Director: Tod Browning and Karl Freund (uncredited)
Screenplay: Garrett Fort, based on the stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan
Running Time: 75 minutes
Genre: Horror
This is one of the most influential horror films ever made. an English solicitor, Renfield (Frye) arrives in Transylvania to finalise the purchase of an old abbey by mysterious nobleman Count Dracula (Lugosi). Renfield soon learns that Dracula is, in reality, a vampire. Driven insane by his experiences and enslaved to Dracula, Renfield helps the Count travel to England. Once in Britain, Dracula sets his sights on Mina (Chandler), the daughter of Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston) who runs the lunatic asylum next to his abbey.
There have been many screen adaptations of Dracula, and this is neither the first or the best of them, but it is still the most influential. The film bears little resemblance to Bram Stoker's original novel of 1897, being largely based on a hugely successful 1924 stage adaptation which turned the novel into effectively a drawing room mystery. The film has some extremely atmospheric scenes, particularly early on, capturing a real sense of decay and mystery. As it comes along the film becomes increasingly flat, it's stage-bound origins very much in evidence. A lot of the important sequences take place off-screen, including the film's climax, which is hugely disappointing. There are also plot elements and characters that appear and are dropped without explanation, and it doesn't really flow. However, Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula, even though he bears little resemblance to the character as described by Stoker he is still what comes to mind when you think of "Dracula", and to this day his portrayal is parodied, copied and referenced. With his slow, fractured, heavily accented speech (Lugosi couldn't speak English at the time and learned his lines phonetically), along with his icy hypnotic stare, he has an otherworldly sense about him that dominates the screen.
This is not a good film, and it really hasn't aged well, but there are some great things in here and it is a key film in the canon of American film and the evolution of the horror film, which make it worth watching, and it is a must-see if only for Bela Lugosi's performance.
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