncredited roles and subsequent
Speaker 1: Frankenstein films. He was also in nineteen thirty one's The
Speaker 1: Maltese Falcon.
Speaker 3: Renfield is really a highlight of the movie apart from
Speaker 3: Lagosi here because in multiple ways, like the way the
Speaker 3: character is written is both intentionally and unintentionally funny, the
Speaker 3: unintentional part being like the fourth time he escapes from
Speaker 3: the sanitarium and just wanders into a scene in the house,
Speaker 3: It's like, how does this guy keep getting out of
Speaker 3: his cell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's kind of like the Kramer of the picture,
Speaker 1: just randomly busts in whenever they need a little need
Speaker 1: a little Renfield action.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he slides in and he's got the crazy
Speaker 3: hair and he's like, oh, the Master is gonna give
Speaker 3: me blood this time. Oh. It's but also just he
Speaker 3: has the deranged monologues about needing lives and blood and
Speaker 3: wanting to eat spiders, and then also has kind of
Speaker 3: a you know, he's mostly a heel after being turned
Speaker 3: by the Count, but he has a face turn at
Speaker 3: one point that doesn't quite stick. It's yeah, it's just great.
Speaker 3: I love Dwight Fry here it thumbs up, thumbs up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if not for Legosi, he would be the most
Speaker 1: memorable performer in the piece. Yeah, totally all right. It's
Speaker 1: a Dracula movie. Who also have to have a Van helsing,
Speaker 1: you have to have a Dracula slayer, and that's Edward
Speaker 1: Van Sloan, who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: American character actor, here reprising the role that he played
Speaker 1: in the stage adaptation. This was only his second film,
Speaker 1: followed by the role of doctor Waldman in nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 1: S Frankenstein doctor Mueller in thirty two's The Mummy, and
Speaker 1: he played Professor van Helsing in nineteen thirty six is
Speaker 1: Dracula's daughter, So he.
Speaker 3: Was just always the professor who shows up too to
Speaker 3: know about the monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, probably a little bit of typecasting going
Speaker 1: on here as well, but it's another strong performance. I
Speaker 1: really like him in this part of it is the
Speaker 1: haircut in the glasses.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if he's ever made as huge
Speaker 3: an impression on me, but he does certainly drive the
Speaker 3: scenes in the middle of the movie that would, I
Speaker 3: think otherwise be the weakest links in the film, basically,
Speaker 3: the investigation scenes where the heroes are trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what's going on. They're the scenes that either don't
Speaker 3: have Legosi or don't have a Dwight Fry in them
Speaker 3: yet until he bursts in later in the scene. Those
Speaker 3: would be the dullest parts. But he does pretty well there.
Speaker 1: He feels a little unhinged in a great way, you know,
Speaker 1: like one of the first people to believe that we're
Speaker 1: actually dealing with vampires. You know, it's probably somebody who
Speaker 1: lives their life a little bit on the edge.
Speaker 3: And later adaptations would generally take this principle a lot further,
Speaker 3: I'd say, compared to later Van Helsing portrayals, Edward Van
Speaker 3: Sloan is a pretty straight shooter. I mean, thinking about
Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins and Copola's Dracula, where Van Helsing borderline insane
Speaker 3: thinking about Willem Dafoe in the in the New nos Ferratu.
Speaker 3: I mean they later really embraced the idea that the
Speaker 3: professor who knows how to fight evil is himself an
Speaker 3: extremely eccentric figure.
Speaker 1: All right. The other principal investigator here is, of course,
Speaker 1: doctor Seward, played by Herbert Bunston, who lived eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: four through nineteen thirty five, British actor best remembered for
Speaker 1: this film. He also had a supporting role in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty as the Lady of Scandal in nineteen thirty three's
Speaker 1: The Monkeys Paw again somewhat reduced here, he's essentially in
Speaker 1: a lot of these older pictures, you really need like
Speaker 1: a supporting cast of two to three old white guy
Speaker 1: experts to help you fight your alien invasion or monster attacks.
Speaker 1: And this is what this guy is.
Speaker 3: His role in this movie is, I say, could it
Speaker 3: be true.
Speaker 1: All right, you can't have a Mina unless you have
Speaker 1: a Lucy. And that's where Francis Dad comes in. She
Speaker 1: lived nineteen ten through nineteen sixty eight, American actress, only
Speaker 1: active in the late twenties and early thirties. This was
Speaker 1: her most memorable role, but she has a supporting role
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirty one Anime Wong film Daughter of
Speaker 1: the Dragon.
Speaker 3: Like many characters in this version, Lucy's role is greatly
Speaker 3: reduced from what it is in the novel. You know,
Speaker 3: a big part of the investigation in the middle of
Speaker 3: the novel is like the characters trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what the cause of Lucy's wasting disease is. You know,
Speaker 3: why is she losing blood? What's going on? In this movie?
Speaker 3: They just like acts all that. It's done in like
Speaker 3: ninety seconds of screen time.
Speaker 1: We of course have the brides. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: the brides later, but Geraldine Devoric, Dorothy Tree, and Cornelia
Speaker 1: Thaw those are your brides. Let's see getting behind the
Speaker 1: scenes here a bit. Carl Fround, of course, did the cinematography,
Speaker 1: rather famous for his work on this picture and subsequent films.
Speaker 1: Lived eighteen ninety through nineteen sixty nine legendary Austrian Hungarian
Speaker 1: born cinematographer and director, two time Oscar winner, four time nominee.
Speaker 1: Much of the visual splendor of this film is often
Speaker 1: attributed to frend and many have have also said that
Speaker 1: he probably directed parts of it as well. He was
Speaker 1: reportedly like a very strong presence on the set sometimes
Speaker 1: when Browning wasn't. He went on to direct nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: two's The Money, as well as nineteen thirty five is
Speaker 1: Mad Love, which we talked about in one of, if
Speaker 1: not our first episodes, and he did several other pictures
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: Freud did the cinematography on most of the movies that
Speaker 3: from the nineteen thirties that I think look the best,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of the thirties movies that I see,
Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, this is gorgeous. It's like, oh, that
Speaker 3: was Carl Freud, so yeah, he in the movie does
Speaker 3: look great. There are typically like the scenes in it
Speaker 3: that look the best tend to be the ones that
Speaker 3: film historians say this is like a signature Carl Freun
Speaker 3: type shot. And I think this has led some people
Speaker 3: to speculate that for the less interesting cinematography in the
Speaker 3: movie that he was kind of he was kind of
Speaker 3: on leash, like he was not necessarily being allowed to
Speaker 3: do all he could do. I don't know if that's
Speaker 3: true or not, but that's what some people have said.
Speaker 1: It's often pointed out that the also nineteen thirty one
Speaker 1: Mexican Dracula film that they shot at night on the
Speaker 1: same sets, is more technically proficient and maybe more daring.
Speaker 1: And for part of that is that apparently they could
Speaker 1: look back at what the day crew was doing and
Speaker 1: figure out how to one up it, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the English language production would shoot and then
Speaker 3: they would shoot afterwards, and so they could look at
Speaker 3: all the mistakes made in the earlier shoots and like
Speaker 3: figure out ways to correct them before they before they
Speaker 3: set up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, spice things up sometimes and so forth. All right.
Speaker 1: Set decoration. Russell A Gossman who lived eighteen ninety two
Speaker 1: through nineteen sixty three. Oscar winner for his work on
Speaker 1: forty fourth Phantom of the Opera and sixty one Spartacus.
Speaker 1: He also worked on other major and minor universal horror films.
Speaker 1: Jack P. Pierce did the makeup eighteen eighty nine through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. Monster Makeup Master of the day who
Speaker 1: worked on like Frankenstein, the Man who Laughs, the Invisible Man,
Speaker 1: the Wolfman, and so many others. I guess on the
Speaker 1: surface it might seem like he had less to do here.
