Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Speaker 3: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird
Speaker 3: House we're tackling a classic. We're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen thirty one Universal Pictures adaptation of Dracula,
Speaker 3: directed by Todd Browning starring Bella Lagosi. Now, Rob, this
Speaker 3: was your pick for this week. I had always assumed
Speaker 3: if we talked about Dracula, it would happen in October.
Speaker 3: But I'm not complaining. Happy to talk about Dracula in
Speaker 3: January or whatever month it still is. Yeah, we're still January.
Speaker 3: So what's going on? How'd you get to Dracula?
Speaker 2: Well, this is how it went down. So, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a film I had actually never seen before. You know,
Speaker 2: sometimes a film I think is so iconic, so genre defining,
Speaker 2: so all present in popular culture that it kind of
Speaker 2: fades in to a personal obscurity. You know, you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it, but you kind of feel like you've seen it,
Speaker 2: or you know you're just overly familiar with its themes.
Speaker 2: It's cast its place in film history, and therefore when
Speaker 2: it comes time to watch something, you're like, well, I
Speaker 2: just want to watch something fresh, or you want to
Speaker 2: watch something you really do know, and films like this
Speaker 2: can 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 2: True, Yeah, what deviations are made is what is intensified
Speaker 2: and what is condensed and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I had this realization over the weekend. So
Speaker 2: my kid has really gotten into Dungeons and Dragons and
Speaker 2: has set their sight so not only DMING A Campaign
Speaker 2: for Friends, but DMING Curse of Strawed. For those of
Speaker 2: you who are unfamiliar, the Dark Lord Strata of aon
Speaker 2: Zardovich is D and d's take on Dracula, essentially a
Speaker 2: Dracula esque vampire lord character created in the late nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies by Tracy and Laura Hickman and based in part
Speaker 2: 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 2: Absolutely, especially like a true vampire as opposed to just
Speaker 2: a vampire spawn.
Speaker 3: But okay, yeah, any.
Speaker 2: Rate, I told you know, I'm supportive. I'm a supportive dad,
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, that sounds good. But one doesn't
Speaker 2: simply run Curse of Straw without seeing at least one
Speaker 2: Dracula movie. And I think the most they'd seen was
Speaker 2: Bart Simpson's 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 2: Absolutely, yes, yeah, And so you know, I was looking
Speaker 2: at my options, and I was considering the Copola one
Speaker 2: as well, because I'm like, all right, my wife's going
Speaker 2: to be out of town, it's just the two of us.
Speaker 2: We've got to watch a Dracula film. And then I
Speaker 2: started really thinking about It's like, you know, I haven't
Speaker 2: actually seen the nineteen thirty one classic in full. You know,
Speaker 2: I've seen so many Dracula films over the years, and
Speaker 2: this one has just fallen through the cracks. So given
Speaker 2: that that they enjoyed Son of Frankenstein back in October,
Speaker 2: I was like, well, it makes sense to watch another
Speaker 2: black and white horror classic. It's maybe not too scary.
Speaker 2: I mean, they can handle stranger things and aliens at
Speaker 2: this point, so I'm not too worried about that. But
Speaker 2: you know, some of these Dracula movies hit pretty hard.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we watched Dracula. For my own part, I
Speaker 2: feel like, absolutely holds up stunning, atmospherically, creepy, absolutely rooted
Speaker 2: in Lugosi's mesmerizing performance, and it's pretty weird in its
Speaker 2: own right too. I'm also happy to report that my
Speaker 2: kid also really enjoyed the film, resulting in many a
Speaker 2: oh my, whenever Dracula or Renfield made crazy or intense eyes,
Speaker 2: they told me after we were viewing that they half
Speaker 2: expected Dracula 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 edgy or hor horror movies that would come later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be clear, they're fine, They're almost thirteen. They
Speaker 2: were able to handle it, But I was. It did
Speaker 2: bring me much joy that they enjoyed it as much
Speaker 2: as they did, and they weren't bored with it or anything.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I don't think there's really a boring moment
Speaker 2: in this one. If it flies right along, sometimes literally
Speaker 2: on the wings of a bat. So I don't really
Speaker 2: have an elevator picture this one, Joe, other than it's Dracula.
Speaker 2: This is the big one. This is a Titan of
Speaker 2: not only cinema enlarge, but also horror cinema specifically.
Speaker 3: Dracula comes to the talkies fully licensed.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Let's see if we're able to.
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and listen to just a little bit
Speaker 2: of the trailer audio.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 5: I am Dracula. I mention of the name brings to
Speaker 5: my I'm things so evil, so fantastic, so degrading. You
Speaker 5: wonder if it isn't all a dream, a nightmare.
Speaker 2: Breath.
Speaker 5: Rap now.
Speaker 3: Millions of them.
Speaker 5: The original terrifying story of a maniac and a man
Speaker 5: who lived after death, lived on human blood, took the
Speaker 5: form of a vampire bat and lured innocent girls to
Speaker 5: a fate truly worse than death.
Speaker 4: Became to me over the same of his arm, and
Speaker 4: he made me dream.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, you might be wondering, well, where can
Speaker 2: I want watch nineteen thirty one's Dracula. Well, I watched
Speaker 2: it on the Universal Dracula Complete Legacy Collection Blu ray Set.
Speaker 2: I rented this from Videodrome. I think you have the
Speaker 2: same addition, right, Joe.
Speaker 3: No, I've got a slightly different thing. I've got the
Speaker 3: Universal Classic Monsters Essential Collection Blu ray set, which I
Speaker 3: highly recommend. It's got a lot of great extra I mean,
Speaker 3: all the films look beautiful. It's got a ton of
Speaker 3: great extras, documentaries and commentary tracks and all that comes
Speaker 3: with a nice little booklet. So yeah, I've enjoyed this
Speaker 3: set for years.
Speaker 2: All Right, I think we have some of the same
Speaker 2: extras and special features. They'll share it, so definitely, you know,
Speaker 2: Universal Horror release.
Speaker 3: Here might just be a partial repackaging kind of thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the extras on this day and there's some
Speaker 2: great extras. They're a little bit older, but charming in
Speaker 2: ways that sometimes things from nineteen ninety nine are not.
Speaker 2: But there's a really good document short documentary called The
Speaker 2: Road to Dracula, and it's hosted by Carla Limley, who
Speaker 2: lived you know, nine through twenty fourteen. She was the
Speaker 2: niece of Universal founder Carl Limley and cousin of producer
Speaker 2: Carl Limley Junior.
Speaker 3: And she's in the movie.
Speaker 2: She is she has the first line of dialogue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's just riding in the carriage in the borgo pass. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's really fun and you know, you got some
Speaker 2: of the usual suspects, various film historians. Some will refer
Speaker 2: to Joe Dante of course shows up to talk a
Speaker 2: little about horror films, and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: So these Blu rays are great. But this is of
Speaker 2: course a very famous film. It's generally available for digital
Speaker 2: purchase in rental, and it's one one of those classics
Speaker 2: that you will also periodically get to see on the
Speaker 2: 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. Skull.
Speaker 3: Some of the things, like probably a lot of the
Speaker 3: behind the scenes things I know know about the movie,
Speaker 3: I learned through Skall's commentary, so credit to him. That's
Speaker 3: a source of a lot of my just general information.
Speaker 2: Yes, Skall, who sadly passed away last year, is also
Speaker 2: an important part of the documentary shorts on the disc
Speaker 2: and among his many books you'll find vas for Vampire
Speaker 2: and a to Z Guide to Everything Undead that was
Speaker 2: published in ninety six. I've already added a used copy
Speaker 2: of that to my cart I think I need that
Speaker 2: in my collection.
Speaker 3: Uh huh, they're all undead. Okay, trying to think what
Speaker 3: the X is?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, might be a tough pull. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: Well let's talk about the connections here, the people behind
Speaker 2: this film. I do have to note that, as usual,
Speaker 2: we can't cover everyone and a film this big. I
Speaker 2: feel like there's been so much written about it and
Speaker 2: explored about the picture. Every little part has probably been
Speaker 2: explored to some degree or another, and you know, we
Speaker 2: just don't have time for all of that. So my
Speaker 2: apologies to anyone whose efforts and talent we left out here.
Speaker 3: Yes, 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, absolutely all right.
Speaker 2: Starting at the top, the director is, of course Todd Browning,
Speaker 2: who ofd eighteen eighty through nineteen sixty two American director
Speaker 2: who was quite successful during the Silent Era and by
Speaker 2: some estimates less sure of himself entering into the talky era,
Speaker 2: and that's something you'll pick up on with this film
Speaker 2: and its frequent use of silence and at times a
Speaker 2: kind of like stagy ritualistic framing that feels very you know,
Speaker 2: in keeping with this film's roots on the stage as
Speaker 2: a play, but also 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 at
Speaker 3: a symphony performance where there's music in the background because
Speaker 3: it's diegetic music, it's supposed to be part of the narrative.
