Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dracula (1931)

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the iconic 1931 Universal Pictures adaptation of “Dracula,” directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi in his most iconic performance. (originally published 1/31/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name
is Rob Lamb. Things are a little bit out of
order this week, but it'll be back to order next week.
This is going to be our look at nineteen thirty
one's Dracula. Yes, be Dracula, Todd Browning, Bela Lagosi. This
episode originally published one, twenty twenty five. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House,
we're tackling a classic. We're going to be talking about
the nineteen thirty one Universal Pictures adaptation of Dracula, directed
by Todd Browning, starring Bela Lagosi. Now, Rob, this was
your pick for this week. I had always assumed if

(01:01):
we talked about Dracula, it would happen in October. But
I'm not complaining. Happy to talk about Dracula in January
or whatever month it still is. Yeah, it's we're still January.
So what's going on? How'd you get to Dracula?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Well, this is how it went down. So, yeah, this
is a film I had actually never seen before. You know,
sometimes a film I think is so iconic, so genre defining,
so all present in popular culture that it kind of
fades into a personal obscurity. You know, you haven't seen it,
but you kind of feel like you've seen it, or
you know you're just overly familiar with its themes. It's
cast its place in film history, and therefore, when it

(01:37):
comes time to watch something, you're like, well, I just
want to watch something fresh, or you want to watch
something you really do know, and films like this can
kind of fall through the cracks.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah, that's sort of interesting. I might talk more about
this later. But something I find interesting about this Dracula
is I've probably seen it at least five or six times,
but I still forget things about it. And the reason
is that there are so many different adaptations of Dracula.
It becomes hard to keep straight which elements are from

(02:07):
which version true?

Speaker 1 (02:09):
True? Yeah, what deviations are made, what is intensified and
what is condensed and so forth.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
So yeah, I had this realization over the weekend. So
my kid has really gotten into dungeons and dragons and
has set their sight so not only dming a campaign
for Friends, but dming Curse of strawed. For those of
you who are unfamiliar, The Dark Lord stra of aon
Zardovich is D and d's take on Dracula, essentially a

(02:39):
dracula esque vampire lord character, created in the late nineteen
seventies by Tracy and Laura Hickman and based in part
on Bela Lugosi's iconic portrayal in nineteen thirty one's Dracula.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
I have no familiarity at all. Basically, all I know
is that vampires are a big deal in D and D.
You can confirm this that they're not like your standard
you know, you're just staking them left and right kind
of enemies that you might expect from some like horror
video games or whatever. Like if you meet a vampire
in D and D, this is like one of the
most devastating and dangerous enemies you could possibly face.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Absolutely, especially like a true vampire as opposed to just
a vampire spawn. But ah, okay, yeah, any rate, I
told you know, I'm supportive. I'm a supportive dad, So
I'm like, okay, that sounds good. But one doesn't simply
run Curse of straw without seeing at least one Dracula movie,
and I think the most they'd seen was Bart Simpson's
Dracula on Treehouse of Horror.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Oh yeah, which is a take on a lot of
the jokes on that are tied into the Francis Ford
Coppola adaptation from the nineties.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Absolutely, yes, yeah, And so you know, I was looking
at my options, and I was considering the Copola one
as well, because I'm like, all right, my wife's going
to be out of town. It's just the two of us.
We've got to watch a Dracula film. And then I
started really thinking about It's like, you know, I haven't
actually seen the nineteen thirty one Assic in full. You know,
I've seen so many Dracula films over the years, and
this one has just fallen through the cracks. So given

(04:07):
that they enjoyed Son of Frankenstein back in October, I
was like, well, it makes sense to watch another black
and white horror classic. It's maybe not too scary. I mean,
they can handle stranger things and aliens at this point,
so I'm not too worried about that. But you know,
some of these Dracula movies hit pretty hard. So yeah,

(04:29):
we watched Dracula. For my own part, I feel like
absolutely holds up stunning, atmospherically, creepy, absolutely rooted in Lugosi's
mesmerizing performance, and it's pretty weird in its own right too.
I'm also happy to report that my kid also really
enjoyed the film, resulting in many a oh my whenever
Dracula or Renfield made crazy or intense eyes. They told

(04:52):
me after we were viewing that they half expected Dracula
to creep out of the shadows in the house.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Well, I think that's what you want. I okay, let's see.
I'm trying to search my feelings and know and find
what I know to be true. Have I ever really
been scared by the Universal Dracula.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
No.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
I think maybe I'm just too hardened by horror movies
that would come later. But I do love it, and
I appreciate the craft of the horror in it, and
I feel like I can see how it would be
scary if I hadn't been so desensitized by all of
the edgier horror movies that would come later.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, to be clear, they're fine, they're almost thirteen. They
were able to handle it, but I was. It did
bring me much joy that they enjoyed it as much
as they did, and they weren't bored with it or anything.
And yeah, I don't think there's really a boring moment
in this one. It flies right along, sometimes literally on
the wings of a bat. So I don't really have
an elevator picture this one, Joe, other than it's Dracula.

(05:51):
This is the big one. This is a titan of
not only cinema enlarge, but also horror cinema specifically.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Dracula comes to the talkies fully licensed.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
That's right, that's right. Let's see if we're able to.
Let's go ahead and listen to just a little bit
of the trailer audio here.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
I am Dracula.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
Dracula. The very mention of the name brings to mind
things so evil, so fantastic, so degrading. You wonder if
it isn't all a dream, a nightmare millions the original

(06:47):
terrifying story of a maniac and a man who lived
after death, lived on human blood, took the form of
a vampire bat, and lured innocent girls to a fate
truly worse than death.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
You done, he made me drink all right? Well, you

(07:26):
might be wondering, well, Where can I watch nineteen thirty
one's Dracula. Well, I watched it on the Universal Dracula
Complete Legacy Collection Blu ray set. I rented this from Videodrome.
I think you have the same addition, right, Joe.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Uh No, I've got a slightly different thing. I've got
the Universal Classic Monsters Essential Collection Blu ray set, which
I highly recommend. It's got a lot of great extra
I mean, all the films look beautiful. It's got a
ton of great extras, documentaries and commentary tracks and all
that comes with a nice little booklet. So yeah, I've
enjoyed this set for years.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
All right, Right, I think we have some of the
same extras and special features that shared, so definitely, you know,
Universal Horror release.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Here might just be a partial repackaging kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, yeah, because the extras on this day and there's
some great extras. They're a little bit older, but charming
in ways that sometimes things from nineteen ninety nine are not.
But there's a really good document short documentary called The
Road to Dracula, and it's hosted by Carla Limley who
lived nineteen oh nine through twenty fourteen. She was the