Speaker 1: There's not. There's no monster makeup on the level of
Speaker 1: Frankenstein in this picture, but clearly makeup is a part
Speaker 1: of bringing Count Dracula and the brides to their to
Speaker 1: undead life on the screen. And finally, Heinz Roemheld has
Speaker 1: a conductor musical arrangement credit of nineteen one through nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, but again this is a needle drop score,
Speaker 1: owing in part to budgetary issues. Again, sometimes there's no
Speaker 1: music at all, but music used in the picture includes
Speaker 1: Schaikowski Swan Lake, Opus twenty, Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, and
Speaker 1: a selection from Wagner's The Meister Singer von Nunberg.
Speaker 3: I mainly associate Dracula with Swan Lake due to this movie,
Speaker 3: but I have actually seen it with the Philip Glass
Speaker 3: score that was done later. I don't know when, was
Speaker 3: that in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was ninety eight legendary Philip Glass composed. It
Speaker 1: was performed by the Kronos Quartet. I've never seen it,
Speaker 1: but I did listen to part of that while I
Speaker 1: was researching and writing up notes here, and it sounds
Speaker 1: quite good.
Speaker 3: Oh hey, mentioning Swan Lake. By the way, that is
Speaker 3: what plays over the opening credits, at least in the
Speaker 3: version I watched. And another thing I wanted to call
Speaker 3: attention to in the opening credits I don't recall if
Speaker 3: I've ever really noticed this before, is the stylized bat
Speaker 3: in the background of the title card here. You know,
Speaker 3: it works fine if you're not paying very close attention,
Speaker 3: but when you really look at it, this illustration does
Speaker 3: seem kind of odd. Looks like something that would be
Speaker 3: on like the Adam West Batman TV show. There's a
Speaker 3: whimsical comic bookiness to it. It does not look super gothic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it looks a little art deco, I guess.
Speaker 1: But it interesting that you would bring up Batman because
Speaker 1: Batman wouldn't be invented till nineteen thirty nine and first
Speaker 1: committed to the screen in forty three, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's not impossible that this had an influence on the
Speaker 1: Cape Crusader.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I can see that, But like, do you
Speaker 3: see that the shape of the ears on the head
Speaker 3: looks exactly like the Batman logo or not the logo
Speaker 3: like the costume.
Speaker 1: M it looks like Batman. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, speaking of bats, you know, there's so many things
Speaker 3: that the like in the Dracula movie tradition that are
Speaker 3: different from how they are in the book. When I
Speaker 3: was watching this, I genuinely could not remember if Dracula
Speaker 3: transforms into a bat in the book, and I had
Speaker 3: to look it up and oh, yeah, he definitely does.
Speaker 3: That's there in the novel. The book is in fact
Speaker 3: full of talk about bats. There's this whole section where
Speaker 3: they're trying to figure out what's happening to Lucy, and
Speaker 3: they talk about these bats in South America that swoop
Speaker 3: down from the trees and drink the blood of sailors
Speaker 3: as they sleep at night, leaving them without a single
Speaker 3: drop left in the morning. That's not true, but anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the book definitely is all about bats. That's originally there.
Speaker 3: But from here after the credits, we come on to
Speaker 3: the opening shot, and wow, what a strong opening shot.
Speaker 3: We start on this deep landscape shot with a tremendous
Speaker 3: sense of vertical reach. In the foreground, there is a
Speaker 3: horse drawn carriage. It's clattering over a dirt road toward
Speaker 3: the camera, and in the background we see the road
Speaker 3: is surrounded by gargantuan mountains, appearing as these shards of bare,
Speaker 3: unforested rock reaching up toward the clouds. And this made
Speaker 3: me think about how while there are a lot of
Speaker 3: there are lots of reasons for preferring the modern widescreen
Speaker 3: aspect ratio and film. This shot shows one cinematic benefit
Speaker 3: of the roughly one point two or one point three
Speaker 3: by one format, which is the ability to create this
Speaker 3: sense of towering height and depth, like a tiny subject
Speaker 3: in a desolate valley in the middle, encircled by these
Speaker 3: skyscrapers of rock.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we get this feeling a few different points
Speaker 1: at a few different points in the picture, So this
Speaker 1: is a great point. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Apparently this shot was accomplished by a kind of composite
Speaker 3: effect where you can bine a real, live moving photography
Speaker 3: shot of a carriage and road in the foreground and
Speaker 3: then the mountains in the background or a painted backdrop.
Speaker 3: I think I believe it was painted on a piece
Speaker 3: of glass that may actually have been done in the
Speaker 3: camera with the painted glass positioned over the camera lens.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure about that in this shot, but Skyll
Speaker 3: talks about that for at least some of these extra
Speaker 3: ear shots in the commentary track. But I'd also like
Speaker 3: to point out something about the feeling of these painted mountains,
Speaker 3: a kind of art history resonance. Actually, to me, these
Speaker 3: mountains resemble things you see in paintings from the Romantic
Speaker 3: movement of the late eighteenth early nineteenth century. So one
Speaker 3: very well known example if you want to look it
Speaker 3: up and see this kind of artistic sensibility in painting
Speaker 3: is A Wanderer above Sea and Fog from eighteen eighteen
Speaker 3: by Casper David Friedrich Robert. Have you seen this painting before?
Speaker 1: Oh? Not only have I seen it, I like a
Speaker 1: lot of liberal arts majors had this on my dormitory wall. Okay,
Speaker 1: n as a post or form, because I guess a
Speaker 1: lot of liberal arts majors probably see themselves like this. Sure,
Speaker 1: A lone figure standing atop a mysterious, you know, craggy
Speaker 1: environment above the mists, surveying everything. That's kind of like
Speaker 1: a gentleman scholar vibe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, but so how would you describe
Speaker 3: the like the the landscape here, it's it's like very
Speaker 3: active and emotional and dramatic, right you mentioned the crags.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely very emotionally charged. There's a sense of
Speaker 1: wonder and possibility here, and it's maybe inverted to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, or at least there's a darker sense of
Speaker 1: wonder and possibility in Dracula. But yeah, similar vibes in
Speaker 1: a way, similar.
Speaker 3: Frequency exactly and realized through these like very jagged edged
Speaker 3: depictions of nature, you know, like the it's just like
Speaker 3: the rocks are infused with drama. A lot of Romantic
Speaker 3: landscape paintings, I think, have this feeling depicting natural objects
Speaker 3: like mountains in particular, mountains are very popular subject of
Speaker 3: you know, painters of this style from this era, but
Speaker 3: also of rocks, bodies of water, trees, et cetera. There
Speaker 3: was a convention at this time of kind of showing
Speaker 3: these things as overwhelming, almost magical in some way, epic, dramatic,
Speaker 3: bursting with irrepressible emotion. And I would say that modern
Speaker 3: genres of horror, especially Gothic horror, have strong roots in
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century European Romantic movements in the arts, in
Speaker 3: arts and literature. Dracula itself as a novel was not
Speaker 3: born of this period, as we've said, it came much later.
Speaker 3: It was in the eighteen nineties. But Frankenstein was from
Speaker 3: this period. Frankenstein is a Romantic novel in many ways,
Speaker 3: and if you go back and read Frankenstein you might
Speaker 3: be shocked how much mountains and epic landscapes play a
Speaker 3: role in the story. For example, when Victor first meets
Speaker 3: the creature again after their initial separation, it's while he
Speaker 3: is out hiking alone in the Alps. And so even
Speaker 3: though Dracula was not a novel from the Romantic period,
Speaker 3: I think Romantic artistic and literary conventions have influenced how
Speaker 3: it was later brought to life on film. You see
Speaker 3: this kind of in themes that want to come out
Speaker 3: in different versions of the telling of the vampire story,
Speaker 3: and in this kind of visual imagery of like the
Speaker 3: great Romantic emotional mountains. So these common Romantic literary tropes. Again,
Speaker 3: this is my take, and I'm sure i'm oversimplifying. You know,
Speaker 3: literature scholars might get mad at me, but this is
Speaker 3: what I think. I think you see a lot of
Speaker 3: like themes of the awe inspiring power of nature and instinct,
Speaker 3: a preference for emotion and passion over cold blooded reason,
Speaker 3: a kind of a sensibility of rebellion, a desire to
Speaker 3: rebel against authority and institutions, and themes of the ways
Speaker 3: in which personal experiences are kind of unique and precious
Speaker 3: and difficult to share or express, and beyond all that,
Speaker 3: just kind of a general attraction to mystery and amazement.