Speaker 3: But most of the scenes it's just kind of silence
Speaker 3: and the characters talking, and some of the most dramatic
Speaker 3: scenes in the film there's nothing at all to listen to.
Speaker 3: It's just utterly silent. Well, like you know, the vampire creeps.
Speaker 2: Up, Yeah, I mean you almost it's almost unheard. Off
Speaker 2: when you compare it to modern films, like so many
Speaker 2: films are just non stop blaring music and sound effects
Speaker 2: and explosions. And it depends on the genre obviously, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it can be almost shocking how silent this picture is.
Speaker 2: But you're also you're not missing the cacophony either. It's
Speaker 2: also worth noting that films of this era were also
Speaker 2: released in silent film versions, in part for older theaters,
Speaker 2: but also for international markets since dubbing subtitles were not
Speaker 2: really all that established yet. So you'll find versions of
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one's Dracula that have the full like silent
Speaker 2: film dialogue set up, where you know, the inter titles. Yeah, yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: I feel like.
Speaker 3: That would There would be so many There's a lot
Speaker 3: of dialogue in this movie, because generally talkies had more
Speaker 3: dialogue in them than silent films. Did I feel like
Speaker 3: that would extend the run time a lot if you
Speaker 3: had to have an intertitle for every line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they must have. I haven't seen it in full myself.
Speaker 2: I've just seen some clips. I'm not sure if a
Speaker 2: full version exists, but yeah, they would have to cut
Speaker 2: some stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, 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 2: They should. They should do that. When the new Nosferatu
Speaker 2: film that came out, they need to do a silent
Speaker 2: film cut of it. You know, people directors keep doing
Speaker 2: like black and white cuts of films. It's like, that's great,
Speaker 2: but let's see the silent Cut's see.
Speaker 3: What that's like.
Speaker 2: Anyway, back to Todd Browning. Browning wrote and directed his
Speaker 2: first full length silent picture in nineteen seventeen, and found
Speaker 2: success with nineteen twenties The Virgin of Stambul. His first
Speaker 2: talkie was nineteen twenty nine's The Thirteenth Chair. That was
Speaker 2: a murder mystery that had Legosi in it as So
Speaker 2: We'll come back to and Dracula of course, followed shortly
Speaker 2: after that. His other films include the notable loss film
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty sevens London After Midnight, nineteen thirty Two's Freaks
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five's Mark of the Vampire in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: six is The Devil Doll. His last film was nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine's Miracles for Sale, and he retired in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty two, with Hollywood trends and tastes drifting further away
Speaker 2: from his sensibilities.
Speaker 3: At the time. When Browning was younger, he had some
Speaker 3: experience working with circus performers, I believe, and this sort
Speaker 3: of came out in an ongoing obsession that appears in
Speaker 3: many of his works. Certainly there in nineteen thirty two's Freaks,
Speaker 3: which is a Oh man. I haven't seen that movie
Speaker 3: in many years, but I'd be very interested to see
Speaker 3: what modern critics think about that as a retrospective. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a very surprising film for the nineteen thirties in
Speaker 3: many ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this Wears is famous for the one of Us song, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a chant. I guess it's a.
Speaker 3: Song Google gobble one of Us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right. Dracula. If you're not aware, the
Speaker 2: original novel is by Bram Stoker, who lived eighteen forty
Speaker 2: seven through nineteen twelve, Irish author and theater critic who's
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety seven novel was Seeming, You know that a
Speaker 2: lot has been written and discussed about where this novel arises.
Speaker 2: You know, in the in Bram Stoker's life and mindset,
Speaker 2: but seems to have spun out of various accounts and
Speaker 2: experiences of disease in the world around him, and perhaps
Speaker 2: you know he was sick as a child, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. Also folklore of Ireland as well as mainland Europe.
Speaker 2: And of course it's also worth noting that in the
Speaker 2: book there's a lot of use of phonographs. It's often
Speaker 2: crazy to realize how thoroughly modern the novel was at
Speaker 2: its release. If he had written it today, Mino would
Speaker 2: have been on TikTok I feel.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't doctor Seward in the book doing like
Speaker 3: phonograph diaries or something? He was? Yes.
Speaker 2: Another detail that we often overlook I was reading about
Speaker 2: this is that the novel was only a moderate success
Speaker 2: at the time, and Merritt's only brief mention in Stoker's
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve obituary It wasn't until the copyright battle over
Speaker 2: a little nineteen twenty two film titled Nosferatu stirred everything out.
Speaker 2: That's when the Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe, gave approval to
Speaker 2: Hamilton Dean for this stage adaptation of Dracula and of
Speaker 2: course from that this film eventually and all this blossoms,
Speaker 2: Dracula cinematic legacy in the novel truly becomes 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 2: Oh wow. So yeah, it can be little surprising to
Speaker 2: realize that the popularity of the novel really rises alongside
Speaker 2: it's sent the book cinematic history. And I think part
Speaker 2: of the sort of confusion that can occur in my
Speaker 2: opinion anyway, is the fact that we often love Dracula
Speaker 2: and Frankenstein together. But Mary Shelley's book was published in
Speaker 2: 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 universal Dracula, the novel was only like thirty three
Speaker 3: or thirty four years old. Wow, Dracula feels like an
Speaker 3: ancient story to us. But it is the equivalent of
Speaker 3: making a movie today based on a novel that was
Speaker 3: 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 Fear by
Speaker 3: Tom Clancy, Which that really puts it in a different
Speaker 3: perspective for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that man, that's mind blowing for sure. All right,
Speaker 2: now getting into the various adaptations here, So yes, we
Speaker 2: have the authorized initial stage adaptation of Dracula by Hamilton
Speaker 2: Dean who lived eighteen seventy nine through nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 2: He was a family friend. He was Bram Stoker's widow's
Speaker 2: choice to make the official stage adaptation. Dean himself initially
Speaker 2: played Van Helsing and the nineteen twenty four play here
Speaker 2: became popular, but some revisions proved necessary before it could
Speaker 2: really make that move to Broadway in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 2: That's also when Bella Lagosi comes on board to play
Speaker 2: 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 Oh, there are play versions of the play.
Speaker 3: You got the Hamilton Dean play. You got at least
Speaker 3: a couple of versions. You said that went through revisions
Speaker 3: going on to Broadway. And then also you've got No Speratu,
Speaker 3: the FW Murnow 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 2: Yeah, and you know, Nosfaratu was not even the first adaptation.
Speaker 2: There was a nineteen twenty one film called Dracula's Death.
Speaker 2: It was a Hungarian silent film that apparently had very
Speaker 2: little to do with the actual plot of Dracula, but
Speaker 2: 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, right.
Speaker 2: No, no, not no, probably not so the Broadway revision though.
Speaker 2: That's where John L. Balderston comes in. Lived eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine through nineteen fifty four playwriting screenwriter, and he'd later
Speaker 2: work on the screenplays for Frankenstein and also in thirty one,
Speaker 2: thirty two Is the Mummy, thirty five is Bride of Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: Mad Love, Dracula's Daughter, Gaslight, and many others.
Speaker 3: Wrote a lot of my favorites of the era.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we've alluded to this already and we'll
Speaker 2: keep mentioning this, the play is already a notable condensing
Speaker 2: of Dracula, which if you've ever read it, you already
Speaker 2: know that. You know. It's only like four hundred and
Speaker 2: something pages long. It's not a sprawling book in terms
Speaker 2: of length, but it can kind of feel sprawling at times,
Speaker 2: just the way that it's written composed of these overlapping correspondences,
Speaker 2: diary entries, and phonograph recordings. The beginning of the novel
Speaker 2: is arguably a lot more exciting than some of the
Speaker 2: latter stretches and so forth. And we should also know
Speaker 2: the other like major influential change that is made in
Speaker 2: the stage adaptation of Dracula here is our change is
Speaker 2: to what Dracula is. The way Dracula is presented as
Speaker 2: a 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 Lagosi. 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 2: Now, he's a creature of dust. He's he's more in
Speaker 2: line with this. He's an grotesque, undead warrior king. And
Speaker 2: here this is the kind of Dracula that can stand
Speaker 2: shoulder to shoulder with London's elite later on and is
Speaker 2: greeted as as an equal and is charming and erotic
Speaker 2: in ways that the original Dracula in the script in
Speaker 2: the in the novel is not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: Garrett Fort is the screenplay credit who lived nineteen hundred
Speaker 2: and nineteen forty five. American screenwriter, playwright, and author. His
Speaker 2: credits include Franken and Dracula's Daughter The Devil Doll. Both
Speaker 2: of those Dracula's Daughter and Devil Doll were thirty six
Speaker 2: and nineteen forties, The Mark of Zaro, just to name
Speaker 2: a few.
Speaker 3: Okay, well we got to talk about Beyla now.