(08:29):
niece of Universal founder Carl Limley and cousin of producer
Carl Limley Junior.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
And she's in the movie.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
She is she has the first line of dialogue.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, she's just riding in the carriage in the Borgo pass.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Yes. Yeah. So it's really fun, and you know, you
got some of the usual suspects of various film historians.
Some will refer to Joe Dante of course, shows up
to talk a little about horror films, and it's a
lot of fun. So these Blu rays are great. But
this is of course a very famous film. It's generally
available for digital purchase in rental, and it's one one

(09:05):
of those classics that you will also periodically get to
see on the big screen, which is a treat.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
While we're on the subject of disc extras, I just
wanted to say a couple of times I've watched this
movie with a commentary track that's on the disc version
I have by the film and horror historian David J. Skall.
Some of the things, like probably a lot of the
behind the scenes things I know about the movie I
learned through Skall's commentary, So credit to him. That's a

(09:31):
source of a lot of my just general information.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yes, Skall, who sadly passed away last year, is also
an important part of the documentary shorts on the disc,
and among his many books you'll find vas for Vampire
and a to Z Guide to Everything Undead that was
published in ninety six. I've already added a used copy
of that to my cart I think I need that
in my collection.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
They're all undead, Okay, trying to think what the X is?

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Oh yeah, this might be a pull. Yeah, all right,
well let's talk about the connections here the people behind
this film. I do have to note that, as usual,
we can't cover everyone and a film this big. I
feel like there's been so much written about it and
explored about the picture. Every little part has probably been
explored to some degree or another, and we just don't

(10:19):
have time for all of that. So my apologies to
anyone whose efforts and talent we left out here.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah. Also worth noting that this film is incredibly huge
and important in Hollywood history, and we're not going to
be able to explore all of this. This is not
your complete history lesson on the universal monsters in Dracula.
We can't do that today. We're not really qualified for that,
but we're going to do what we can.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Absolutely all right. Starting at the top. The director is,
of course Todd Browning, who ofd eighteen eighty through nineteen
sixty two, American director who was quite successful during the
silent era and by some estimates less sure of himself
entering into the talky era. And that's something you'll pick
up on with this film and its frequent use of

(11:03):
silence and at times a kind of like stagy ritualistic
framing that feels very you know, in keeping with this
film's roots on the stage as a play, but also
fitting for the silent era as well.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, I guess we can talk more later about the
different musical compositions that have been paired with the movie
over the years, but one thing that will feel kind
of unusual about it to a lot of modern audiences
is the lack of music throughout the film. There are
a couple of scenes with music, you know, with the
credits and the old version you get the Swan Lake,

(11:42):
and there's a scene that takes place at a symphony
performance where there's music in the background. Because it's diegetic music,
it's supposed to be part of the narrative. But most
of the scenes it's just kind of silence and the
characters talking, and some of the most dramatic scenes in
the film, there's nothing at all to listen to. It's
just it's utterly silent. Well like you know, the vampire

(12:02):
creeps up.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, I mean you almost it's almost unheard off when
you compare it to modern films, like so many films
are just non stop blaring music and sound effects and explosions.
And it depends on the genre obviously, but yeah, it
can be almost shocking how silent this picture is. But
you're also you're not missing the cacophony either. It's also

(12:25):
worth noting that films of this era were also released
in silent film versions, in part for older theaters, but
also for international markets since dubbing subtitles were not really
all that establish yet. So you'll find versions of nineteen
thirty one's Dracula that have the full like silent film
dialogue set up, where you know, the inter titles. Yeah, yeah, oh,

(12:47):
I feel.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Like that would there would be so many there's a
lot of dialogue in this movie, because generally talkies had
more dialogue in them than silent films. Did I feel
like that would extend the run time a lot, if
you had to have an intertie for every line.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, they must have. I haven't seen it in full myself.
I've just seen some clips. I'm not sure if a
full version exists, but yeah, they would have to cut
some stuff, right.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
I would think so. Well, I don't know who knows.
I've never edited a talkie into a silent film, but yeah,
I would think it would. It would end up running
really long and they'd have to cut some stuff down.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
They should do that. When the new Nosferatu film that
came out, they need to do a silent film cut
of it. You know. People directors keep doing like black
and white cuts of films. It's like, that's great, but
let's see, let's see the silent Cut's see what that's like. Anyway,
back to Todd Browning. Browning wrote and directed his first
full length silent picture in nineteen seventeen, and found success

(13:42):
with nineteen twenties The Virgin of Stambul. His first talkie
was nineteen twenty nine, It's the Thirteenth Chair. That was
a murder mystery that had Legosi in it. And so
we'll come back to and Dracula of course, followed shortly
after that. His other films include the notable lost film
nineteen twenty sevens London After Midnight, nineteen thirty two's Free Weeks,
nineteen thirty five's Mark of the Vampire in nineteen thirty

(14:03):
six is The Devil Doll. His last film was nineteen
thirty nine's Miracles for Sale, and he retired in nineteen
forty two, with Hollywood trends and tastes drifting further away
from his sensibilities at the time.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
When Browning was younger, he had some experience working with
circus performers, I believe, and this sort of came out
in an ongoing obsession that appears in many of his works.
Certainly there in nineteen thirty two's Freaks, which is a
ooh man. I haven't seen that movie in many years,

(14:36):
but I'd be very interested to see what modern critics
think about that as a retrospective. I mean, it's a
very surprising film for the nineteen thirties in many ways.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, this was his famous for the One of Us song, right, yeah, yeah,
it's kind of a chant. I guess it's a.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Song Google gobble one of Us.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, yeah, all right. Dracula if you're not aware. Original
novel is by Brown Stoker, who lived eighteen forty seven
through nineteen twelve, Irish author and theater critic, whose eighteen
ninety seven novel was Seeming. You know that a lot
has been written and discussed about where this novel arises,
you know, in brown Stoker's life and mindset, but seems

(15:19):
to have spun out of various accounts and experiences of
disease in the world around him. And perhaps you know
he was sick as a child. That sort of thing
also folklore of Ireland as well as mainland Europe. And
of course it's also worth noting that in the book
there's a lot of use of phonographs. It's often crazy

(15:41):
to realize how thoroughly modern the novel was at its release.
If he had written it today, Mino would have been
on TikTok i fee.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Wasn't doctor Seward in the book doing like phonograph diaries
or something? He was? Yes.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Another detail that we often overlook I was reading about
this is that the novel was only a moderate success
at the time, and Merritt's only brief mention in Stoker's
nineteen twelve obituary. It wasn't until the copyright battle over
a little nineteen twenty two film titled Nosferatu stirred everything out.