Speaker 3: I do not think that these themes are especially present
Speaker 3: in my reading of the novel Dracula, but I do
Speaker 3: think these themes really come out in movie adaptations of Dracula.
Speaker 1: Yes, and really even in the opening here in a sense,
Speaker 1: a stranger in a strange land. What's going to happen?
Speaker 3: So anyway, we're down with the people now in the carriage,
Speaker 3: and this is the part what I think this is
Speaker 3: Carla Limley, isn't it who's reading reading from like a
Speaker 3: travel book? Here there are like five or six people.
Speaker 3: One of them is Dwight Fry. They're in this carriage.
Speaker 3: Dwight Fry is dressed in a tidy suit and tie
Speaker 3: with a white fedora. And I was just thinking, dude, you're
Speaker 3: going to go in a full three piece suit to
Speaker 3: the Borgo Pass.
Speaker 1: It's just how you traveled back then.
Speaker 3: So the other woman in the carriage, she's reading from
Speaker 3: the travel book, and she says, among the rugged peaks
Speaker 3: that frowned down upon the Borgo Pass are found crumbling
Speaker 3: castles of a bygone age, and a little real world.
Speaker 3: Note this is a real mountain pass. The Borgo Pass exists.
Speaker 3: It's called some different today, but it is located in
Speaker 3: modern day Romania. At the time then was written, this
Speaker 3: was part of the region of Transylvania, which I believe
Speaker 3: at the time was part of Hungary. Bramstoker almost certainly
Speaker 3: never went there. He probably just found the name on
Speaker 3: a map and it sounded cool, And according to experts,
Speaker 3: like the way he describes it is not really how
Speaker 3: this place.
Speaker 1: Is right right. I've often heard it pointed out that
Speaker 1: there's really more Irish mythology than Eastern European mythology. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a bit of it. The vampire does have Eastern
Speaker 1: European origins, but there's a lot of Irish mythology bound
Speaker 1: up in what bram Stoker is creating here.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Dwight Fry looks bored and annoyed. Everybody
Speaker 3: in the carriage is getting tossed around by the bumpy road,
Speaker 3: and he calls out to the driver to slow down,
Speaker 3: but another man in the carriage, a local with a mustache,
Speaker 3: leans over to sharply rebuke him, and he says, we
Speaker 3: must reach the inn before sundown. So ain't no slowing
Speaker 3: down this carriage. That is the wrong choice. We've got
Speaker 3: to go as fast as we can to get to shelter.
Speaker 3: Now why would it be to get there before sundown? Well,
Speaker 3: he says, it is well, Purgas night, the night of evil.
Speaker 3: That's April thirtieth, by the way, everyone, for those who
Speaker 3: don't celebrate, And then he goes on to shout nos
Speaker 3: Feratu before the woman in the carriage next to him.
Speaker 3: I think this must be his wife. She tries to
Speaker 3: cover up his mouth, but he will not be silent.
Speaker 3: He says, on this night, madame, the doors they are barred,
Speaker 3: and to the Virgin we pray. So the carriage does
Speaker 3: make it to the end before sundown, and we see,
Speaker 3: you know, the locals going about their business praying in Hungarian.
Speaker 3: And here we get a scene versions of which are
Speaker 3: in many adaptations of Dracula where the locals try to
Speaker 3: warn the visiting real estate agent about the evils that
Speaker 3: lurk at Castle Dracula. You know, No, it's a bad place,
Speaker 3: don't go there, and they eventually will usually give him
Speaker 3: some form of talismanic protection, usually a crucifix. Here it
Speaker 3: is a crucifix.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: One thing that makes this adaptation unlike both the novel
Speaker 3: and most later movie adaptations is the identity of the
Speaker 3: agent making the visit. Usually, the agent that comes here
Speaker 3: to Transylvania is one of our main young protagonists. It's
Speaker 3: Jonathan Harker, or, in the German adaptations like nos Feraratu,
Speaker 3: Thomas Hutter. In this version, the character is Wrenfield. Now,
Speaker 3: for those not familiar with the story, Harker is the young, handsome,
Speaker 3: ambitious fiance of Mina, who Mina will become, by the
Speaker 3: end of the story the ultimate target of Dracula's predations,
Speaker 3: Whereas Wrenfield in the novel is a former colleague of
Speaker 3: Harker's who I believe had also previously traveled to Transylvania,
Speaker 3: but that's not part of the narrative. It's the background.
Speaker 3: He had gone there to conduct business with Count Dracula.
Speaker 3: He ends up coming back having been driven mad, and
Speaker 3: he is turned into Dracula's loyal servant and familiar spins
Speaker 3: the rest of the story housed in doctor Seward's sanitarium
Speaker 3: near Carfax, eating flies and pining to serve his master.
Speaker 3: I do about right with that, Rob, Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 3: So in the novel, Harker, the character who's our real
Speaker 3: like protagonist, has to pick up where Renfield left off.
Speaker 3: So he goes to Dracula's castle and we go with
Speaker 3: him because we read his letters. He's going there to
Speaker 3: bring signing papers for the purchase of an estate in England,
Speaker 3: and we learn about Dracula first through Harker's letters here.
Speaker 3: Harker will later escape the castle and be reunited with Mina,
Speaker 3: and he is part of the posse of heroes who
Speaker 3: chase down Dracula at the end of the novel to
Speaker 3: free Mina from his curse. But this movie has made
Speaker 3: some executive editing decisions and they have decided instead to
Speaker 3: just give all of the action in Transylvania to Renfield,
Speaker 3: which is in a way an efficient storytelling choice that
Speaker 3: I can see ways in which that's a good edit.
Speaker 3: But I would also argue that leaves Jonathan Harker without
Speaker 3: a very good reason to be in the story and
Speaker 3: without much interesting to do. It's just kind of like
Speaker 3: Dracula is preying on Mina. Oh and Mina's got a
Speaker 3: fiance somewhere. What's his deal?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean I applaud the adaptation for
Speaker 1: doubling down on weird Renfield, and it makes for the
Speaker 1: intro to be I think, in a way more horrifying
Speaker 1: because it is going to meet it ended madness for him.
Speaker 1: He's not truly going to escape the count. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Harker is reduced to almost nothing in the picture.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to be mean to the actor or anything,
Speaker 3: but it's just he he has strong, like why is
Speaker 3: he here energy?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: One note I wanted to make about Renfield and the
Speaker 3: actor Dwight Fry who plays him here. This is from
Speaker 3: David Skal's commentary Scout talks about how you know, really
Speaker 3: Dwight Fry had the makings of a dashing leading man
Speaker 3: of Hollywood. He had good looks, he had you know,
Speaker 3: good acting skills, like he could have been that type
Speaker 3: of character, that kind of leading player. But his role
Speaker 3: as Renfield and then his later role as the grave
Speaker 3: robbing assistant Fritz and James Wales. Frankenstein made it really
Speaker 3: hard for Fry to get these roles, to get the
Speaker 3: leading roles. He was kind of pigeonholed as the grinning
Speaker 3: lunatic who you catch rooting around in the hospital Morgue
Speaker 3: and they're just like it in a way. It was
Speaker 3: like a very successful acting turn that proved to be
Speaker 3: a curse for his career.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean you can make some comparisons to
Speaker 1: Lugosi there as well, but yeah, a shame. It's also
Speaker 1: shame that he died rather young heart attack or heart condition,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's you know, what could we have gotten
Speaker 1: out of him had we had ten or twenty more
Speaker 1: years of him as an active actor. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so back to the scene that the locals try
Speaker 3: to warn Renfield away, but he insists that he has
Speaker 3: to meet the Count because he's made it. He's got
Speaker 3: an appointment with Count Dracula's carriage and they've got to
Speaker 3: meet at the Borgo Pass at midnight. It sounds like fun.