Speaker 2: Yes, Beila Legosi plays Count Dracula. Of course, lived eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty two through nineteen fifty six. So we've discussed some
Speaker 2: films with iconic, even career defining performances here on Weird
Speaker 2: House before. But the case of bel Lugosi and Dracula,
Speaker 2: I feel like this is on an entirely different level,
Speaker 2: like even compared to things like Carlos Frankenstein. It's because
Speaker 2: it's not only career defining, its genre defining. He not
Speaker 2: only becomes Dracula in this picture, but defines what Dracula
Speaker 2: is for the next one hundred years and beyond. Anyone
Speaker 2: else playing Dracula in the shadow of this film has
Speaker 2: no choice but to either embrace Legosi's performance or to
Speaker 2: play against it, which is what you often see, but
Speaker 2: you absolutely cannot ignore it. Like this really sets the
Speaker 2: tone and sets the course for not only Dracula films,
Speaker 2: not 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 adaptation, like in nos Faratu.
Speaker 3: You know Max Shrek no attacking Max Shrek's performance as
Speaker 3: count Orlock there, but that's a totally different take on
Speaker 3: the character. Does not have the kind of charm and
Speaker 3: sense of humor that Bella Legosi brings to this role.
Speaker 3: That actually makes it much more sinister. In those rare
Speaker 3: moments where in this movie you get flashes of anger
Speaker 3: and malice from Dracula, like in the moment where he
Speaker 3: slaps down the after they pulled the trick on him
Speaker 3: by opening the cigarette box and shining the mirror in
Speaker 3: his face, smacks it away, and you see him, you know,
Speaker 3: scowling at Van Helsing and the other men, and that
Speaker 3: moment is quite shocking. And it's because of the you know,
Speaker 3: the calmness and the coolness that Legosi brings to this character.
Speaker 3: He's kind of like it's he's in on a joke
Speaker 3: that only he gets, and the joke is that you
Speaker 3: will serve him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sexiness of Dracula. It brings me back to
Speaker 2: what I said earlier about the about being you can
Speaker 2: be overly familiar with this picture and you can also
Speaker 2: just be more accustomed to stills from it, and maybe
Speaker 2: even stills of an older Legosi playing Count Dracula dressing
Speaker 2: up as Count Dracula. But I feel like you really
Speaker 2: have to see the full performance. You have to see
Speaker 2: him in motion, you have to hear him make every
Speaker 2: little enunciation to the Dracula dialogue, and it all adds
Speaker 2: up to what, especially for the time period, is like
Speaker 2: a very erotically charged performance, Like there is a hypnotic
Speaker 2: charisma to him, and there is I think a strong
Speaker 2: like pan sexual eroticism to him as he you know,
Speaker 2: because he doesn't see gender or anything. He sees blood.
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter if you're a if you're a male, female
Speaker 2: or what have you. Dracula is going to come for you.
Speaker 3: There is Dracula's embrace. Yeah, I would say that that
Speaker 3: is implicit in the film. It's not explicit like it
Speaker 3: is in a lot of the later Dracula adaptations which
Speaker 3: make him overtly sexual and stuff. But it's a strong
Speaker 3: subtext here. And to emphasize again what we said earlier
Speaker 3: that like, whatever sexual themes about Dracula are there in
Speaker 3: the novel or whatever, I do not think there's really
Speaker 3: much about him being potentially like alluring in any way.
Speaker 3: I mean, dude, whatever's there is just purely predatory.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, again nineteen twenty two, nos Faratu not really sexy.
Speaker 2: And as we were discussing off Mike earlier, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: nos Faratu maybe perhaps sexy. I haven't seen it yet,
Speaker 2: But if that Nosfaratu is sexy, it's because that Nosfaratu
Speaker 2: stands in the long shadow of Bella Lagosi's.
Speaker 3: Dracula, because that one is remixing different themes that have
Speaker 3: come through in all the different interpretations of Dracula over
Speaker 3: the years. Yes, I would argue that the new Robert
Speaker 3: Eggers knows Feratu, which I have seen and I greatly enjoyed.
Speaker 3: In fact, I was talking about this with Rachel and
Speaker 3: we were trying to say, like, is Dracula sexy in
Speaker 3: that I think the goal, actually, the specific thing they
Speaker 3: were trying to accomplish, was to go for maximally disgusting
Speaker 3: and revolting and sexy at the same time. It is
Speaker 3: kind of an oxymoron. They were trying to accomplish something
Speaker 3: that should be impossible to do. Is like polar opposite
Speaker 3: kind of qualities to the character. But I think they
Speaker 3: did a pretty good job.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing it at some
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: All right, well, I'm not knocking it, you know.
Speaker 2: Well back to Legosi again, an immortal performance, no two
Speaker 2: ways about it. And now we've talked about Lagosi twice
Speaker 2: on the show before, in our episodes on the Devil
Speaker 2: Bat and Son of Frankenstein. He's wonderful and Son of Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: and even in Devil of bat As with many of
Speaker 2: his other like later lesser roles, he still finds a
Speaker 2: way to shine through it all. But here he is
Speaker 2: at the height of his powers, and it is a
Speaker 2: thing to behold, richly charismatic, frightening, erotic, and above all hypnotic.
Speaker 2: I was asking my kid about how this one stacked
Speaker 2: up to Son of Frankenstein, and they told me that
Speaker 2: Drakiva was definitely the scarier of the two, and the
Speaker 2: scarious moments were Dracula's gaze. Oh, looks right at the camera.
Speaker 3: What they do? Actually, I meant to bring this up
Speaker 3: in the plot section. If you know anything about this
Speaker 3: shot they do. It's a recurring visual theme where we
Speaker 3: 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 most of the shot is dark and there's sort
Speaker 3: of a beam of light falling over his eyes. It's
Speaker 3: just the eyes and it's just there, scowling with the
Speaker 3: eyes wide. I don't know if you knew why they
Speaker 3: selected that, like the beam on the eyes only, but
Speaker 3: I always thought that was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really adds to this like otherworldly hypnotizing power
Speaker 2: of the character. And yeah, on top of that, Legosi's
Speaker 2: performance is just one thing that's pointed out by by
Speaker 2: some of the Dracula experts is that there are no
Speaker 2: small moments at all in it. Every annunciation, but every
Speaker 2: even like subtle movement feels very calculated and essential. Some
Speaker 2: have chalked this up to the possibility that Legosi memorized
Speaker 2: his parts phonetically, at least at the stage of his career,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure where the truth falls and all
Speaker 2: of that at any rate, the finished product, the actual performance,
Speaker 2: like the way that he stresses words in each line,
Speaker 2: like it seems to bring across like cryptic meaning to
Speaker 2: things like even some of the lines you think, you know,
Speaker 2: like like the children of the Night, what music they make?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: It's what music they make, you know. Like the choices
Speaker 2: there are so absolutely cryptic, and it feels like perfectly
Speaker 2: the perfectly calculated way that this cold, immortal being would be,
Speaker 2: you know, cutting through to our fear and desire with
Speaker 2: every word and every movement.
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. I've really loved that the annunciation
Speaker 3: of the lines does add this mystery to the intended
Speaker 3: meaning of them, which lends itself well to something that
Speaker 3: is here in Legosi's performance. And actually I noticed, in
Speaker 3: all three of the movies we've covered of his, two
Speaker 3: 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: that like double meaning, kind of sinister irony lines. There's
Speaker 3: a 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 2: Absolutely so. As we discussed in the previous Legosi episodes,
Speaker 2: he started at a Hungarian theater in silent films before
Speaker 2: making his way to Germany and finally America via New Orleans.
Speaker 2: He's made his way to New York. He became very
Speaker 2: active in the theater, seen there, did some silent films,
Speaker 2: and eventually lands that lead role in the Broadway. Played
Speaker 2: Dracula in twenty seven, ends up moving to la in
Speaker 2: twenty eight part of the tour, and this kicks off
Speaker 2: his Hollywood career. The next year, he appeared in Todd
Speaker 2: Browning's The Thirteenth Chair. And the interesting thing is Bella
Speaker 2: was clearly the obvious choice for the film adaptation of
Speaker 2: the play. He'd been performing it to rave reviews, and
Speaker 2: yet he was not the first pick for the film.
Speaker 2: The producers considered the likes of Lawn Cheney, who ended
Speaker 2: up dying before the film could be produced. Conrad Vt,
Speaker 2: The Man Who Laughs, was also considered, but he had
Speaker 2: moved back to Europe, and I think the idea is
Speaker 2: like he wasn't He didn't really, it wasn't as comfortable
Speaker 2: with English language, and so eventually they're like, okay, well
Speaker 2: Legosi's there, will hire Legosi. And they got him somewhat
Speaker 2: on the cheap. It's a role that made him an
Speaker 2: undying legend, obviously, but as has been covered in many
Speaker 2: a biography, it also type cast him. It was the
Speaker 2: high point of a life and career that didn't always
Speaker 2: maintain an even trajectory.
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 2: Yeah, and there are a number of other ones that
Speaker 2: are often cited. Is like strong Legosi performances. So we
Speaker 2: may have to come back to two more Legosi in
Speaker 2: the future. All right, Getting into the rest of the
Speaker 2: cast here, I'm gonna spend less time with the remainders here.