(16:17):
That's when Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe, gave approval to Hamilton
Dean for this stage adaptation of Dracula, And of course
from that we get this film eventually, and all of
this blossoms. Dracula's cinematic legacy in the novel truly becomes
a popular classic.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Now, wait a minute, did bram Stoker not himself adapt
the novel to the stage. I thought there was at
least one play version that he wrote, but I could
be wrong. Well, folks, neither of us knew the answer
for sure, so I just looked it up to find out. Yes,
bram Stoker did create at least one version of the
novel for the stage that apparently debuted before the novel

(16:58):
was even released, or at least the same year. So
he wrote the novel then made a stage adaptation, which
debuted under the title Dracula or the Undead, and that
was performed in May eighteen ninety seven, the same month
that the novel was released. And according to an article
that I just dug up about this. Apparently only two

(17:20):
people came and showed up in the audience to watch it.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Oh wow. So yeah, it can be a little surprising
to realize that the popularity of the novel really rises
alongside it sent the book cinematic history. And I think
part of the sort of confusion that can occur, in
my opinion anyway, is the fact that we often love

(17:44):
Dracula and Frankenstein together. But Mary Shelley's book was published
in eighteen eighteen. That's seventy nine years earlier.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah. So another weird thing to think about is that
when this movie was made, the movie we're talking about today,
the Universe versa Dracula, the novel was only like thirty
three or thirty four years old. Wow, Dracula feels like
an ancient story to us. But it is the equivalent
of making a movie today based on a novel that

(18:14):
was originally published like in the early nineties. I looked up, like,
what were the big novels on the bestseller lists in
like nineteen ninety one, So it would be like today
making an adaptation of the Sum of All Fears by
Tom Clancy, which that really puts it in a different
perspective for me.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, yeah, that man, that's mind blowing for sure. All right,
now getting into the various adaptations here, So yes, we
have the authorized initial stage adaptation of Dracula by Hamilton Dean,
who lived eighteen seventy nine through nineteen fifty eight. He
was a family friend. He was brom Stoker's widow's choice

(18:54):
to make the official stage adaptation. Dean himself initially played
Van Helsing and in nineteen twenty four play here became popular,
but some revisions proved necessary before it could really make
that move to Broadway in nineteen twenty seven. That's also
when Bella Lagosi comes on board to play the Count.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
It's funny that there are so many different versions of
Dracula before it even makes it to the movie that
made it so famous, you know. So like you've got
the original novel, you've got bram Stoker's stage adaptation, You've
got multiple different other play versions of the play. You
got the Hamilton Dean play. You've got at least a
couple of versions you said that went through revisions going

(19:33):
on to Broadway. And then also you've got No Speratu,
the the FW Murnau movie, which we said, as we said,
is an unofficial adaptation of the story making some changes.
So it's like this novel that is not even thirty
years old is getting all of these different rewrites in
different versions before it even reaches its best known form.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Yeah, and you know, Nosfaratu was not even the first adaptation.
There was a nineteen twenty one film called Dracula's Death.
It was a Hungarian silent film that apparently had very
little to do with the actual plot of Dracula, but
still there it was.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
But surely once we get the play version on Broadway
starring Bella Lagosi, then that's exactly what we get in
the film.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Right, No, no, not no, probably not so the Broadway
revision though. That's where John L. Balderston comes in, who
lived eighteen eighty nine through nineteen fifty four, playwright and screenwriter,
and he'd later work on the screenplays for Frankenstein and
also in thirty one, thirty two Is the Mummy, thirty
Five's Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Dracula's Daughter, Gaslight and many.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Others wrote a lot of my favorites of the era.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, and as we've alluded to this already, and we'll
keep mentioning this. The play is already a notable condensing
of Dracula, which if you've ever read it, you already
know that. You know, it's only like four hundred and
something pages long. It's not a sprawling book in terms
of length, but it can kind of feel sprawling at times,

(21:00):
just the way that's it's written. Composed of these overlapping correspondences,
diary entries and phonograph recordings. The beginning of the novel
is arguably a lot more exciting than some of the
latter stretches and so forth. And we should also note
the other like major influential change that is made in

(21:21):
the stage adaptation of Dracula. Here is our changes to
what Dracula is. The way Dracula is presented as a
creature and a character.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah that's right. I mean, Dracula is the bad guy
of the movie, but he is much more of the
Bella Legosi. Dracula is much more charming and interesting than
the Dracula of the novel, who is a filthy, repulsive demon.
Just you know, there's not the Dracula in the book
is just not lovable.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
He's a creature of dust. He's more in line with this,
he's an grotesque, undead warrior king. And here this is
the kind of Dracula that can stand shoulder to shoulder
with London's elite later on and is greeted as an
equal and is charming and erotic in ways that the

(22:14):
original Dracula in the script in the novel is not. Yeah,
all right. Garrett Fort has the screenplay credit who lived
nineteen hundred and nineteen forty five, American screenwriter, playwright, and author.
His credits include Frankenstein, Dracula's Daughter, the Devil Doll. Both
of those Dracula's Daughter and Devil Doll were thirty six
and nineteen forties, The Mark of Zaro, just to name

(22:35):
a few.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Okay, well we got to talk about Bayla now.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yes, bail Legosi plays Count Dracula, of course, who lived
eighteen eighty two through nineteen fifty six. So we've discussed
some films with iconic, even career defining performances here on
Weird House before, but the case of Bella Legosi and Dracula,
I feel like this is on an entirely different level,
like even compared to things like Carlofs Frankenstein. It's because

(23:08):
it's not only career defining its genre defining. He not
only becomes Dracula in this picture, but defines what Dracula
is for the next one hundred years and beyond anyone else.
Playing Dracula in the shadow of this film has no
choice but to either embrace Legosi's performance or to play

(23:30):
against it, which is what you often see, but you
absolutely cannot ignore it like this really sets the tone
and sets the course for not only Dracula films, not
only vampire films, but horror cinema in large.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
He brings a lot to the role that I think
you wouldn't necessarily get about the character on the page.
I don't know if Bela Legosi is the sexiest Dracula
there has ever been, but he does bring a kind
of interesting suaveness and attractiveness to the role. He brings
a smile and a sense of humor to the character
that I think was not really there previously, was certainly

(24:08):
not there in the previous film adaptations. In like in
nos Feratu, you know Max Shrek no attacking Max Shrek's
performances count orlock there, but that's a totally different take
on the character. Does not have the kind of charm
and sense of humor that Belle Lagosi brings to this
role that actually makes it much more sinister in those

(24:31):
rare moments where in this movie you get flashes of
anger and malice from Dracula, like in the moment where
he slaps down the after they pulled the trick on
him by opening the cigarette box and shining the mirror
in his face, smacks it away, and you see him,
you know, scowling at Van Helsing and the other men,
and that moment is quite shocking. And it's because of

(24:52):
the you know, the calmness and the coolness that Legosi
brings to this character. He's kind of like it's he's
in on a joke that only he gets, and the
joke is that you will serve him.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, the sexiness of Dracula. It brings me back to
what I said earlier about the about being you can
be overly familiar with this picture and you can also
just be more accustomed to stills from it, and maybe
even stills of an older Legosi playing Count Dracula dressing
up as Count Dracula. But I feel like you really
have to see the full performance. You have to see
him in motion. You have to hear him make every