Speaker 3: By the way. One of the people who tries to
Speaker 3: warn him off is this innkeeper here who is the
Speaker 3: actor is great. I love this scene where he's he's
Speaker 3: like telling him all of the vampire lore. He's telling him, like, listen,
Speaker 3: no vampires are at the castle. You can't go there.
Speaker 3: Vampires drink blood, they sleep in coffins, they change into
Speaker 3: bats and wolves, they can be repelled by the cross.
Speaker 3: This is all the stuff you need to know. But
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel like the kind of tight lore dump
Speaker 3: that it is. Instead, it's like this innkeeper is ranting
Speaker 3: at me and I want him to stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I had to look this guy at. Michael Visarov,
Speaker 1: Russian born actor most mostly active in did parts in
Speaker 1: the thirties and forties.
Speaker 3: Anyway, after this, Renfield does take off in the carriage
Speaker 3: again to meet Dracula's carriage at the Borgo Pass at midnight,
Speaker 3: and we get another great dramatic landscape shot. This was
Speaker 3: once again by combining real photography and painting. It's the
Speaker 3: perilous rock bridge crossing to the vampire's castle. Now, before
Speaker 3: Renfield arrives, we actually get what I think is one
Speaker 3: of the best shots in the film, which is a
Speaker 3: dolly shot, a moving camera shot through the filthy catacombs
Speaker 3: and the bowels of Dracula's castle, and we're approaching this
Speaker 3: brood of coffins that lie nestled in the dust, and
Speaker 3: there's this great effect where mist is pouring eerily across
Speaker 3: the surface of the earth, and we get closer and
Speaker 3: closer to the coffin, and finally the lid creaks open
Speaker 3: and out comes a pale hand.
Speaker 1: This, I believe is one of a few shots that
Speaker 1: is pointed out as being clearly inspired by twenty two's Nosferatu.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, okay, I don't think I would have made
Speaker 3: that connection, but that sounds right to me. Now. Interesting note,
Speaker 3: we don't see Draculu's face in this moment where the
Speaker 3: hand is coming out of the coffin. In fact, before
Speaker 3: we see his face, we see the face of one
Speaker 3: of his wives. So, despite some movie trivia, sources say
Speaker 3: the first on screen vampire in a talkie was not
Speaker 3: bela Lagosi, but one of his three demon brides. I'm
Speaker 3: almost certain this is the one played by Geraldine de Vorak.
Speaker 3: She beats him by a few seconds.
Speaker 1: However, she does not talkie herself.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 1: Very quiet.
Speaker 3: Also in the scene possums, you know, yes, but Dracula's castles.
Speaker 3: It's full of possums. They're crawling around in the bones,
Speaker 3: they're getting up all in all the cracks and crevices.
Speaker 3: They've got a real possum issue.
Speaker 1: Oh man. When I started watching Dracula the other day
Speaker 1: with my kid, I wasn't fully considering it for this
Speaker 1: week's Weird House Cinema until the possums and the armadillos
Speaker 1: showed up, rooting around caskets and generally just infesting Dracula's castle.
Speaker 1: So the possums show up first, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: fair enough, possums look like big gross rats. I'll allow it.
Speaker 1: But then there are armadillas as well, armadillos as well.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, possums and armadillo's are both endemic
Speaker 1: to the Americas. They absolutely don't live in Transylvania or
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. And yet at the same time, you know
Speaker 1: you have to acknowledge they do look creepy rooting around
Speaker 1: in a Gothic castle. So what's going on here? Well,
Speaker 1: the most obvious interpretations are, of course, this was shot
Speaker 1: in California and on a depression trunken budget, so you know,
Speaker 1: you use what you can get your hands on, and
Speaker 1: if you didn't know any better, these animals again look
Speaker 1: creepy in a Gothic castle setting. A deeper answer, however,
Speaker 1: seems to exist in attitudes concerning these two species, especially
Speaker 1: at the time I was reading Dale Hudson's Of Course
Speaker 1: there are werewolves and vampires from the American Quarterly twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: and this author argues that the presence of these creatures
Speaker 1: serve to animalize Dracula himself. Additionally, the contagion aspects of
Speaker 1: Stoker's novel are perhaps summoned here in the presence of
Speaker 1: two creatures often associated with diseases possums. I look this up.
Speaker 1: They can carry a number of diseases that are transferable
Speaker 1: to humans, and Armatilla's, of course, can carry Furthermore, there
Speaker 1: are slash were apparently tall tales of Armadillo's digging up
Speaker 1: graves and eating corpses.
Speaker 3: What I've never heard that.
Speaker 1: I mean, they do root around, and I think the
Speaker 1: idea is that this led to, you know, tall tails
Speaker 1: of them digging up and eating corpses, and you know,
Speaker 1: there may be some accounts of them, you know, eating
Speaker 1: non insect meat, scavenging it if the availability is there.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen that in other animals, but it
Speaker 1: seems to be yeah, just you know, a myth and
Speaker 1: a legend. But yeah, despite all the other aspects of
Speaker 1: this adaptation of Dracula that becomes set in Stone, the
Speaker 1: inclusion of possums and Armadilla's doesn't seem to be like
Speaker 1: something that really stuck. I don't think cope Wi used
Speaker 1: this at all.
Speaker 3: I do not recall it. But anyway, so after that,
Speaker 3: we finally get to the iconic shot where we first
Speaker 3: see Bella Legosi in full standing tall in a black
Speaker 3: cloak with the tall collar, and the dark catacombs under
Speaker 3: the stone arches and the cobwebs, with the light curiously
Speaker 3: falling on his face in a way that makes him
Speaker 3: look unnaturally pale, and the camera closes in and it
Speaker 3: brings us closer and closer to him, and it's almost
Speaker 3: like he's floating through the air toward us as the
Speaker 3: camera zooms in. Just great, great shot. It's one of
Speaker 3: those all time epic movie introductions. It's like, when you
Speaker 3: see a guy for the first time like this, you'll
Speaker 3: never forget him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like he is floating towards us. We are
Speaker 1: being drawn towards him. Yeah, we are already captivated.
Speaker 3: We also see Dracula's brides for the first time in
Speaker 3: this scene. They're like creeping along through the catacombs, also
Speaker 3: under these arches, and very very unsettling as well. So
Speaker 3: the next scene is the one where Dracula picks up
Speaker 3: Rinfield at the Borgo Pass at midnight. Dracula is supposed
Speaker 3: to be in disguise as the coachman here in the novel.
Speaker 3: I think he doesn't want Harker to realize that he's
Speaker 3: doing everything himself and that he doesn't actually have any
Speaker 3: living servants inside his castle, so he you know, he's
Speaker 3: into guys. But this is not a good disguise.
Speaker 1: It's bel Legosi, okay, basically just as a scarf and
Speaker 1: a hat.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but yeah, maybe if you've never seen Belli
Speaker 3: Lagosi before, just like, okay, it's another guy. Renfield meets
Speaker 3: the carriage in a haunted, misty landscape filled with crooked trees,
Speaker 3: and then he gets aboard. The driver does not speak.
Speaker 3: At one point along the way, Renfield looks out the
Speaker 3: window and sees the team of horses being led by
Speaker 3: a bat in flight. Good. Good, little moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to add a note here about the
Speaker 1: you know, their rubber bats on yeah, on the strings essentially.
Speaker 1: We've seen so many flapping rubber bats on strings and
Speaker 1: various films, but here they do look really good. I
Speaker 1: mean there's never any doubt that you're watching an effect
Speaker 1: and not a real animal, but it looks really good.
Speaker 1: I absolute props.
Speaker 3: It's a rubber bat. But I like this rubber bat. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the rubber bat is better than the rubber spider that
Speaker 3: climbs the wall in a few minutes.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's true. Yeah, they couldn't keep live spider. Try
Speaker 1: to use live spiders. There are some. There are some
Speaker 1: live crickets as well, but yeah, live spiders. That's got
Speaker 1: eaten up pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Okay, some notes about the scene where where Renfield arrives
Speaker 3: at the castle. It's great. You know, the door creaks
Speaker 3: open by itself. Again, most people have probably seen some
Speaker 3: kind of adaptation of Dracula, so you know this scene,
Speaker 3: Renfield cautiously steps into the main hall, which looks as
Speaker 3: if it had been deserted for centuries. Everything's covered in
Speaker 3: just ages worth of dust, giant spider webs. You got
Speaker 3: bats bobbing and cheapen outside the window. Uh are here,
Speaker 3: Here's where we meet the Armadillos for the first time.