Speaker 2: But how Allan Chandler plays Mina. She lived nineteen oh
Speaker 2: six through nineteen sixty five, American actress of stage and screen,
Speaker 2: best remembered for Dracula. David Manners plays Jonathan Harker. He
Speaker 2: lived nineteen one hundred through nineteen ninety eight, Canadian born
Speaker 2: leading man. Here completely overshadowed by stronger character performances and also,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss in a very reduced Jonathan Harker.
Speaker 3: He just as we was shadowed by the script.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's just he's overshadowed by yeah, other
Speaker 2: performances and also the writings. He's not sent to the
Speaker 2: castle in the opening. He does not have the Keanu
Speaker 2: Reeves 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 2: He's best remembered for his roles in Dracula nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: two is the Mummy and nineteen thirty four as the Black.
Speaker 3: Cat now Rob Again. I was surprised to find out
Speaker 3: that you'd never seen Dracula in its entirety before, but
Speaker 3: it caused me to remember back back to the first
Speaker 3: time 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 absolutely.
Speaker 2: This is a just Bonker's performance by the great Dwight
Speaker 2: Frye lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen forty three, American
Speaker 2: character actor of steven screen with broad range, but best
Speaker 2: remembered for his outlandish horror roles and certainly typecast to those.
Speaker 2: After a while, he went on to play Fritz in
Speaker 2: thirty ones Frankenstein, Carl in thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: and smaller, often uncredited roles in subsequent Frankenstein films. He
Speaker 2: was also in nineteen thirty one's The 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, what, how how does this guy keep getting
Speaker 3: out of his cell?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's kind of like the Cramer of the picture,
Speaker 2: just gonna randomly busts in whenever they need need a
Speaker 2: little uh need 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, but it's but also just
Speaker 3: he has these deranged monologues about needing lives and blood
Speaker 3: and wanting to eat spiders, and then also has kind
Speaker 3: of a you know, he's mostly a heel after being
Speaker 3: turned by the Count, but he has a face turn
Speaker 3: at one point that doesn't quite stick. It's yeah, it's
Speaker 3: it's just great. I love d white Fry here it
Speaker 3: thumbs up, thumbs up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if not for Legosi, he would be the most
Speaker 2: memorable performer in the piece. Yeah, totally all right. It's
Speaker 2: a Dracula movies who also have to have a Van Helsing.
Speaker 2: You have to have a Dracula slayer, and that's Edward
Speaker 2: Van Sloan, who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: four American character actor, here reprising the role that he
Speaker 2: played in the stage adaptation. This was only his second film,
Speaker 2: followed by the role of doctor Waldman in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: one s Frankenstein, doctor Mueller in thirty two's The Mummy,
Speaker 2: and he played Professor Van Helsing in nineteen thirty six
Speaker 2: is Dracula's daughter.
Speaker 3: So he was just always the professor who shows up
Speaker 3: too to know about the monster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, probably a little bit of typecasting going
Speaker 2: on here as well, but it's another strong performance. I
Speaker 2: really like him in this part of it is the
Speaker 2: 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 burn later in the scene. Those would
Speaker 3: be the dullest parts. But he does pretty well there.
Speaker 2: He feels a little unhinged in a great way, you know,
Speaker 2: like one of the first people to believe that we're
Speaker 2: actually dealing with vampires. You know, it's probably somebody who
Speaker 2: lives their life a little bit on the.
Speaker 3: Edge, and later adaptations would generally take this principle a
Speaker 3: lot further, I'd say, compared to later Van Helsing portrayals,
Speaker 3: Edward Van Sloan is a pretty straight shooter. I mean,
Speaker 3: thinking about Anthony Hopkins, and Coppola's Dracula, where Van Helsing
Speaker 3: is borderline insane thinking about Willem Dafoe in the New
Speaker 3: nos Ferratu. I mean they later really embraced the idea
Speaker 3: that the professor who knows how to fight evil is
Speaker 3: himself an extremely eccentric figure.
Speaker 2: All right. The other principal investigator here is, of course,
Speaker 2: doctor Seward, played by Herbert Bunston, who had eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: four through nineteen thirty five British actor best remembered for
Speaker 2: this film. He also had a supporting role in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty Is the Lady of Scandal in nineteen thirty three
Speaker 2: Is the Monkey's Paw, again somewhat reduced here, he's essentially
Speaker 2: in a lot of these older pictures, you really need
Speaker 2: like a supporting cast of two to three old white
Speaker 2: guy experts to help you fight your alien invasion or
Speaker 2: monster attacks. And this is what this guy is.
Speaker 3: His role in this movie is I say, could it
Speaker 3: be true? All right?
Speaker 2: You can't have a Mina unless you have a Lucy.
Speaker 2: And that's where Francis Dad comes in. She lived nineteen
Speaker 2: ten through nineteen sixty eight, American actress, only active in
Speaker 2: the late twenties and early thirties. This was her most
Speaker 2: memorable role, but she has a supporting role in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one Anime Wong film Daughter of 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 character is trying to figure
Speaker 3: out 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 2: We of course have the brides. We'll talk more about
Speaker 2: the brides later. But Geraldine Devoric, Dorothy Tree, and Cornelia
Speaker 2: Thaw those are your brides. Let's see getting behind the
Speaker 2: scenes here a bit. Carl Fround, of course, did the cinematography,
Speaker 2: rather famous for his work on this picture and subsequent films.
Speaker 2: Lived eighteen ninety through nineteen sixty nine. Legendary Austrian Hungarian
Speaker 2: born cinematographer and director, two time Oscar winner, four time nominee.
Speaker 2: Much of the visual splendor of this film is often
Speaker 2: attributed to Friend and many have also said that he
Speaker 2: probably directed parts of it as well. He was reportedly
Speaker 2: like a very strong presence on the set sometimes when
Speaker 2: Browning wasn't. He went on to direct nineteen thirty twos
Speaker 2: The Mommy, as well as nineteen thirty five Is Mad Love,
Speaker 2: which we talked about in one of, if not our
Speaker 2: first episodes, and he did several other pictures 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, and the movie does look great.
Speaker 3: There are typically like the scenes in it that look
Speaker 3: the best tend to be the ones that film historians
Speaker 3: say this is like a signature Carl Freun type shot.
Speaker 3: And I think this has led some people to speculate
Speaker 3: that for the less interesting cinematography in the movie that
Speaker 3: he was kind of he was kind of on leash,
Speaker 3: like he was not necessarily being allowed to do all
Speaker 3: he could do. I don't know if that's true or not,
Speaker 3: but that's what some people have said.
Speaker 2: It's often pointed out that the not also nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: one Mexican Dracula film that they shot at night on
Speaker 2: the same sets is more technically proficient and maybe more
Speaker 2: daring and force. Part of that is that apparently they
Speaker 2: could look back at what the day crew was doing
Speaker 2: and figure out how to one up it.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, So the English language production would shoot, and
Speaker 3: then they would shoot afterwards, and so they could look
Speaker 3: at all the mistakes made in the earlier shoots and
Speaker 3: like figure out ways to correct them before they before
Speaker 3: they set up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, spice things up sometimes and so forth.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: Set decoration. Russell A Gossman who lived eighteen ninety two
Speaker 2: through nineteen sixty three, Oscar winner for his work on
Speaker 2: forty fourth Phantom of the Opera and sixty one Spartacus.
Speaker 2: He also worked on other major and minor universal horror films.
Speaker 3: Jack P.
Speaker 2: Pierce did the makeup eighteen eighty nine through nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight Monster Makeup Master of the Day, who worked on
Speaker 2: like Frankenstein, The Man Who Laughs, The Invisible Man, The
Speaker 2: wolf Man, and so many others. I guess on the
Speaker 2: surface it might seem like he had less to do here.
Speaker 2: There's not There's there's no monster makeup on the level
Speaker 2: of Frankenstein in this picture, but clearly makeup is a
Speaker 2: part of bringing Count Dracula and the brides to their
Speaker 2: to undead life on the screen. And finally, Heinz Roemheld
Speaker 2: has a conductor musical arrangement credit with nineteen one through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five, but again this is a needle drop score,
Speaker 2: owing in part to budgetary issues. Again, sometimes there's no
Speaker 2: music at all, but music used in the picture includes
Speaker 2: Schaikowski Swan Lake Opus twenty, Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, and
Speaker 2: this selection from Wagner's The Mice to 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 2: Yeah, that was ninety eight legendary Philip Glass composed. It
Speaker 2: was performed by the Kronos Quartet. I've never never seen it,
Speaker 2: but I did listen to part of that while I
Speaker 2: was researching and writing up notes here, and it sounds
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 3: You know, it works fine if you're not paying very
Speaker 3: close attention, but when you really look at it, this
Speaker 3: illustration does seem kind of odd. It looks like something
Speaker 3: that would be on like the Adam West Batman TV show.