(25:30):
little enunciation to the Dracula dialogue, and it all adds
up to what, especially for the time period, is like
a very erotically charged performance. Like there is a hypnotic
charisma to him, and there is I think a strong
like pan sexual eroticism to him as he you know,

(25:50):
because he doesn't see gender or anything. He sees blood.
Doesn't matter if you're a if you're a male, female
or what have you. Dracula is going to come for you.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
There Dracula's embrace. Yeah, I would say that that is
implicit in the film. It's not explicit like it is
in a lot of the later Dracula adaptations which make
him overtly sexual and stuff. But it's a strong subtext here.
And to emphasize again what we said earlier that like
whatever sexual themes about Dracula are there in the novel

(26:21):
or whatever, I do not think there's really much about
him being potentially like alluring in any way. I mean, dude,
whatever's there is just purely predatory.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah. Yeah, again nineteen twenty two, nos Faratu not really sexy.
And as we were discussing off Mic earlier twenty twenty four,
nos Faratu maybe perhaps sexy. I haven't seen it yet,
but if that Nosparatu is sexy, it's because that Nosparatu
stands in the long shadow of Bella Lugosi's Dracula, because.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
That one is remixing different themes that have come through
in all the different interpretations of Dracula over the years. Yes,
I would argue that the new Robert Eggers knows Ferrautu,
which I have seen and I greatly enjoyed. In fact,
I was talking about this with Rachel and we were
trying to say, like, is Dracula sexy in that? I
think the goal, actually, the specific thing they were trying
to accomplish was to go for maximally disgusting and revolting

(27:19):
and sexy at the same time. It is kind of
an oxymoron. They were trying to accomplish something that should
be impossible to do. Is like polar opposite kind of
qualities to the character. But I think they did a
pretty good job.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing it at some
point here.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
And if you look up fan reception on the internet,
definitely there are a lot of people who find this
this rotting, decomposing plague corpse somewhat somewhat exciting for some reason, right,
I'm not knocking to you know.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Well, back to Legosi again, an immortal performance, no two
ways about it. Now. We've talked about Lagosi twice on
the show before, in our episodes on The Devil Bat
and Son of Frankenstein. He's wonderful and Son of Frankenstein,
and even in Devil of Bat, as with many of
his other, like later lesser roles, he still finds a
way to shine through it all. But here he is
at the height of his powers, and it is a

(28:12):
thing to behold, richly charismatic, frightening, erotic, and above all hypnotic.
I was asking my kid about how this one stacked
up to Son of Frankenstein, and they told me that
Dracula was definitely the scarier of the two, and the
scariest moments were Dracula's gaze. Oh he's looking right at
the camera.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
But they do, and actually I meant to bring this
up in the plot section. If you know anything about
this shot they do. It's a recurring visual theme where
we come in on Dracula's face. Maybe the camera is moving,
zooming in on him, or it's just still on Dracula's face,
but the most of the shot is dark and there's
sort of a beam of light falling over his eyes.

(28:55):
It's just the eyes and it's just there scowling with
the eyes wide. I don't know if you knew why
they selected that, like the beam on the eyes only,
but I always thought that was interesting.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah, it really adds to this like otherworldly hypnotizing power
of the character. And Yeah, on top of that, Legosi's
performance is just one thing that's pointed out by by
some of the Dracula experts is that there are no
small moments at all in it. Every annunciation, but every
even like subtle movement feels very calculated and essential. Some

(29:31):
have chalked this up to the possibility that Legosi memorized
his parts phonetically, at least at the stage of his career,
but I'm not sure where the truth falls and all
of that at any rate, the finished product, the actual performance,
like the way that he stresses words in each line,

(29:52):
like it seems to bring across like cryptic meaning to things,
like even some of the lines you think, you know,
like like children of the Night, what music they make?
You know, it's what music they make, you know, like
the choices there are so absolutely cryptic, and it feels
like perfectly the perfectly calculated way that this cold, immortal

(30:17):
being would be, you know, cutting through to our fear
and desire with every word and every movement.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
I couldn't agree more. I've really loved that. Yeah, the
enunciation of the lines does add this mystery to the
intended meaning of them, which lends itself well to something
that is here in Legosi's performance. And actually I noticed
in all three of the movies we've covered of his,
two of them much better than the other one. I mean,
I really enjoyed all three. But Son of frank and

(30:44):
Dracula are much better movies than Devil Back. But in
all three, the thing that's common is bell Leegosi has
this way of delivering lines that he understands in a
different way than the person he's talking to, you know,
like double meaning, kind of sinister irony lines. There's a
lot of that in Dracula. There's a lot of that.

(31:04):
There was a lot of that in Son of Frankenstein,
you know, and they're what's that part where you know
they're talking about like bringing the creature back, healing him up,
and the other you know, the son of Frank is like, well,
I don't know if he's if he's well enough yet,
and and Igor is like, well enough for me. Oh,

(31:25):
And it's just he has a lot of that kind
of thing, these dry, threatening, humorous little ironies in that
are often expressed exquisitely in the way he inflects words
in an unexpected way.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Absolutely so. As we discussed in the previous lego see episodes,
he started out in Hungarian theater in silent films before
making his way to Germany and finally America via New Orleans.
He's made his way to New York. He became very
active in the theater scene there. He did some silent
films and eventually lands that lead role in the Broadway
played Dracula twenty seven, ends up moving to la in

(32:02):
twenty eight part of the tour, and this kicks off
his Hollywood career. The next year, he appeared in Todd
Browning's The Thirteenth Chair, and the Interesting thing is Bella
was clearly the obvious choice for the film adaptation of
the play. He'd been performing it to rave reviews, and
yet he was not the first pick for the film.
The producers considered the likes of Laon Cheney, who ended

(32:25):
up dying before the film could be produced. Conrad Vitt,
the Man who Laughs, was also considered, but he had
moved back to Europe, and I think the idea is
like he wasn't He didn't really, it wasn't as comfortable
with English language, and so eventually they're like, Okay, well
Legosi's there, will hire Legosi. And they got him somewhat

(32:46):
on the cheap. It's a role that made him an
undying legend, obviously, but as has been covered in many
a biography, it also typecast him. It was the high
point of a life and career that didn't always maintain
an even trueject.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
But I want to be clear again, not his only
great performance. I mean his turn as Igor and son
of Frankenstein is fantastic, hilarious, is so good in that.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah, and there are a number of other ones that
are often cited. Is like strong Legosi performances, So we
may have to come back to more Legosi in the future.
All right, getting into the rest of the cast here,
I'm gonna spend less time with the remainders here. But
Helen Chandler plays Mina. She lived nineteen oh six through
nineteen sixty five, American actress of stage and screen, best

(33:32):
remembered for Dracula. David Manners plays Jonathan Harker. He lived
nineteen one hundred through nineteen ninety eight, Canadian born leading
man here, completely overshadowed by stronger character performances and also,
as we'll discuss in a very reduced Jonathan Harker.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, just as shadowed by the script.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, I mean, he's just he's overshadowed by yeah, other
performances and also the writings. He's not sent to the
castle in the he does not have the Keanu Reeves
version of Jonathan Harker here.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
No, we need to talk about this later in the plot.
But it's almost like, why is this character even in
the story exactly?