Speaker 3: They're just crawling out of the furniture. Another beautiful set,
Speaker 3: once again a composite shot made by I think it's
Speaker 3: a real photograph, real photography of a stage, a sound
Speaker 3: stage made up set on the bottom, and then I
Speaker 3: think the painted editions are higher up in the frame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous. The depth is amazing and is
Speaker 1: nov in the Road to Dracula documentary. This look, this set,
Speaker 1: like this really sets the tone for the look of
Speaker 1: horror films, all the horror films that come afterwards, particularly
Speaker 1: gothic horror films to come. This cathedral of the macabre.
Speaker 1: It just yeah, you know what you're looking at here,
Speaker 1: and it just resonates through horror cinema and things adjacent
Speaker 1: to horror cinema, Like this is like your basic Scooby
Speaker 1: Doo haunted house as well. So it does get deluded
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, but here in its original form,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still astounding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I mean it is beautiful, and it's
Speaker 3: the mother of all movie haunted castles. So we get
Speaker 3: the introductory scene he Dracula comes down the stairs with
Speaker 3: the candelabra. He says, I am Dracula. He says to Renfield,
Speaker 3: I bid you welcome. Renfield says, is just kind of
Speaker 3: nervously stammering and you know, saying a bunch of stuff
Speaker 3: that's not necessary. And as they start to go up
Speaker 3: the stairs, we get the great moment where Count Dracula says,
Speaker 3: they hear wolves howling outside, and Dracula says, listen to them,
Speaker 3: chill the rain of the night. What music they make?
Speaker 3: I'm sorry if I didn't deliver that right, but it's
Speaker 3: it's I think Skull points out that actually, in a
Speaker 3: lot of later adaptations of the Dracula story, this line
Speaker 3: gets embellished. They start adding other words to it, where
Speaker 3: it's like what beautiful music they make or what sweet
Speaker 3: music they make? And the simplicity of what music they
Speaker 3: make is so much better. I like that this Dracula
Speaker 3: is understated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and again yeah, the cryptic nature of it
Speaker 1: and the fact that Lugosi makes every syllable count. And
Speaker 1: I think it was Joe Dante who made the point
Speaker 1: in the Road to Dracula that that Legosi also had
Speaker 1: a great ability to find every possible syllable in a
Speaker 1: word yes and bring it to full life.
Speaker 3: The scene also has the moment where Dracula is going
Speaker 3: up the stairs and he passes through the spider web
Speaker 3: without parting it, and then Renfield going through. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a spider web across the Dracula is already gone
Speaker 3: and he has to split the web and go through,
Speaker 3: which is eerie, but there are actually no special effects needed.
Speaker 3: It's just a no ominous cut. You see him walking
Speaker 3: up toward it and it cuts away and suddenly he's
Speaker 3: on the other side of it, but it's still intact.
Speaker 3: And then a rubber spider scuttles up the wall. So
Speaker 3: Renfield is brought up to a more hospitable room with
Speaker 3: a roaring fireplace and supper set out for him. This
Speaker 3: drag hospitality scene also appears in some form in most
Speaker 3: versions of the story. As usual, they discuss business here,
Speaker 3: you know, Dracula signs the lease on the property he's
Speaker 3: acquiring in England. He works out shipping arrangements. He explains
Speaker 3: that he's taking three boxes on the ship that he's
Speaker 3: chartered for England, which is leaving tomorrow evening. Wow, that's
Speaker 3: soon three boxes. I think he takes more boxes in
Speaker 3: the book, but three, I guess that. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: It seems like you could take four, right. I must
Speaker 1: be missing something here because he needs one for each
Speaker 1: bride and then himself. But maybe there's.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's a good point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Even then there were carry on lints and and so forth.
Speaker 1: So it was like, I have four buckses and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we have to charge you for the fourth, when it's
Speaker 1: like I can make do with three.
Speaker 3: So Renfield in this scene, of course, you know, he
Speaker 3: gets a paper cut all those documents. That's a little dangerous.
Speaker 3: You're gonna you're gonna cut your fingers, and he does,
Speaker 3: and DrAk can't help himself. He starts creeping up to him,
Speaker 3: but then the sign of the cross, the crucifix given
Speaker 3: to him by the woman at the end, makes Dracula
Speaker 3: recoil m And around here is where we start getting
Speaker 3: these great close ups on Dracula's face with the light
Speaker 3: just falling over his eyes where he seems to be
Speaker 3: hypnotizing the person in front of him. Uh. The scene
Speaker 3: also has the great wine exchange, you know, where he
Speaker 3: offers wine to Renfield. He says, this is very old wine.
Speaker 3: I hope you will like it. And Renfield's like, oh,
Speaker 3: thank you. Aren't you you having any I never drink why.
Speaker 1: We know what he drinks.
Speaker 3: So after this, Dracula leaves Renfield for the evening, but
Speaker 3: he's not leaving for long. Renfield, when finally alone, looks
Speaker 3: moderately disconcerted. But then uh h. Immediately some trouble starts
Speaker 3: creeping in. So we see Dracula's three demon brides approaching
Speaker 3: the door through a through a misty hallway, and then
Speaker 3: Renfield goes to the window of his room, outside of
Speaker 3: which there are these crooked tree branches and it's a
Speaker 3: I don't know, just a very creepy kind of landscape
Speaker 3: out there again, like mists covering the ground. And then
Speaker 3: a bat there's a bat. Oh, bat comes to the
Speaker 3: window and it sort of floats in front of him.
Speaker 3: Renfield collapses on the floor as if you know, hypnotized
Speaker 3: into unconsciousness somehow by the bat. And then the brides
Speaker 3: creep into the room. They're advancing on Renfield's body. They're
Speaker 3: obviously they're going to drink his blood, but no, no,
Speaker 3: Renfield is not for them. Dracula himself comes back in
Speaker 3: through the window into the room, and he drives away
Speaker 3: his wives as if to say he is mine, and
Speaker 3: then the Count descends on Wrinfield's unconscious body and leans
Speaker 3: over him to take him in his arms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great, Steveuince. And we never actually see him
Speaker 1: like bite into Renfield. Correct me if I'm wrong, But
Speaker 1: do we ever see fangs in nineteen thirty one Stracula
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 3: That's a very good point. I'm afraid to be wrong,
Speaker 3: but I think you never do. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 3: never see them. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: If you do see them there, it's not much as
Speaker 1: made out of it, And it almost seems like they
Speaker 1: couldn't show for things, you know, like that would be
Speaker 1: too much for thirty one, and therefore it's implied rather
Speaker 1: than shown. And I mean you don't miss them because
Speaker 1: your imagination takes you there already.
Speaker 3: That's right. So we get the standard interlude of a
Speaker 3: ship on route to England. A difference from most versions
Speaker 3: here is that because it's Wrinfield rather than Harker who
Speaker 3: went to the castle, Renfield is on the ship with Dracula.
Speaker 3: There's like there are two creeps on this journey, and
Speaker 3: he's a full on vampire thraw already. You know, he's
Speaker 3: crouching next to the to the vampire's coffin, saying, you
Speaker 3: will keep your promise when we get to London, won't you? Master?
Speaker 3: You will see that I get lives.
Speaker 1: I think for some reason, it's not the Demeter as well,
Speaker 1: like it venta Yeah, because they I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't give themselves enough time to make that particular ship,
Speaker 1: so they had to deal with the deal with another one. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, uh so Dracula is like he never answers
Speaker 3: the question about whether he's gonna get lives, does he. He
Speaker 3: just gives him this withering look like no promises, kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've already talked about this. We're not going through
Speaker 1: all this again. Yeah, you get what you get. You
Speaker 1: don't pitch a fit.