Speaker 3: There's a whimsical, comic bookiness to it. It does not
Speaker 3: look super gothic. Yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Looked a little art deco, I guess. But interesting that
Speaker 2: you would bring up Batman because Batman wouldn't be invented
Speaker 2: till nineteen thirty nine and first committed to the screen
Speaker 2: in forty three, So I don't know. It's not impossible
Speaker 2: that this had an influence on the 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 2: It looks like Batman. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, speaking of bats, you know, there are so many
Speaker 3: things that the like in the Dracula movie tradition that
Speaker 3: are different from how they are in the book. When
Speaker 3: I was watching this, I genuinely could not remember if
Speaker 3: Dracula transforms into a bat in the book, and I
Speaker 3: had 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 the
Speaker 3: skyscrape of rock.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we get this feeling a few different points
Speaker 2: at a few different points in the picture, So this
Speaker 2: is a great point.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Apparently this shot was accomplished by a kind of
Speaker 3: composite effect where you can bine a real, live moving
Speaker 3: photography shot of a carriage and road in the foreground
Speaker 3: and 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 camera,
Speaker 3: with the painted glass positioned over the camera lens. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure about that in this shot, but Skyll talks
Speaker 3: about that for at least some of these exterior shots
Speaker 3: in the commentary track. But I'd also like to point
Speaker 3: out something about the feeling of these painted mountains, a
Speaker 3: kind of art history resonance. Actually, to me, these mountains
Speaker 3: resemble things you see in paintings from the Romantic movement
Speaker 3: of the late eighteenth early nineteenth century. So one very
Speaker 3: well known example, if you want to look it up
Speaker 3: and see this kind of artistic sense ability 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? Oh?
Speaker 2: Not only have I seen it, I like a lot
Speaker 2: of liberal arts majors had this on my dormitory wall. Okay,
Speaker 2: as a post or form, because I guess a lot
Speaker 2: of liberal arts majors probably see themselves like this. Sure,
Speaker 2: A lone figure standing atop a mysterious, you know, craggy
Speaker 2: environment above the mists, surveying everything. That's kind of like
Speaker 2: a gentleman scholar vibe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, but so, how would you describe
Speaker 3: the like the landscape here, It's it's like very active
Speaker 3: and emotional and dramatic, right you mentioned the crags.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, very emotionally charged. There's a sense of
Speaker 2: wonder and possibility here, it's maybe inverted to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: or at least there's a darker sense of wonder and
Speaker 2: possibility in Dracula. But yeah, similar vibes in a way, similar.
Speaker 3: Frequency exactly and realized through these like very jagged edged
Speaker 3: depictions of nature, you know, like just like the rocks
Speaker 3: are infused with drama. A lot of Romantic landscape paintings,
Speaker 3: I think, have this feeling depicting natural objects like mountains
Speaker 3: in particular, mountains are very popular subject of you know,
Speaker 3: painters of this style from this era, but also of rocks,
Speaker 3: bodies of water, trees, et cetera. There was a convention
Speaker 3: at this time of kind of showing these things as overwhelming,
Speaker 3: almost magical in some way, epic, dramatic, bursting with irrepressible emotion.
Speaker 3: And I would say that modern genres of horror, especially
Speaker 3: Gothic horror, have strong roots in the nineteenth century European
Speaker 3: Romantic movements in the arts, in arts and literature. Dracula
Speaker 3: itself as a novel was not born of this period,
Speaker 3: as we've said, it came much later. It was in
Speaker 3: the eighteen nineties, but Frankenstein was from this period. Frankenstein
Speaker 3: is a Romantic novel in many ways, and if you
Speaker 3: go back and read Frankenstein you might be shocked how
Speaker 3: much mountains and epic landscapes play a role in the story.
Speaker 3: For example, when Victor first meets the creature again after
Speaker 3: their initial separation, it's while he is out hiking alone
Speaker 3: in the Alps. And so even though Dracula was not
Speaker 3: a novel from the Romantic period, I think Romantic artistic
Speaker 3: and literary conventions have influenced how it was later brought
Speaker 3: to life on film. And so you see this kind
Speaker 3: of in themes that want to come out in different
Speaker 3: versions of the telling of the vampire story, and in
Speaker 3: this kind of visual imagery of like the great Romantic
Speaker 3: emotional mountains. So these common Romantic literary tropes. Again, this
Speaker 3: 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. Yeah,
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 2: Yes, and really even in the opening here in a
Speaker 2: sense 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 Lemley, 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 in a tidy suit and tie with
Speaker 3: 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 2: 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 the novel was written,
Speaker 3: this was part of the region of Transylvania, which I
Speaker 3: believe at the time was part of Hungary. Bramstoker almost
Speaker 3: certainly never went there. He probably just found the name
Speaker 3: on 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 is.
Speaker 2: Right right. I've often heard it pointed out that there's
Speaker 2: really more Irish mythology than Eastern European mythology. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a bit of it the vampire of Eastern European origins,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of Irish mythology bound up in
Speaker 2: what brown 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. Now,
Speaker 3: why would it be important 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 no
Speaker 3: s ferratu 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 to the end before sundown, and we see, you know,
Speaker 3: the locals going about their business praying in Hungarian. And
Speaker 3: here we get a scene versions of which are in
Speaker 3: many adaptations of Dracula, where the locals try to warn
Speaker 3: the visiting real estate agent about the evils that lurk
Speaker 3: 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. Now. One thing that makes this adaptation
Speaker 3: unlike both the novel and most later movie adaptations is
Speaker 3: the identity of the agent making the visit. Usually, the
Speaker 3: agent that comes here to Transylvania is one of our
Speaker 3: main young protagonists. It's Jonathan Harker, or, in the German adaptations,
Speaker 3: like nos Faratu, Thomas Hutter. In this version, the character
Speaker 3: is Wrinfield. Now, for those not familiar with the story,
Speaker 3: Harker is the the young, handsome, ambitious fiancee of Mina,
Speaker 3: who Mina will become, by the end of the story
Speaker 3: the ultimate target of Dracula's predations, whereas Renfield in the
Speaker 3: novel is a former colleague of Harker's who I believe
Speaker 3: had also previously traveled to Transylvania, but that's not part
Speaker 3: of the narrative. It's the background. He had gone there
Speaker 3: to conduct business with Count Dracula. He ends up coming
Speaker 3: back having been driven mad, and he is turned into
Speaker 3: Dracula's loyal servant and familiar. Spends the rest of the
Speaker 3: story housed in doctor Seward's sanitarium near Carfax, eating flies
Speaker 3: and pining to serve his master. I do about right
Speaker 3: with that, Rob, Yes, that's correct. So in the novel, Harker,
Speaker 3: the character who's our real like protagonist, has to pick
Speaker 3: up where Renfield left off. So he goes to Dracula's castle,
Speaker 3: and we go with him because we read his letters.
Speaker 3: He's going there to bring signing papers for the purchase
Speaker 3: of an estate in England, and we learn about Dracula
Speaker 3: first through Harker's letters here. Harker will later escape the
Speaker 3: castle and be reunited with Mina, and he is part
Speaker 3: of the posse of heroes who chase down Dracula at
Speaker 3: the end of the novel to free Mina from his curse.
Speaker 3: But this movie has made some executive editing decisions, and
Speaker 3: they have decided instead to just give all of the
Speaker 3: action in Transylvania to Renfield, which is in a way
Speaker 3: an efficient storytelling choice that I can see ways in
Speaker 3: which that's a good edit. But I would also argue
Speaker 3: that leaves Jonathan Harker without a very good reason to
Speaker 3: be in the story and without much interesting to do.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like Dracula is preying on Mina.
Speaker 3: Oh and Mina's got a fiance somewhere. What's his deal?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I applaud the adaptation for
Speaker 2: doubling down on weird Renfield, and it makes for the
Speaker 2: intro to be I think, in a way more horrifying
Speaker 2: because it is going to me it will end in
Speaker 2: madness for him. He's not truly going to escape the count.
Speaker 2: But yeah, 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? Yeah. One note I wanted to make
Speaker 3: about Renfield and the actor Dwight Frye who plays him here.
Speaker 3: This is from David Skal's commentary Scout talks about how
Speaker 3: you know, really Dwight Frye had the makings of a
Speaker 3: dashing leading man of Hollywood. He had good looks, he had,
Speaker 3: you know, good acting skills, like he could have been
Speaker 3: that type of character, that kind of leading player. But
Speaker 3: his role as Renfield and then his later role as
Speaker 3: the grave robbing assistant Fritz and James Wales Frankenstein, made
Speaker 3: it really hard for fry to get these roles, to
Speaker 3: get the leading roles he was kind of pigeonholed as
Speaker 3: the grinning lunatic who you catch rooting around in the
Speaker 3: hospital morgue and they're just like it in a way.