Speaker 1 (34:11):
He's best remembered for his roles in Dracula nineteen thirty
two is the Mummy and nineteen thirty four is the
Black Cat.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
Now Rob again. I was surprised to find out that
you'd never seen Dracula in its entirety before, but it
caused me to remember back back to the first time
I saw Dracula. Like you, I grew up, you know,
knowing bits of it, seeing bits of it on TV
and things like that, especially in clip show type things.
But when I finally saw it in full, honestly, one

(34:39):
of the things that made the biggest impression on me
was Dwight Frye as Renfield.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Absolutely, this is a just bonker's performance by the great
Dwight fry lived eighteen ninety nine through nineteen forty three,
American character actor of stage and screen with broad range,
but be member for his outlandish horror roles and certainly
typecast to those. After a while, he went on to
play Fritz in thirty ones Frankenstein, Carl in thirty five's

(35:09):
Bride of Frankenstein, and smaller often uncredited roles and subsequent
Frankenstein films. He was also in nineteen thirty one's The
Maltese Falcon.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
Renfield is really a highlight of the movie apart from
Lagosi here because in multiple ways, like the way the
character is written is both intentionally and unintentionally funny, the
unintentional part being like the fourth time he escapes from
the sanitarium and just wanders into a scene in the house,
It's like, how does this guy keep getting out of

(35:39):
his cell.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Yeah, he's kind of like the Kramer of the picture,
just randomly busts in whenever they need a little need
a little Renfield action.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Yeah, yeah, he slides in and he's got the crazy
hair and he's like, oh, the Master is gonna give
me blood this time. Oh. It's but also just he
has the deranged monologues about needing lives and blood and
wanting to eat spiders, and then also has kind of
a you know, he's mostly a heel after being turned

(36:10):
by the Count, but he has a face turn at
one point that doesn't quite stick. It's yeah, it's just great.
I love Dwight Fry here it thumbs up, thumbs up.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, if not for Legosi, he would be the most
memorable performer in the piece. Yeah, totally all right. It's
a Dracula movie. Who also have to have a Van helsing,
you have to have a Dracula slayer, and that's Edward
Van Sloan, who lived eighteen eighty two through nineteen sixty four,
American character actor, here reprising the role that he played
in the stage adaptation. This was only his second film,

(36:41):
followed by the role of doctor Waldman in nineteen thirty one.
S Frankenstein doctor Mueller in thirty two's The Mummy, and
he played Professor van Helsing in nineteen thirty six is
Dracula's daughter, So he.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Was just always the professor who shows up too to
know about the monster.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah. I mean, probably a little bit of typecasting going
on here as well, but it's another strong performance. I
really like him in this part of it is the
haircut in the glasses.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
Yeah. I don't know if he's ever made as huge
an impression on me, but he does certainly drive the
scenes in the middle of the movie that would, I
think otherwise be the weakest links in the film, basically,
the investigation scenes where the heroes are trying to figure
out what's going on. They're the scenes that either don't
have Legosi or don't have a Dwight Fry in them
yet until he bursts in later in the scene. Those

(37:29):
would be the dullest parts. But he does pretty well there.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
He feels a little unhinged in a great way, you know,
like one of the first people to believe that we're
actually dealing with vampires. You know, it's probably somebody who
lives their life a little bit on the edge.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
And later adaptations would generally take this principle a lot further,
I'd say, compared to later Van Helsing portrayals, Edward Van
Sloan is a pretty straight shooter. I mean, thinking about
Anthony Hopkins and Copola's Dracula, where Van Helsing borderline insane
thinking about Willem Dafoe in the in the New nos Ferratu.

(38:05):
I mean they later really embraced the idea that the
professor who knows how to fight evil is himself an
extremely eccentric figure.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
All right. The other principal investigator here is, of course,
doctor Seward, played by Herbert Bunston, who lived eighteen seventy
four through nineteen thirty five, British actor best remembered for
this film. He also had a supporting role in nineteen
thirty as the Lady of Scandal in nineteen thirty three's
The Monkeys Paw again somewhat reduced here, he's essentially in

(38:36):
a lot of these older pictures, you really need like
a supporting cast of two to three old white guy
experts to help you fight your alien invasion or monster attacks.
And this is what this guy is.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
His role in this movie is, I say, could it
be true.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
All right, you can't have a Mina unless you have
a Lucy. And that's where Francis Dad comes in. She
lived nineteen ten through nineteen sixty eight, American actress, only
active in the late twenties and early thirties. This was
her most memorable role, but she has a supporting role
in the nineteen thirty one Anime Wong film Daughter of
the Dragon.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
Like many characters in this version, Lucy's role is greatly
reduced from what it is in the novel. You know,
a big part of the investigation in the middle of
the novel is like the characters trying to figure out
what the cause of Lucy's wasting disease is. You know,
why is she losing blood? What's going on? In this movie?
They just like acts all that. It's done in like

(39:30):
ninety seconds of screen time.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
We of course have the brides. We'll talk more about
the brides later, but Geraldine Devoric, Dorothy Tree, and Cornelia
Thaw those are your brides. Let's see getting behind the
scenes here a bit. Carl Fround, of course, did the cinematography,
rather famous for his work on this picture and subsequent films.