Speaker 3: We've got lives at home. So of course Dracula, you know,
Speaker 3: he eats the crew along the way. When they arrived.
Speaker 3: The only sailors left on the ship are dead. There's
Speaker 3: one tied to the wheel, which we only see in silhouette.
Speaker 3: But here we start to get Dwight Fry's deranged high
Speaker 3: energy performance, like they throw open the doors down into
Speaker 3: the hold and Dwight Fry is just standing there at
Speaker 3: the bottom of the stairs, laughing maniacally with this unbelievably
Speaker 3: devilish grin. It's so good.
Speaker 1: Oh yes.
Speaker 3: We also get a newspaper clipping here to sort of
Speaker 3: fill us in on what's going on. It tells us
Speaker 3: that the soul survivor is a raving maniac, says quote.
Speaker 3: His craving to devour ants, flies, and other small living
Speaker 3: things to obtain their blood puzzles scientists. At present, he
Speaker 3: is under observation in doctor Seward's sanitarium near London. Now
Speaker 3: Here we also get a scene that say, in a
Speaker 3: lot of versions of this story, the sort of first
Speaker 3: taste of the fish out of water horror scenario, and
Speaker 3: it's Dracula walking the streets of modern London. The old
Speaker 3: curse has been taken out of the old world and
Speaker 3: inserted into the modern world. So he menacingly approaches a
Speaker 3: girl selling fla on the street corner and then slowly
Speaker 3: envelops her with his arms to drink her blood. And
Speaker 3: I wanted to take a moment to talk here about
Speaker 3: the staging of how Dracula descends upon a victim in
Speaker 3: this movie, it almost looks sort of awkward. Usually, it's
Speaker 3: clearly a deliberate choice to make him move like this.
Speaker 3: It is a stiff, extremely slow movement into the victim's
Speaker 3: space and around them. He did the same thing when
Speaker 3: he descended on Dwight Fry's unconscious body. He'll do the
Speaker 3: same thing later when we see him leaning down toward
Speaker 3: Mina's bed. It's just this slow, stiff, rigid kind of approach.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly why they made that choice or
Speaker 3: what it means, but it's interesting and different, and I
Speaker 3: don't know, it looks very weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes me think of some of the later
Speaker 1: scenes where we see him using his full power of
Speaker 1: enthrallment over victims. You know, he doesn't have to lunge,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to move quickly because he's already snared
Speaker 1: you with his eyes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good comparison. I
Speaker 3: don't know, I'll have to think more about that anyway.
Speaker 3: Dracula makes his way to an auditorium in the city
Speaker 3: center where a symphony performance is taking place. He eventually
Speaker 3: makes his way to the box bearing our main good characters.
Speaker 3: These are Mina Seward and Lucy Weston, two young women
Speaker 3: close friends since childhood who will become the targets of
Speaker 3: Count Dracula's blood hunt in London. Jonathan Harker again with
Speaker 3: big whys he here now energy Mina's fiance. He's Mina's fiance.
Speaker 3: There he is. There's doctor Seward, who runs the sanitarium
Speaker 3: where Rinfield has been committed, which also just happens to
Speaker 3: be right next door to Carfax Abbey, the estate that
Speaker 3: Dracula has leased. In this version of the story, doctor
Speaker 3: Seward is Mina's father in the novel, that's not the case.
Speaker 3: I think he is. He's younger, and I believe he
Speaker 3: is one of Lucy's mini suitors. That's the whole thing.
Speaker 3: In the novel, She's got like five different guys who
Speaker 3: are trying to marry her.
Speaker 1: Unnecessary love triangle removed. I'm in favor love Pentagon, Yeah, Pentagon.
Speaker 1: So Dracula uses a ploy to talk himself into the
Speaker 1: sort of opera box here to meet these characters. I
Speaker 1: think one thing I was a little unclear on is
Speaker 1: like why he's trying to meet them, And I think
Speaker 1: the issue is that he knows Renfield, his vampire Thrall,
Speaker 1: has been committed to the sanitarium the Doctor Seward runs,
Speaker 1: and so he's trying to to like influence them related
Speaker 1: to that, or maybe because they're neighbors.
Speaker 3: Now, maybe that's why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their neighbors's neighborly.
Speaker 3: This is neighborly, that's exactly yes, So he introduces himself
Speaker 3: to the three younger Londoners. Doctor Seward takes a phone call,
Speaker 3: and you know, they bring up that he's moving into
Speaker 3: Carfax Abbey and Harker's like, oh, that's very old. Will
Speaker 3: it need repairs? And Dracula says, I shall do very
Speaker 3: little repairing.
Speaker 1: This is such a great everyone plays. The next time
Speaker 1: you move to a new town or new home, keep
Speaker 1: this one with you. When someone, when a neighbor like
Speaker 1: subtly brings up some sort of repair that might need
Speaker 1: to happen, be like, I shall do very little repair.
Speaker 3: Very good. Yeah. So, but he explains it's because he
Speaker 3: likes the way that the abbey reminds him of the
Speaker 3: old broken battlements of his castle in Transylvania. And then
Speaker 3: Lucy says, oh, you know, that reminds me of an
Speaker 3: old toast. I don't remember everything she says, but it
Speaker 3: ends with a line about dying, and then Dracula says,
Speaker 3: to die, to be really dead. That must be glorious.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so good. And there's more too. That's great
Speaker 1: because then Mina says, why Count Dracula, and that alone
Speaker 1: is excellent. I love that, Oh Dracula. But then then
Speaker 1: the Count says, they are far worse things awaiting men
Speaker 1: than death, and oh my god, this is another moment
Speaker 1: where I just love the ambiguity and the cryptic nature
Speaker 1: of it. Is he talking about is he talking about undeath?
Speaker 1: Or is it something else, like something so terrible that
Speaker 1: we morals haven't even conceived of it yet. It's only
Speaker 1: known to the vampires.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. So in this scene, Dracula somewhat charms them.
Speaker 3: I clearly he becomes fixated on Lucy, and in a
Speaker 3: later scene at home between Mina and Lucy, we see
Speaker 3: that Lucy's kind of fixated on him, like they're making
Speaker 3: jokes about his accent, but Lucy talks about how she's
Speaker 3: fascinated by the Count.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just both kind of hanging out crushing on Dracula.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But then later that night, in Lucy's bedroom while
Speaker 3: she sleeps, there's a bat floating out the window. You
Speaker 3: don't want that. And then he appears in Legosi form
Speaker 3: in her room, standing over her bed, and once again
Speaker 3: he slowly descends and we cut away right as he's
Speaker 3: over her. I guess here's a good part in the
Speaker 3: in the plot to kind of take a step back
Speaker 3: and acknowledge the plot falls A follows a similar structure
Speaker 3: to most Stracks adaptations, and we can kind of note
Speaker 3: some interesting things and differences. So at this point in
Speaker 3: the story, usually Lucy takes ill as a result of
Speaker 3: having her blood drained by the vampire each night. In
Speaker 3: the book, this illness and the mystery as to its
Speaker 3: cause are protracted, but in this movie we just We're
Speaker 3: going to cut straight to her death and the autopsy,
Speaker 3: and doctor Seward and colleagues note that there are two
Speaker 3: marks on her neck, the same as with the other
Speaker 3: victims in London that have been found drained of blood.
Speaker 3: So from here doctor Seward recruits the aid of his mentor,
Speaker 3: doctor Van Helsing, who deduces that they may be dealing
Speaker 3: not with an ordinary illness, but with a vampire. No
Speaker 3: s Feratu, and then Lucy dies. In this version, she
Speaker 3: dies quite quickly and the vampire turns his attention to Mina,
Speaker 3: whom he visits in the Night for blood, eventually starting
Speaker 3: to turn her into a vampire herself. And the heroes
Speaker 3: in the end have to solve the mystery and realize
Speaker 3: that the only way they can save Mina is to
Speaker 3: destroy the vampire, which they do. So things to discuss
Speaker 3: within the structure. As the movie goes on, we got
Speaker 3: scenes of Rinfield at the sanitarium raving about how he
Speaker 3: wants to eat spiders. He's trying to upgrade from flies,
Speaker 3: like he's been eating flies, but he decides they're not
Speaker 3: good enough now he wants spiders. Of course, we meet
Speaker 3: doctor van Helsing when we meet him here. I think
Speaker 3: he's like doing some chemistry experiments right after the death
Speaker 3: of Lucy, and he's like, yep, tests came back. Knows Faratu,
Speaker 3: that's what we're dealing with. So they I don't know.