Speaker 3: It was like a very six full acting turn that
Speaker 3: proved to be a curse for his career.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean you can make some comparisons to
Speaker 2: Lugosi there as well. But yeah, a shame. It's also
Speaker 2: a shame that he died rather young heart attack or
Speaker 2: heart condition, and yeah, it's you know, what could we
Speaker 2: have gotten out of him had we had ten or
Speaker 2: twenty more years of him as an active actor.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. Anyway, so back to the scene that the
Speaker 3: locals try to warn Renfield away, but he insists that
Speaker 3: he has to meet the count because he's made. He's
Speaker 3: got an appointment with Count Dracula's carriage and they've got
Speaker 3: to meet at the Borgo Pass at midnight. It sounds
Speaker 3: like fun. By the way. One of the people who
Speaker 3: tries to warn him off is this innkeeper here who
Speaker 3: is the actor is great. I love this scene where
Speaker 3: he's he's like telling him all of the vampire lore.
Speaker 3: He's telling him like, listen, no vampires are at the castle.
Speaker 3: You can't go there. Vampires drink blood, they sleep in coffins,
Speaker 3: they change in to bats and wolves. They can be
Speaker 3: repelled by the cross. This is all the stuff you
Speaker 3: need to know, but it doesn't feel like the kind
Speaker 3: of tight, lower dump that it is. Instead, it's like
Speaker 3: this innkeeper is ranting at me and I want him
Speaker 3: to stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I had to look this guy at. Michael Visarov,
Speaker 2: Russian born actor most mostly active in did parts in
Speaker 2: 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 2: This, I believe is one of a few shots that
Speaker 2: 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 Dracula'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 what 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 2: However, she does not talkie herself.
Speaker 3: That's true. Very quiet. Also in the scene possums, you know, yes,
Speaker 3: but Dracula's castles, it's full of possums. They're crawling around
Speaker 3: in the bones, they're getting up all in all the cracks, crevices.
Speaker 3: They've got a real possum issue. Oh, man.
Speaker 2: When I started watching Dracula the other day with my kid,
Speaker 2: I wasn't fully considering it for this week's Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema until the possums and the armadillos showed up, rooting
Speaker 2: around caskets and generally just infesting Dracula's castle. So the
Speaker 2: possums show up first, and I was like, okay, fair enough,
Speaker 2: possums look like big gross rats. I'll allow it. But
Speaker 2: then there are armadillas as well, armadillos as well. And
Speaker 2: to be clear, possums and armadillos are both endemic to
Speaker 2: the Americas. They absolutely don't live in Transylvania or Eastern Europe.
Speaker 2: And yet at the same time, you know you have
Speaker 2: to acknowledge they do look creepy rooting around in a
Speaker 2: Gothic castle. So what's going on here? Well, the most
Speaker 2: obvious interpretations are, of course, this was shot in California
Speaker 2: and on a depression trunken budget, so you know, you
Speaker 2: use what you can get your hands on, and if
Speaker 2: you didn't know any better, these animals again look creepy
Speaker 2: in a Gothic castle setting. A deeper answer, however, seems
Speaker 2: to exist in attitudes concerning these two species, especially at
Speaker 2: the time I was reading Dale Hudson's Of course there
Speaker 2: are werewolves and vampires from the American Quarterly twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: and this author argues that the presence of these creatures
Speaker 2: serve to animalize Dracula himself. Additionally, the contagion aspects of
Speaker 2: Stoker's novel are perhaps summoned here in the presence of
Speaker 2: two creatures often associated with diseases possums.
Speaker 3: I look this up.
Speaker 2: They can carry a number of diseases that are transferable
Speaker 2: to humans, and Armadilla's of course, can carry leprosy. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: there are slash were apparently tall tales of Armadilla's digging
Speaker 2: up graves and eating corpses.
Speaker 3: What I've never heard that.
Speaker 2: I mean, they do root around, and I think the
Speaker 2: idea is that this led to tall tales of them
Speaker 2: digging up and eating corpses. And you know, there may
Speaker 2: be some accounts of them, you know, eating non insect meat,
Speaker 2: scavenging it if the availability is there. I mean, we've
Speaker 2: seen that in other animals, but it seems to be
Speaker 2: just a myth and a legend. But yeah, despite all
Speaker 2: the other aspects of this adaptation of Dracula, that becomes
Speaker 2: set in stone. The inclusion of possums and Armadilla's doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be like something that really stuck. I don't
Speaker 2: think Copley used 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. He's standing tall in a
Speaker 3: black cloak with the tall collar and the dark catacombs
Speaker 3: under the stone arches and the cobwebs, with the light
Speaker 3: curiously falling on his face in a way that makes
Speaker 3: him look unnaturally pale. And the camera closes in and
Speaker 3: it brings us closer and closer to him, and it's
Speaker 3: almost like he's floating through the air toward us as
Speaker 3: the camera zooms in. Just great, great shot. It's one
Speaker 3: of those all time epic movie introductions. It's like, when
Speaker 3: you see a guy for the first time like this,
Speaker 3: you'll never forget him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like he is floating towards us. We are
Speaker 2: 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: Renfield 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: in disguise. But this is not a good disguise. It's
Speaker 3: bela lagosi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically just as a scarf and a hat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but yeah, maybe if you never seen in
Speaker 3: Belli lagosi before, just like, okay, it's another guy. Renfield
Speaker 3: meets the carriage in a haunted, misty landscape filled with
Speaker 3: crooked trees, and then he gets aboard. The driver does
Speaker 3: not speak. At one point along the way, Renfield looks
Speaker 3: out the window and sees the team of horses being
Speaker 3: led by a bat in flight. Good, good little moment.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to add a note here about the you know,
Speaker 2: their rubber bats on yea, on the strings. Essentially, we've
Speaker 2: seen so many flapping rubber bats on strings and various films.
Speaker 2: But here they do look really good. I mean there's
Speaker 2: never any doubt that you're watching an effect and not
Speaker 2: a real animal, but it looks really good. 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 2: Oh, it's true. Yeah, they couldn't keep live spider. They
Speaker 2: tried to use live spiders. There are some. There are
Speaker 2: some live crickets as well, but yeah, live spiders. That's
Speaker 2: got to 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 century. Everything's covered in
Speaker 3: just ages worth of dust, giant spiderwebs. You got bats
Speaker 3: bobbing and cheapening outside the window. Here's where we meet
Speaker 3: the Armadillo's for the first time. They're just crawling out
Speaker 3: of the furniture. Another beautiful set once again a composite
Speaker 3: shot made by I think it's a real photograph, real
Speaker 3: photography of a stage, a sound stage made up set
Speaker 3: on the bottom, and then I think the painted editions
Speaker 3: are higher up in the frame.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous. The depth is amazing and is
Speaker 2: noted in the Road to Dracula documentary. This look, this set,
Speaker 2: like this really sets the tone for the look of
Speaker 2: horror films, all the horror films that come afterwards, particularly
Speaker 2: gothic horror films to come. This cathedral of the macabre.
Speaker 2: It just, yeah, you know what you're looking at here,
Speaker 2: and it just resonates through horror cinema and things adjacent
Speaker 2: to horror cinema. This is like your basic Scooby Doo
Speaker 2: haunted house as well. So it does get deluded to
Speaker 2: a certain extent, but here in its original form, I
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: says they hear wolves howling outside, and Dracula says, listen
Speaker 3: to them chilled r and of the night. What music
Speaker 3: they make? I'm sorry if I didn't deliver that right,
Speaker 3: but it's it's I think Skull points out that actually,
Speaker 3: in a lot of later adaptations of the Dracula story,
Speaker 3: this line gets embellished. They start adding other words to it,
Speaker 3: where it's like what beautiful music they make or what
Speaker 3: sweet music they make? And the simplicity of what music
Speaker 3: they make is so much better. I like that this
Speaker 3: Dracula is understated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and again yeah, the cryptic nature of it
Speaker 2: and the fact that Lugosi makes every syllable count. And
Speaker 2: I think it was Joe Dante who made the point
Speaker 2: in the Road to Dracula that Legosi also had a
Speaker 2: great ability to find every possible syllable in a word
Speaker 2: 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 nominous cut. You see him walking up
Speaker 3: toward it, and it cuts away and suddenly he's on
Speaker 3: the other side of it, but it's still intact. Yeah,
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. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: It seems like he would take four.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I must be missing something here, because he needs one
Speaker 2: for each bride and then himself. But maybe there's I.
Speaker 3: Don't know, that's a good point. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Even then there were carry on lints and so forth.
Speaker 2: So it was like, I have four boxes and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: we have to charge you for the fourth, when he's like,
Speaker 2: 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 cut your fingers, and he does, and drac
Speaker 3: can't help himself. He starts creeping up to him, but
Speaker 3: then the sign of the cross, the crucifix given to
Speaker 3: him by the woman at the end, makes Dracula recoil
Speaker 3: and around here's where we start getting these great close
Speaker 3: ups on Dracula's face with the light just falling over
Speaker 3: his eyes where he seems to be hypnotizing the person
Speaker 3: in front of him. The scene also has the great
Speaker 3: wine exchange, you know, where he offers wine to Renfield.
Speaker 3: He says, this is very old wine. I hope you
Speaker 3: will like it, and Renfield's like, oh, thank you. Aren't
Speaker 3: you having any? I never drink why.