(39:55):
Lived eighteen ninety through nineteen sixty nine legendary Austrian Hungarian
born cinematographer and director, two time Oscar winner, four time nominee.
Much of the visual splendor of this film is often
attributed to frend and many have have also said that
he probably directed parts of it as well. He was

(40:15):
reportedly like a very strong presence on the set sometimes
when Browning wasn't. He went on to direct nineteen thirty
two's The Money, as well as nineteen thirty five is
Mad Love, which we talked about in one of, if
not our first episodes, and he did several other pictures
as well.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
Freud did the cinematography on most of the movies that
from the nineteen thirties that I think look the best,
Like a lot of the thirties movies that I see,
I'm like, wow, this is gorgeous. It's like, oh, that
was Carl Freud, so yeah, he in the movie does
look great. There are typically like the scenes in it

(40:53):
that look the best tend to be the ones that
film historians say this is like a signature Carl Freun
type shot. And I think this has led some people
to speculate that for the less interesting cinematography in the
movie that he was kind of he was kind of
on leash, like he was not necessarily being allowed to

(41:15):
do all he could do. I don't know if that's
true or not, but that's what some people have said.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
It's often pointed out that the also nineteen thirty one
Mexican Dracula film that they shot at night on the
same sets, is more technically proficient and maybe more daring.
And for part of that is that apparently they could
look back at what the day crew was doing and
figure out how to one up it, right.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Yeah, So the English language production would shoot and then
they would shoot afterwards, and so they could look at
all the mistakes made in the earlier shoots and like
figure out ways to correct them before they before they
set up.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah, spice things up sometimes and so forth. All right.
Set decoration. Russell A Gossman who lived eighteen ninety two
through nineteen sixty three. Oscar winner for his work on
forty fourth Phantom of the Opera and sixty one Spartacus.
He also worked on other major and minor universal horror films.
Jack P. Pierce did the makeup eighteen eighty nine through
nineteen sixty eight. Monster Makeup Master of the day who

(42:15):
worked on like Frankenstein, the Man who Laughs, the Invisible Man,
the Wolfman, and so many others. I guess on the
surface it might seem like he had less to do here.
There's not. There's no monster makeup on the level of
Frankenstein in this picture, but clearly makeup is a part
of bringing Count Dracula and the brides to their to

(42:38):
undead life on the screen. And finally, Heinz Roemheld has
a conductor musical arrangement credit of nineteen one through nineteen
eighty five, but again this is a needle drop score,
owing in part to budgetary issues. Again, sometimes there's no
music at all, but music used in the picture includes
Schaikowski Swan Lake, Opus twenty, Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, and

(43:02):
a selection from Wagner's The Meister Singer von Nunberg.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
I mainly associate Dracula with Swan Lake due to this movie,
but I have actually seen it with the Philip Glass
score that was done later. I don't know when, was
that in the nineteen nineties.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, that was ninety eight legendary Philip Glass composed. It
was performed by the Kronos Quartet. I've never seen it,
but I did listen to part of that while I
was researching and writing up notes here, and it sounds
quite good.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
Oh hey, mentioning Swan Lake. By the way, that is
what plays over the opening credits, at least in the
version I watched. And another thing I wanted to call
attention to in the opening credits I don't recall if
I've ever really noticed this before, is the stylized bat
in the background of the title card here. You know,

(44:00):
it works fine if you're not paying very close attention,
but when you really look at it, this illustration does
seem kind of odd. Looks like something that would be
on like the Adam West Batman TV show. There's a
whimsical comic bookiness to it. It does not look super gothic.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah, yeah, it looks a little art deco, I guess.
But it interesting that you would bring up Batman because
Batman wouldn't be invented till nineteen thirty nine and first
committed to the screen in forty three, So I don't know.
It's not impossible that this had an influence on the
Cape Crusader.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Oh yeah, I can see that, But like, do you
see that the shape of the ears on the head
looks exactly like the Batman logo or not the logo
like the costume.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
M it looks like Batman. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Also, speaking of bats, you know, there's so many things
that the like in the Dracula movie tradition that are
different from how they are in the book. When I
was watching this, I genuinely could not remember if Dracula
transforms into a bat in the book, and I had
to look it up and oh, yeah, he definitely does.
That's there in the novel. The book is in fact

(45:03):
full of talk about bats. There's this whole section where
they're trying to figure out what's happening to Lucy, and
they talk about these bats in South America that swoop
down from the trees and drink the blood of sailors
as they sleep at night, leaving them without a single
drop left in the morning. That's not true, but anyway, Yeah,
so the book definitely is all about bats. That's originally there.

(45:27):
But from here after the credits, we come on to
the opening shot, and wow, what a strong opening shot.
We start on this deep landscape shot with a tremendous
sense of vertical reach. In the foreground, there is a
horse drawn carriage. It's clattering over a dirt road toward
the camera, and in the background we see the road

(45:49):
is surrounded by gargantuan mountains, appearing as these shards of bare,
unforested rock reaching up toward the clouds. And this made
me think about how while there are a lot of
there are lots of reasons for preferring the modern widescreen
aspect ratio and film. This shot shows one cinematic benefit

(46:11):
of the roughly one point two or one point three
by one format, which is the ability to create this
sense of towering height and depth, like a tiny subject
in a desolate valley in the middle, encircled by these
skyscrapers of rock.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, And we get this feeling a few different points
at a few different points in the picture, So this
is a great point. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
Apparently this shot was accomplished by a kind of composite
effect where you can bine a real, live moving photography
shot of a carriage and road in the foreground and
then the mountains in the background or a painted backdrop.
I think I believe it was painted on a piece
of glass that may actually have been done in the
camera with the painted glass positioned over the camera lens.
I'm not sure about that in this shot, but Skyll

(46:57):
talks about that for at least some of these extra
ear shots in the commentary track. But I'd also like
to point out something about the feeling of these painted mountains,
a kind of art history resonance. Actually, to me, these
mountains resemble things you see in paintings from the Romantic

(47:18):
movement of the late eighteenth early nineteenth century. So one
very well known example if you want to look it
up and see this kind of artistic sensibility in painting
is A Wanderer above Sea and Fog from eighteen eighteen
by Casper David Friedrich Robert. Have you seen this painting before?

Speaker 1 (47:36):
Oh? Not only have I seen it, I like a
lot of liberal arts majors had this on my dormitory wall. Okay,
n as a post or form, because I guess a
lot of liberal arts majors probably see themselves like this. Sure,
A lone figure standing atop a mysterious, you know, craggy
environment above the mists, surveying everything. That's kind of like

(47:57):
a gentleman scholar vibe.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, but so how would you describe
the like the the landscape here, it's it's like very
active and emotional and dramatic, right you mentioned the crags.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Yeah, yeah, definitely very emotionally charged. There's a sense of
wonder and possibility here, and it's maybe inverted to a
certain extent, or at least there's a darker sense of
wonder and possibility in Dracula. But yeah, similar vibes in
a way, similar.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Frequency exactly and realized through these like very jagged edged
depictions of nature, you know, like the it's just like
the rocks are infused with drama. A lot of Romantic
landscape paintings, I think, have this feeling depicting natural objects
like mountains in particular, mountains are very popular subject of

(48:45):
you know, painters of this style from this era, but
also of rocks, bodies of water, trees, et cetera. There
was a convention at this time of kind of showing
these things as overwhelming, almost magical in some way, epic, dramatic,
bursting with irrepressible emotion. And I would say that modern

(49:08):
genres of horror, especially Gothic horror, have strong roots in
the nineteenth century European Romantic movements in the arts, in
arts and literature. Dracula itself as a novel was not
born of this period, as we've said, it came much later.
It was in the eighteen nineties. But Frankenstein was from
this period. Frankenstein is a Romantic novel in many ways,