Speaker 3: They cut over what, from my memory is a huge
Speaker 3: section in the middle of the book to get from
Speaker 3: like Lucy starts falling sick to they figure out that
Speaker 3: a vampire is involved. That's a couple minutes in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a quick test. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the van Helsing here, I guess maybe it's the chemistry
Speaker 1: set in the glasses kind of helps give him a
Speaker 1: slight mad scientist air for me, and I guess, like
Speaker 1: the van Helsing that I'm mostly familiar with is Peter Cushings,
Speaker 1: and Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, of course, is very prim
Speaker 1: and proper.
Speaker 3: Very Yeah. Yeah, this guy's weirder than Peter Cushing definitely.
Speaker 3: So the mystery in this is not whether it's a vampire.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess some of the other like Seward
Speaker 3: and Harker take some convincing, but Van Helsing gets there immediately.
Speaker 3: So the mystery is not like what is hurting Lucy,
Speaker 3: but it is who is the vampire? Renfield is the
Speaker 3: initial subject, and this is plausible because Renfield keeps escaping
Speaker 3: the sanitarium. The scene where Van Helsing first meets Renfield
Speaker 3: is great, like he asks Renfield asked to be sent
Speaker 3: away from the sanitarium? Why? He says, because my cries
Speaker 3: at night might disturb Mina. They might give her bad dreams,
Speaker 3: which is this great combination of sweet and threatening. You
Speaker 3: can't tell which one it is, but Van Helsing drives
Speaker 3: Field mad with a sprig of wolf Spain. He's like, you,
Speaker 3: I have some of this, and how about little wolf
Speaker 3: Spain Renfield, and Renfield says, you know too much to
Speaker 3: live van Helsing, and this, of course confirms Van Helsing's
Speaker 3: suspicions some vamping is going on. So Dracula attacks Mina
Speaker 3: in the night, and after this happens, there's a haunting
Speaker 3: scene where she explains her experience the next morning. I
Speaker 3: thought this is a good monologue. She says, I heard
Speaker 3: dogs howling, and when the dream came, it seemed the
Speaker 3: whole room was filled with mist. It was so thick.
Speaker 3: I could just see the lamp by the bed, a
Speaker 3: tiny spark in the fog. And then I saw two
Speaker 3: red eyes glaring at me, and a white, livid face
Speaker 3: came down out of the mist. It came closer and closer.
Speaker 3: I felt its breath on my face, and then its lips.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: And we compare this with what we saw from the
Speaker 3: scene before, where Dracula is descending over her bed. And
Speaker 3: it's funny because Dracula is often very composed and calm
Speaker 3: and movie but he as he's leaning right over her.
Speaker 3: He makes this grimace that I don't think we've seen
Speaker 3: anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is like, this is the scene where
Speaker 1: you would see the things. I feel like if we
Speaker 1: were going to see things. But yeah, it's horrifying and
Speaker 1: he's coming right at us.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And this scene leads to doctor van Helsing
Speaker 3: doing a throat check on Mina. Like he takes her
Speaker 3: scarf off, and what do you know, She's got some
Speaker 3: punctures on the neck. She was hiding them behind a scarf.
Speaker 3: Something kind of interesting there. The movie doesn't really draw
Speaker 3: a lot of attention to it, but why was Mina
Speaker 3: hiding the wounds? Anyway, This scene is suddenly interrupted by
Speaker 3: a visit from Count Dracula. Mina kind of perks up
Speaker 3: on Dracula's arrival. I remember she didn't seem to like
Speaker 3: him that much when they first met, but now she's
Speaker 3: kind of eager to talk to him and smiles in
Speaker 3: his presence. Apparently Dracula has been telling Mina grim tales
Speaker 3: about his home country and she likes that. Another interesting
Speaker 3: choice in this scene. I don't recall if this is
Speaker 3: in the novel or not. I don't think so. But
Speaker 3: Dracula knows of Van Helsing. It's like, oh, yes, we're
Speaker 3: familiar with your work, even in Transylvania.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Van Helsing probably publishes in the various
Speaker 1: occult journals, and you know, Dracula and his kind read up.
Speaker 1: They want to stay abreast of new findings in vampire sciences.
Speaker 3: Of course, yeah, you got to know your enemy, right,
Speaker 3: So read what van Helsing writes. Another great thing in
Speaker 3: the scene the mirror in the cigarette case. I love
Speaker 3: this part. So Van Helsing first notices that Dracula has
Speaker 3: no reflection in the mirrored lid of a cigarette case,
Speaker 3: and then he sets a trap for Dracula. Where before
Speaker 3: they're parting ways, he suddenly opens the case in front
Speaker 3: of him. And I love the way Legosi reacts to
Speaker 3: this trick. It's a you know, he reacts with surprise
Speaker 3: and alarm, and the slaps the case out of Van
Speaker 3: Helsing's hand onder the floor, steps back and glares at him.
Speaker 3: But then slowly the glare turns into a composed smile.
Speaker 3: Oh and also he turns into a wolf as he's
Speaker 3: running away across the lawn. So you know, as I said,
Speaker 3: Harker and Sewer takes some convincing by Van Helsing that
Speaker 3: they're definitely dealing with a vampire, but they're slowly getting there.
Speaker 3: This leads to another lore dump. We got a lore
Speaker 3: dump for Renfield earlier, but here's one from Van Helsing.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, yeah, vampires have to drink blood
Speaker 3: to survive. They sleep in their native soil every day,
Speaker 3: which means he must have brought some soil with him
Speaker 3: from Transylvania. They're talking about this, but they get interrupted
Speaker 3: by maniacal laughter when Dwight Fry comes in again. Hilarious
Speaker 3: keeps escaping. He's here once more.
Speaker 1: They I guess they just have a trust policy, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: the sanatorium, like stop leaving. You're not going to leave
Speaker 1: this time, right, Okay.
Speaker 3: I promise they're on the honor system. Yeah. But Renfield
Speaker 3: in this scene, this is the part I was talking about,
Speaker 3: where he does a face turn, like he explains to
Speaker 3: the heroes that Dracula is targeting Mina and he can't
Speaker 3: let Dracula take Mina. I guess maybe Renfield loves her
Speaker 3: or just feels protective of her in some way.
Speaker 1: I guess so.
Speaker 3: But in the scene, Dracula reappears in bat form and
Speaker 3: menaces Renfield, which makes him clam up and declare his
Speaker 3: loyalty wants more to the Master. And then suddenly everybody
Speaker 3: goes running because a maid calls out that Mina has
Speaker 3: been found dead. Oh no, which leads to this horrifying scene,
Speaker 3: another great Dwight Fry moment, where like the maid is
Speaker 3: left alone in the room with Dwight Fry and he's
Speaker 3: grinning maniacally and doing this horrible laughter, and she faints
Speaker 3: and then he's like crawling on the floor toward her body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like he's an anaconda that is going to go
Speaker 1: to swallow her hole. It's super creepy.
Speaker 3: Love it. Yeah, But fortunately we find out that Mina
Speaker 3: is not dead, as she was near death, but they
Speaker 3: got there just in time. So some other stuff goes on.
Speaker 3: There's a side plot with Lucy being a vampire who's
Speaker 3: running around stealing children and stuff. But one thing that
Speaker 3: they do in this movie is there's no garlic for Mina.