Speaker 2: 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 immediately some trouble starts creeping in.
Speaker 3: So we see Dracula's three demon brides approaching the door
Speaker 3: through a misty hallway, and then Renfield goes to the
Speaker 3: window of his outside of which there are these crooked
Speaker 3: tree branches and it's a I don't know, just a
Speaker 3: very creepy kind of landscape out there again, like mists
Speaker 3: covering the ground. And then a bat. There's a bat. Oh,
Speaker 3: bat comes to the window and it sort of floats
Speaker 3: in front of him. Renfield collapses on the floor as if,
Speaker 3: you know, hypnotized into unconsciousness somehow by the bat. And
Speaker 3: then the brides creep into the room. They're advancing on
Speaker 3: Renfield's body. They're obviously they're going to drink his blood.
Speaker 3: But no, no, Renfield is not for them. Dracula himself
Speaker 3: comes back in through the window into the room and
Speaker 3: he drives away his wives as if to say he
Speaker 3: is mine. And then the Count descends on Renfield's unconscious
Speaker 3: body and leans over him to take him in his arms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. Steveuince and we never actually see him
Speaker 2: like bite into Renfield. Correct me if I'm wrong, But
Speaker 2: do we ever see fangs in nineteen thirty one Stracula
Speaker 2: at all?
Speaker 3: I 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 2: If you do see them there, it's not much as
Speaker 2: made out of it, And it almost seems like they
Speaker 2: couldn't show for things, you know, like that would be
Speaker 2: too much for thirty one, and therefore it's implied rather
Speaker 2: than shown. And I mean you don't miss them because
Speaker 2: 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 w Renfield rather than Harker
Speaker 3: who went to the castle, Renfield is on the ship
Speaker 3: with Dracula. There's like there are two creeps on this
Speaker 3: journey and he's a full on vampire thrawle already. You know,
Speaker 3: he's crouching next to the to the vampire's coffin, saying,
Speaker 3: you will keep your promise when we get to London,
Speaker 3: won't you? Master? You will see that I get lives.
Speaker 2: I think for some reason, it's not the Demeter as well,
Speaker 2: like it has a different vent. Yeah, because they I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, they didn't give themselves enough time to make
Speaker 2: that particular ship, so they had to deal with the
Speaker 2: deal with another one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. So so Dracula is like he never answers
Speaker 3: the question about whether he's going to get lives, does
Speaker 3: he. He just gives him this withering look like no promises, kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've already talked about this. We're not going through
Speaker 2: all this again. Yeah, you get what you get. You
Speaker 2: 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 DWIGHTE. Fry is just standing there at
Speaker 3: the bottom of the of the stairs, laughing maniacally with
Speaker 3: this unbelievably devilish grin. It's so good. Oh yes, we
Speaker 3: also get a newspaper clipping here to sort of fill
Speaker 3: us in on what's going on. It tells us that
Speaker 3: the sole survivor is a raving maniac, says quote. His
Speaker 3: craving to devour ants, flies, and other small living things
Speaker 3: to obtain their blood puzzles scientists. At present, he is
Speaker 3: under observation in doctor Seward's sanitarium near London. Now Here
Speaker 3: we also get a scene that saying a lot of
Speaker 3: versions of the story, the sort of first taste of
Speaker 3: the fish out of water horror scenario, and it's Dracula
Speaker 3: walking the streets of modern London. The old curse has
Speaker 3: been taken out of the old world and inserted into
Speaker 3: the modern world. So he menacingly approaches a girl selling
Speaker 3: flowers on a street corner and then slowly envelops her
Speaker 3: with his arms to drink her blood. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to take a moment to talk here about the staging
Speaker 3: of how Dracula descends upon a victim in this movie.
Speaker 3: It almost looks sort of awkward. Usually, it's clearly a
Speaker 3: deliberate choice to make him move like this. It is
Speaker 3: a stiff, extremely slow movement into the victim's space and
Speaker 3: around them. He did the same thing when he descended
Speaker 3: on Dwight Fry's unconscious body. He'll do the same thing
Speaker 3: later when we see him leaning down toward Mina's bed.
Speaker 3: It's just this slow, stiff, rigid kind of approach. I
Speaker 3: don't know exactly why they made that choice or what
Speaker 3: it means, but it's interesting and different, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: it looks very weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes me think of some of the later
Speaker 2: scenes where we see him using his full power of
Speaker 2: enthrallment over victims. You know, he doesn't have to lunge,
Speaker 2: he doesn't have to move quickly because he has already
Speaker 2: snared you with his eyes. 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 why is he here now? Energy, Mina's fiance. He's
Speaker 3: just he's Mina's fiance. There he is. There's doctor Seward,
Speaker 3: who runs the sanitarium where Rinfield has been committed, which
Speaker 3: also just happens to be right next door to Carfax Abbey,
Speaker 3: the estate that Dracula has leased. In this version of
Speaker 3: the story, doctor Seward is Mina's father. In the novel,
Speaker 3: that's not the case. I think he is. He's younger,
Speaker 3: and I believe he is one of Lucy's mini suitors.
Speaker 3: That's the whole thing. In the novel, She's got like
Speaker 3: five different guys who are trying to marry her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unnecessary love triangle removed.
Speaker 3: I'm in favor love Pentagon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pentagon.
Speaker 3: So Dracula uses a ploy to talk himself into the
Speaker 3: sort of opera box here to meet these characters. I
Speaker 3: think one thing I was a little unclear on is
Speaker 3: like why he's trying to meet them, And I think
Speaker 3: the issue is that he knows Renfield, his vampire Thrall,
Speaker 3: has been committed to the sanitarium the doctor Seward runs,
Speaker 3: and so he's trying to to like influence them related
Speaker 3: to that, or maybe because they're neighbors. Now, maybe that's why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their neighbors. He's just being neighborly. This is neighborly d.
Speaker 3: That's exactly yes. So he introduces himself to the three
Speaker 3: younger Londoners. Doctor Seward takes a phone call, and you know,
Speaker 3: they bring up that he's moving into Carfax Abbey and
Speaker 3: Harker's like, oh, that's very old. Will it need repairs?
Speaker 3: And Dracula says, I shall do very little repairing.
Speaker 2: This is such a great everyone plays. The next time
Speaker 2: you move to a new new town or new home,
Speaker 2: keep this one with you. When someone, when a neighbor
Speaker 2: like subtly brings up some sort of repair that might
Speaker 2: need to happen, be like, I should 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 2: Oh that's so good. And there's more too. That's great
Speaker 2: because then Mina says, why Count Dracula, and that alone
Speaker 2: is excellent. I love, oh Dracula. But then then the
Speaker 2: Count says, they are far worse things awaiting men, then death,
Speaker 2: and oh my god, this is another moment where I
Speaker 2: just love the ambiguity and the cryptic nature of it.
Speaker 2: Is he talking about hell? Is he talking about undeath?
Speaker 2: Or is it something else, like something so terrible that
Speaker 2: we morals haven't even conceived of it yet it's only
Speaker 2: known to the vampires.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. So in this scene, Dracula somewhat charms
Speaker 3: them 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 2: Yeah, they're just both kind of hanging out crushing on Dracula.
Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah. But then later that night, in
Speaker 3: Lucy's bedroom while she sleeps, there's a bat floating out
Speaker 3: the window. You don't want that, And then he appears
Speaker 3: in Legosi form in her room, standing over her bed,
Speaker 3: and once again, he slowly descends and we cut away
Speaker 3: right as he's over her. I guess here's a good
Speaker 3: part in the in the plot to kind of take
Speaker 3: a step back and acknowledge the plot falls a follows
Speaker 3: a similar structure to most Dracula adaptations, and we can
Speaker 3: kind of note some interesting things and differences. So at
Speaker 3: this point in the story, usually Lucy takes ill as
Speaker 3: a result of having her blood drained by the vampire
Speaker 3: each night. In the book, this illness and the mystery
Speaker 3: as to its cause are protracted, but in this movie,
Speaker 3: we're just gonna We're gonna cut straight to her death
Speaker 3: and the autopsy and doctor Seward and colleagues note that
Speaker 3: there are two marks on her neck, the same as
Speaker 3: with the other victim in London that have been found
Speaker 3: drained of blood. So from here doctor Seward recruits the
Speaker 3: aid of his mentor, doctor Van Helsing, who deduces that
Speaker 3: they may be dealing not with an ordinary illness, but
Speaker 3: with a vampire no s Ferratu, and then Lucy dies.
Speaker 3: In this version, she dies quite quickly, and the vampire
Speaker 3: turns his attention to Mina, whom he visits in the
Speaker 3: night for blood, eventually starting to turn her into a
Speaker 3: vampire herself, and the heroes in the end have to
Speaker 3: solve the mystery and realize that the only way they
Speaker 3: can save Mina is to destroy the vampire, which they do.
Speaker 3: So things to discuss within the structure. As the movie
Speaker 3: goes on, we got scenes of Renfield at the sanitarium
Speaker 3: raving about how he wants to eat spiders. He's trying
Speaker 3: to upgrade from flies, like he's been eating flies, but
Speaker 3: he decides they're not good enough now he wants spiders.