(49:31):
and if you go back and read Frankenstein you might
be shocked how much mountains and epic landscapes play a
role in the story. For example, when Victor first meets
the creature again after their initial separation, it's while he
is out hiking alone in the Alps. And so even
though Dracula was not a novel from the Romantic period,

(49:52):
I think Romantic artistic and literary conventions have influenced how
it was later brought to life on film. You see
this kind of in themes that want to come out
in different versions of the telling of the vampire story,
and in this kind of visual imagery of like the
great Romantic emotional mountains. So these common Romantic literary tropes. Again,

(50:13):
this is my take, and I'm sure i'm oversimplifying. You know,
literature scholars might get mad at me, but this is
what I think. I think you see a lot of
like themes of the awe inspiring power of nature and instinct,
a preference for emotion and passion over cold blooded reason,
a kind of a sensibility of rebellion, a desire to

(50:34):
rebel against authority and institutions, and themes of the ways
in which personal experiences are kind of unique and precious
and difficult to share or express, and beyond all that,
just kind of a general attraction to mystery and amazement.
I do not think that these themes are especially present

(50:56):
in my reading of the novel Dracula, but I do
think these themes really come out in movie adaptations of Dracula.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Yes, and really even in the opening here in a sense,
a stranger in a strange land. What's going to happen?

Speaker 3 (51:11):
So anyway, we're down with the people now in the carriage,
and this is the part what I think this is
Carla Limley, isn't it who's reading reading from like a
travel book? Here there are like five or six people.
One of them is Dwight Fry. They're in this carriage.
Dwight Fry is dressed in a tidy suit and tie
with a white fedora. And I was just thinking, dude, you're

(51:31):
going to go in a full three piece suit to
the Borgo Pass.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
It's just how you traveled back then.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
So the other woman in the carriage, she's reading from
the travel book, and she says, among the rugged peaks
that frowned down upon the Borgo Pass are found crumbling
castles of a bygone age, and a little real world.
Note this is a real mountain pass. The Borgo Pass exists.
It's called some different today, but it is located in

(51:57):
modern day Romania. At the time then was written, this
was part of the region of Transylvania, which I believe
at the time was part of Hungary. Bramstoker almost certainly
never went there. He probably just found the name on
a map and it sounded cool, And according to experts,
like the way he describes it is not really how

(52:17):
this place.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Is right right. I've often heard it pointed out that
there's really more Irish mythology than Eastern European mythology. I mean,
there's a bit of it. The vampire does have Eastern
European origins, but there's a lot of Irish mythology bound
up in what bram Stoker is creating here.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
That's right. So Dwight Fry looks bored and annoyed. Everybody
in the carriage is getting tossed around by the bumpy road,
and he calls out to the driver to slow down,
but another man in the carriage, a local with a mustache,
leans over to sharply rebuke him, and he says, we
must reach the inn before sundown. So ain't no slowing

(52:53):
down this carriage. That is the wrong choice. We've got
to go as fast as we can to get to shelter.
Now why would it be to get there before sundown? Well,
he says, it is well, Purgas night, the night of evil.
That's April thirtieth, by the way, everyone, for those who
don't celebrate, And then he goes on to shout nos
Feratu before the woman in the carriage next to him.

(53:15):
I think this must be his wife. She tries to
cover up his mouth, but he will not be silent.
He says, on this night, madame, the doors they are barred,
and to the Virgin we pray. So the carriage does
make it to the end before sundown, and we see,
you know, the locals going about their business praying in Hungarian.
And here we get a scene versions of which are

(53:37):
in many adaptations of Dracula where the locals try to
warn the visiting real estate agent about the evils that
lurk at Castle Dracula. You know, No, it's a bad place,
don't go there, and they eventually will usually give him
some form of talismanic protection, usually a crucifix. Here it
is a crucifix.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Now.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
One thing that makes this adaptation unlike both the novel
and most later movie adaptations is the identity of the
agent making the visit. Usually, the agent that comes here
to Transylvania is one of our main young protagonists. It's
Jonathan Harker, or, in the German adaptations like nos Feraratu,

(54:17):
Thomas Hutter. In this version, the character is Wrenfield. Now,
for those not familiar with the story, Harker is the young, handsome,
ambitious fiance of Mina, who Mina will become, by the
end of the story the ultimate target of Dracula's predations,

(54:37):
Whereas Wrenfield in the novel is a former colleague of
Harker's who I believe had also previously traveled to Transylvania,
but that's not part of the narrative. It's the background.
He had gone there to conduct business with Count Dracula.
He ends up coming back having been driven mad, and
he is turned into Dracula's loyal servant and familiar spins

(55:00):
the rest of the story housed in doctor Seward's sanitarium
near Carfax, eating flies and pining to serve his master.
I do about right with that, Rob, Yes, that's correct.
So in the novel, Harker, the character who's our real
like protagonist, has to pick up where Renfield left off.
So he goes to Dracula's castle and we go with
him because we read his letters. He's going there to

(55:22):
bring signing papers for the purchase of an estate in England,
and we learn about Dracula first through Harker's letters here.
Harker will later escape the castle and be reunited with Mina,
and he is part of the posse of heroes who
chase down Dracula at the end of the novel to
free Mina from his curse. But this movie has made

(55:43):
some executive editing decisions and they have decided instead to
just give all of the action in Transylvania to Renfield,
which is in a way an efficient storytelling choice that
I can see ways in which that's a good edit.
But I would also argue that leaves Jonathan Harker without
a very good reason to be in the story and

(56:05):
without much interesting to do. It's just kind of like
Dracula is preying on Mina. Oh and Mina's got a
fiance somewhere. What's his deal?

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean I applaud the adaptation for
doubling down on weird Renfield, and it makes for the
intro to be I think, in a way more horrifying
because it is going to meet it ended madness for him.
He's not truly going to escape the count. But yeah,
Harker is reduced to almost nothing in the picture.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
I'm not trying to be mean to the actor or anything,
but it's just he he has strong, like why is
he here energy?