Speaker 3: When they set a trap for Dracula and Mina's chambers
Speaker 3: with stuff to repel him. It's wolf Spain. It's just
Speaker 3: all wolf Spain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I can understand people being a little
Speaker 1: bit too familiar with garlic. And why would this scare
Speaker 1: away of vampires. Maybe we go with wolf Spain because
Speaker 1: it has a little more mistique to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that too. Now here's
Speaker 3: where we get to. There's another Renfield escape scene, of course,
Speaker 3: and then he is describing the appeal that Dracula made
Speaker 3: to him. He says, he came and stood below my
Speaker 3: window in the moonlight, and he promised me things, not
Speaker 3: in words, but by doing them. He's talking to Van Helsing.
Speaker 3: He says, by making them happen. A red mist spread
Speaker 3: over the lawn, coming on like a flame of fire.
Speaker 3: And then he parted it, and I could see that
Speaker 3: there were thousands of rats with their eyes blazing red
Speaker 3: like his, only smaller. Then he held up his hand
Speaker 3: and they all stopped, and I thought he seemed to
Speaker 3: be saying, rats, rats, rats, thousands, millions of them, all
Speaker 3: red blood, all these I will give you if you
Speaker 3: will obey me.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: I love that. That's the thing that Renfield. You know,
Speaker 3: some people when they make a deal with the devil,
Speaker 3: they want riches, somewhat, you know, power. He wants rats.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In that line, he promised me things, not in words,
Speaker 1: but by doing them, like oh, it's just perfect.
Speaker 3: But promised in return for what I think it's for.
Speaker 3: I believe Renfield sabotaged the protections that against Dracula that
Speaker 3: were in Mina's room, like he got rid of the
Speaker 3: wolf Spain or something. I don't know. Somehow Dracula got
Speaker 3: into Mina's room and I think Renfield was involved. And whoops,
Speaker 3: he has turned to Mina into a vampire now, and
Speaker 3: so this is going to accelerate us toward the conclusion.
Speaker 3: The only way to get Mina back is to destroy
Speaker 3: the vampire. Now, there's a scene where we have were
Speaker 3: like Harker is left alone with Mina here and she's
Speaker 3: creepy now right, Like she doesn't like the smell of
Speaker 3: wolf Spain. She's really interested in Harker's neck. She keeps
Speaker 3: staring at it. And Chandler is good in this, Like
Speaker 3: she puts on the creeps and she keeps him close.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: She's talking about like I love the fog. I love
Speaker 3: nights with the fog. And it's like you never you
Speaker 3: said in the past that you hated the night time
Speaker 3: in the fog, And she's like well, I like it now,
Speaker 3: But anyway, we're going on toward the conclusion. We know
Speaker 3: that we gotta have a final showdown where the heroes
Speaker 3: find Dracula's coffins and Carfax Abbey and drive the steak
Speaker 3: into him. Before that, one one great moment as we
Speaker 3: get the sort of the death of w Renfield, like
Speaker 3: Dracula is taking Mina back to his lair and he
Speaker 3: confronts w Renfield on this long, creepy staircase and Renfield says, no,
Speaker 3: please don't kill me, master, I can't die with all
Speaker 3: those lives on my conscience. And Dracula just I think,
Speaker 3: breaks his neck and throws him down the staircase and
Speaker 3: Renfield tumbles like a doll.
Speaker 1: Great saint, Great Saint again. Like this said, the set
Speaker 1: is amazing that there's real tension in minutes there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful. And then of course we get
Speaker 3: the final staking, the final staking of Dracula in his coffin,
Speaker 3: and Mina is rescued from from her demonic fate and
Speaker 3: reunited with John. So there is a happy ending. But
Speaker 3: like many adaptations of Dracula, I thought we would mention
Speaker 3: this the final staking of Dracula in his coffin has
Speaker 3: always felt a bit anti climactic. You know, in this case,
Speaker 3: it's not even done by the young hero who's to
Speaker 3: be reunited with his love. Is done by Van helsing Uh.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, it's like it happens off screen.
Speaker 3: You just hear Dracula yell and then you know it's
Speaker 3: kind of a hammering and a yelling and that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like what happens to the villain. Well,
Speaker 1: we hunted him down and killed him in his sleep,
Speaker 1: like it's you know, it's it doesn't feel as heroic.
Speaker 1: I still love it, but but you know, it makes
Speaker 1: you in a way. Maybe it's the thing that make
Speaker 1: people love Dracula so much though, because like a lot
Speaker 1: of these universal horror films, we identify with the monster
Speaker 1: so much, and subsequent generations identify with the monster, you know,
Speaker 1: the creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein's Monster, and Dracula, like,
Speaker 1: we feel a certain amount of sympathy for him at
Speaker 1: the end because he is this outsider character who cannot
Speaker 1: quite make a life for himself in this new place,
Speaker 1: and then he's hunted down and killed by the local inhabitants, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: they were eradicating because he's a bloodsucking demon, but still
Speaker 1: feel you feel for him in a way because he
Speaker 1: is killed in his sleep.
Speaker 3: I absolutely see what you're saying. And of course Bella
Speaker 3: Lagosi makes the character more interesting and fun and likable
Speaker 3: than he would be otherwise. I still think the universal
Speaker 3: Dracula in this movie is a less sympathetathetic character than
Speaker 3: the other monster. As you mentioned, he's less sympathetic than
Speaker 3: Frankenstein's creature certainly. I would also say less sympathetic than
Speaker 3: the creature from Black Lagoon who's just hanging out at home.
Speaker 3: People go to where he is and bother him. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 3: and certainly less sympathetic than some Dracula adaptations that would
Speaker 3: come later. That it make him a more explicitly like, tragic,
Speaker 3: wronged and romantic figure. I mean, in this movie, there's
Speaker 3: no mistaken he's the bad guy. Like he yes, he's
Speaker 3: going out of his way to hurt other people.
Speaker 1: And I think that's ultimately the way I like my
Speaker 1: I mean, I like some romantic Draculas, and Gary Oldman's
Speaker 1: Dracula is terrific. Yeah, and that in Coppola's version, and
Speaker 1: you know that plays up the tragic aspects of the character.
Speaker 1: But you know, I love it when when you have
Speaker 1: like a Christopher Lee Dracula or the bell Legosti Dracula
Speaker 1: that is that is more just absolutely evil, or even
Speaker 1: the Dracula in Blacula that we previously talked about in
Speaker 1: the show, where that is a really evil Dracula.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, you're talking about Dracula himself, not not the
Speaker 3: not Mama Walde.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, the racist Dracula from the film.
Speaker 3: Evil racist Dracula, who's like I I love drinking blood
Speaker 3: and I approve.
Speaker 1: Of the slave trade. Yes, that Dracula.
Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to this thing about the anti
Speaker 3: climactic ending of staking the Dracula in his coffin, I
Speaker 3: feel like this is actually a change from the nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty two nos Feratu that was like a good a
Speaker 3: good change to you know, to invert the ending where
Speaker 3: instead of attacking the vampire in his sleep, you force
Speaker 3: him to stay out too late. That is more like
Speaker 3: the vampire is undone or is destroyed by being trapped
Speaker 3: by his own greed and violence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: Anyway, that's the universal Dracula.
Speaker 1: Love it absolutely. I mean, it's a classic. It's an
Speaker 1: icon for a reason. And if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it in a long time, it's
Speaker 1: well worth looking up. I mean, maybe save it for Halloween,
Speaker 1: but you know why deprive yourself. Go ahead and watch
Speaker 1: it now. All right, We're going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: close the book on nineteen thirty one's Dracula. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder that Stuffed to Bow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 1: science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: Dracula has come up in a number of them. He
Speaker 1: even came up in our episodes on Dust from last year.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, we don't talk about Dracula
Speaker 1: in every Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode, but he
Speaker 1: does come up generally, though. We set aside most serious
Speaker 1: concerns on Fridays when we have a Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: episode and we just talk about a nice weird movie.
Speaker 1: If you want to keep up with the various weird movies.
Speaker 1: So we've discussed on Weird House Cinema. We have an
Speaker 1: account on a letterboxed that's Weird House. You can find
Speaker 1: us there, and we have a list of all the
Speaker 1: films that we've covered so far, and sometimes there's a
Speaker 1: peek ahead at what comes next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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