Speaker 3: Of course, we meet doctor van Helsing when we meet
Speaker 3: him here. I think he's like doing some chemistry experiments
Speaker 3: right after the death of Lucy, and he's like, yep,
Speaker 3: tests came back, knows Faratu, that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 3: So they, I don't know. They cut over what, from
Speaker 3: my memory is a huge section in the middle of
Speaker 3: the book to get from like Lucy starts falling sick
Speaker 3: to they figure out that a vampire is involved. That's
Speaker 3: a couple minutes in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a quick test. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the van Helsing here, I guess maybe it's the chemistry
Speaker 2: set in the glasses kind of helps give him a
Speaker 2: slight mad scientist air for me, and I guess, like
Speaker 2: the van Helsing that I'm mostly familiar with is Peter Cushing's,
Speaker 2: and Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, of course, is very prim
Speaker 2: and proper.
Speaker 3: Very yeah, 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 miss 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: Renfield mad with the sprig of wolf Spain. He's like,
Speaker 3: you I have some of this, and how about little
Speaker 3: wolf Spain. Renfield and Renfield says, you know too much
Speaker 3: to live Van Helsing, and this, of course confirms Van
Speaker 3: Helsing's suspicions some vamping is going on. So Dracula attacks
Speaker 3: Mina in the night, and after this happens, there's a
Speaker 3: haunting scene where she explains her experience the next morning.
Speaker 3: This is a good monologue. She says, I heard dogs
Speaker 3: how and when the dream came, it seemed the whole
Speaker 3: room was filled with mist. It was so thick. I
Speaker 3: could just see the lamp by the bed, a tiny
Speaker 3: spark in the fog. And then I saw two red
Speaker 3: eyes glaring at me, and a white, livid face came
Speaker 3: down out of the mist. It came closer and closer.
Speaker 3: I felt its breath on my face, and then its lips. 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: in this 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 2: Yeah, yeah, this is like, this is the scene where
Speaker 2: you would see the things. I feel like if we
Speaker 2: were going to see things. But yeah, it's horrifying and
Speaker 2: 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 me and 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 2: Well, you know, Van Helsing probably publishes in the various
Speaker 2: occult journals and you know, Dracula and his kind read up.
Speaker 2: 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 he slaps the case out of Van
Speaker 3: Helsing's hand under 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 Seward takes some convincing by Van Helsing that
Speaker 3: they're definitely dealing with a vampire, but they're they're slowly
Speaker 3: getting there. This leads to another lore dump. We got
Speaker 3: a lore dump for Renfield earlier, but here's one from
Speaker 3: Van Helsing. It's like, you know, yeah, vampires have to
Speaker 3: drink blood to survive. They sleep in their native soil
Speaker 3: every day, which means he must have brought some soil
Speaker 3: with him from Transylvania. They're talking about this, but they
Speaker 3: get interrupted by maniacal laughter when Dwight Fry comes in again.
Speaker 3: Hilarious keeps escaping. He's here once more.
Speaker 2: They I guess they just have a trust policy, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: the sanatorium, like stop leaving. You're not gonna leave this time, right, Okay, I.
Speaker 3: Promise they're on the honor system. Yeah. But Renfield in
Speaker 3: 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 2: I guess so.
Speaker 3: But in this 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 Dwhite 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 2: Yeah, like he's an anaconda that is going to go
Speaker 2: 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. She was near death, but they got
Speaker 3: 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, you know, stealing children and stuff. But one
Speaker 3: thing that they do in this movie is there's no
Speaker 3: garlic for Mina. When they set a trap for Dracula
Speaker 3: and Mina's chambers with stuff to repel him. It's wolf Spain.
Speaker 3: It's just all wolf Spain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I can understand people being a little
Speaker 2: bit too familiar with garlic, and why would this scare
Speaker 2: away of vampires. Maybe we go with wolf Spaine because
Speaker 2: 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. Wow. I love that. That's the thing
Speaker 3: that Renfield. You know, some people when they make a
Speaker 3: deal with the devil, they want riches, somewhat, you know, power.
Speaker 3: He wants rats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in that line, he promised me things, not in words,
Speaker 2: but by doing them, like oh, this 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 2: 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 got have a final showdown where the heroes
Speaker 3: find Dracula's coffins in Carfax Abbey, and drive the steak
Speaker 3: into him. Before that, one one great moment is we
Speaker 3: get the sort of the death of Renfield, Like Dracula
Speaker 3: is taking Mina back to his lair and he confronts
Speaker 3: w Renfield on this long, creepy staircase and Renfield says, no, please,
Speaker 3: don't kill me, master, I can't die with all those
Speaker 3: lives on my conscience. And Dracula just I think, breaks
Speaker 3: his neck and throws him down the staircase and Renfield
Speaker 3: tumbles like a doll.
Speaker 2: Great saint, Great Saint again. Like this said, the set
Speaker 2: 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 her demonic fate and reunited
Speaker 3: with John. So there is a happy ending. But like
Speaker 3: many adaptations of Dracula, I thought we would mention this,
Speaker 3: the final staking of Dracula in his coffin has always
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, it's like it happens off screen.
Speaker 3: You just hear Dracula yell, and then it's kind of
Speaker 3: a hammering and a yelling and that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like what happens to the villain. Well,
Speaker 2: we hunted him down and killed him in his sleep,
Speaker 2: like it's you know, it's it doesn't feel as heroic.
Speaker 2: I still love it, but but you know, it makes
Speaker 2: you in a way. Maybe it's the thing that makes
Speaker 2: people love Dracula so much though, because like a lot
Speaker 2: of these universal horror films, we identify with the monster
Speaker 2: so much, and subsequent generations identify with the monster, you know,
Speaker 2: the creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula,
Speaker 2: like we feel a certain amount of sympathy for him
Speaker 2: at the end because he is this outsider character who
Speaker 2: cannot quite make a life for himself in this new place,
Speaker 2: and then he's hunted down and killed by the local inhabitants. Like, yes,
Speaker 2: they were eradicating because he's a bloodsucking demon, but still
Speaker 2: feel you feel for him in a way because he
Speaker 2: 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 the Black Lagoon who's just hanging out
Speaker 3: at home. People go to where he is and bother him,
Speaker 3: and certainly less sympathetic than some Dracula adaptations that would
Speaker 3: come later. That it make him a more explicitly tragic,
Speaker 3: wronged and romantic figure. I mean, in this movie, there's
Speaker 3: no mistaken he's the bad guy. He's going out of
Speaker 3: his way to hurt other people.
Speaker 2: And I think that's ultimately the way I like my
Speaker 2: I mean, I like some romantic Draculas. Gary Oldman's Dracula
Speaker 2: is terrific, and that in Coppola's version, and you know,
Speaker 2: that plays up the tragic aspects of the character. But
Speaker 2: you know, I love it when when you have like
Speaker 2: a Christopher Lee Dracula or the Bell of GHOSTU Dracula
Speaker 2: that is that is more just absolutely evil, or even
Speaker 2: the Dracula in Blacula that we previously talked about in
Speaker 2: 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 Waade.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the racist Dracula from the film.
Speaker 3: Evil racist Dracula who's like I love drinking blood and
Speaker 3: I approve of the slave trade. Yes, that Dracula. But anyway,
Speaker 3: coming back to this thing about the anti climactic ending
Speaker 3: of staking the Dracula in his coffin, I feel like
Speaker 3: this is actually a change from the nineteen twenty two
Speaker 3: nos Feratu that was like a good a good change
Speaker 3: to you know, to invert the ending where instead of
Speaker 3: attacking the vampire in his sleep, you force him to
Speaker 3: stay out too late. That is more like the vampire
Speaker 3: is un done or is destroyed by being trapped by
Speaker 3: his own greed and violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: Anyway, that's the universal Dracula.
Speaker 2: Love it absolutely. I mean, it's a classic. It's an
Speaker 2: icon for a reason, and if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen it in a long time, it's
Speaker 2: well worth looking up. I mean, maybe save it for Halloween.
Speaker 2: But you know, why deprive yourself, go ahead and watch
Speaker 2: it now, all right, We're gonna go ahead and close
Speaker 2: the book on nineteen thirty one's Dracula. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: Dracula has come up in a number of them. He
Speaker 2: even came up in our episodes on Dust from last year.
Speaker 2: But for the most part, we don't talk about Dracula
Speaker 2: in every Stuff to Bliw Your Mind episode, but he
Speaker 2: does come up generally, though we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns on Fridays when we have a Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: episode and we just talk about a nice weird movie.
Speaker 2: If you want to keep up with the various weird movies,
Speaker 2: so we've discussed on Weird House Cinema. We have an
Speaker 2: account on a boxed that's Weird House. You can find
Speaker 2: us there, and we have a list of all the
Speaker 2: films that we've covered so far, and sometimes there's a
Speaker 2: 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.
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