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
One note I wanted to make about Renfield and the
actor Dwight Fry who plays him here. This is from
David Skal's commentary Scout talks about how you know, really
Dwight Fry had the makings of a dashing leading man
of Hollywood. He had good looks, he had you know,
good acting skills, like he could have been that type
of character, that kind of leading player. But his role

(57:04):
as Renfield and then his later role as the grave
robbing assistant Fritz and James Wales. Frankenstein made it really
hard for Fry to get these roles, to get the
leading roles. He was kind of pigeonholed as the grinning
lunatic who you catch rooting around in the hospital Morgue
and they're just like it in a way. It was

(57:25):
like a very successful acting turn that proved to be
a curse for his career.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean you can make some comparisons to
Lugosi there as well, but yeah, a shame. It's also
shame that he died rather young heart attack or heart condition,
and yeah, it's you know, what could we have gotten
out of him had we had ten or twenty more
years of him as an active actor. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
Anyway, so back to the scene that the locals try
to warn Renfield away, but he insists that he has
to meet the Count because he's made it. He's got
an appointment with Count Dracula's carriage and they've got to
meet at the Borgo Pass at midnight. It sounds like fun.
By the way. One of the people who tries to
warn him off is this innkeeper here who is the
actor is great. I love this scene where he's he's

(58:18):
like telling him all of the vampire lore. He's telling him, like, listen,
no vampires are at the castle. You can't go there.
Vampires drink blood, they sleep in coffins, they change into
bats and wolves, they can be repelled by the cross.
This is all the stuff you need to know. But
it doesn't feel like the kind of tight lore dump
that it is. Instead, it's like this innkeeper is ranting

(58:39):
at me and I want him to stop.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Yeah, yeah, I had to look this guy at. Michael Visarov,
Russian born actor most mostly active in did parts in
the thirties and forties.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Anyway, after this, Renfield does take off in the carriage
again to meet Dracula's carriage at the Borgo Pass at midnight,
and we get another great dramatic landscape shot. This was
once again by combining real photography and painting. It's the
perilous rock bridge crossing to the vampire's castle. Now, before
Renfield arrives, we actually get what I think is one

(59:08):
of the best shots in the film, which is a
dolly shot, a moving camera shot through the filthy catacombs
and the bowels of Dracula's castle, and we're approaching this
brood of coffins that lie nestled in the dust, and
there's this great effect where mist is pouring eerily across
the surface of the earth, and we get closer and

(59:30):
closer to the coffin, and finally the lid creaks open
and out comes a pale hand.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
This, I believe is one of a few shots that
is pointed out as being clearly inspired by twenty two's Nosferatu.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
Oh yeah, okay, I don't think I would have made
that connection, but that sounds right to me. Now. Interesting note,
we don't see Draculu's face in this moment where the
hand is coming out of the coffin. In fact, before
we see his face, we see the face of one
of his wives. So, despite some movie trivia, sources say
the first on screen vampire in a talkie was not

(01:00:05):
bela Lagosi, but one of his three demon brides. I'm
almost certain this is the one played by Geraldine de Vorak.
She beats him by a few seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
However, she does not talkie herself.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Very quiet.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
Also in the scene possums, you know, yes, but Dracula's castles.
It's full of possums. They're crawling around in the bones,
they're getting up all in all the cracks and crevices.
They've got a real possum issue.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Oh man. When I started watching Dracula the other day
with my kid, I wasn't fully considering it for this
week's Weird House Cinema until the possums and the armadillos
showed up, rooting around caskets and generally just infesting Dracula's castle.
So the possums show up first, and I was like, okay,
fair enough, possums look like big gross rats. I'll allow it.

(01:00:51):
But then there are armadillas as well, armadillos as well.
And to be clear, possums and armadillo's are both endemic
to the Americas. They absolutely don't live in Transylvania or
Eastern Europe. And yet at the same time, you know
you have to acknowledge they do look creepy rooting around
in a Gothic castle. So what's going on here? Well,
the most obvious interpretations are, of course, this was shot

(01:01:13):
in California and on a depression trunken budget, so you know,
you use what you can get your hands on, and
if you didn't know any better, these animals again look
creepy in a Gothic castle setting. A deeper answer, however,
seems to exist in attitudes concerning these two species, especially
at the time I was reading Dale Hudson's Of Course

(01:01:34):
there are werewolves and vampires from the American Quarterly twenty thirteen,
and this author argues that the presence of these creatures
serve to animalize Dracula himself. Additionally, the contagion aspects of
Stoker's novel are perhaps summoned here in the presence of
two creatures often associated with diseases possums. I look this up.

(01:01:55):
They can carry a number of diseases that are transferable
to humans, and Armatilla's, of course, can carry Furthermore, there
are slash were apparently tall tales of Armadillo's digging up
graves and eating corpses.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
What I've never heard that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
I mean, they do root around, and I think the
idea is that this led to, you know, tall tails
of them digging up and eating corpses, and you know,
there may be some accounts of them, you know, eating
non insect meat, scavenging it if the availability is there.
I mean, we've seen that in other animals, but it
seems to be yeah, just you know, a myth and

(01:02:31):
a legend. But yeah, despite all the other aspects of
this adaptation of Dracula that becomes set in Stone, the
inclusion of possums and Armadilla's doesn't seem to be like
something that really stuck. I don't think cope Wi used
this at all.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
I do not recall it. But anyway, so after that,
we finally get to the iconic shot where we first
see Bella Legosi in full standing tall in a black
cloak with the tall collar, and the dark catacombs under
the stone arches and the cobwebs, with the light curiously
falling on his face in a way that makes him
look unnaturally pale, and the camera closes in and it

(01:03:08):
brings us closer and closer to him, and it's almost
like he's floating through the air toward us as the
camera zooms in. Just great, great shot. It's one of
those all time epic movie introductions. It's like, when you
see a guy for the first time like this, you'll
never forget him.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Yeah, it's like he is floating towards us. We are
being drawn towards him. Yeah, we are already captivated.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
We also see Dracula's brides for the first time in
this scene. They're like creeping along through the catacombs, also
under these arches, and very very unsettling as well. So
the next scene is the one where Dracula picks up
Rinfield at the Borgo Pass at midnight. Dracula is supposed
to be in disguise as the coachman here in the novel.
I think he doesn't want Harker to realize that he's

(01:03:53):
doing everything himself and that he doesn't actually have any
living servants inside his castle, so he you know, he's
into guys. But this is not a good disguise.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
It's bel Legosi, okay, basically just as a scarf and
a hat.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Yeah yeah, but yeah, maybe if you've never seen Belli
Lagosi before, just like, okay, it's another guy. Renfield meets
the carriage in a haunted, misty landscape filled with crooked trees,
and then he gets aboard. The driver does not speak.
At one point along the way, Renfield looks out the
window and sees the team of horses being led by
a bat in flight. Good. Good, little moment.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Yeah, I want to add a note here about the
you know, their rubber bats on yeah, on the strings essentially.
We've seen so many flapping rubber bats on strings and
various films, but here they do look really good. I
mean there's never any doubt that you're watching an effect
and not a real animal, but it looks really good.
I absolute props.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
It's a rubber bat. But I like this rubber bat. Yeah,
the rubber bat is better than the rubber spider that
climbs the wall in a few minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Oh, it's true. Yeah, they couldn't keep live spider. Try
to use live spiders. There are some. There are some
live crickets as well, but yeah, live spiders. That's got
eaten up pretty quickly.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
Okay, some notes about the scene where where Renfield arrives
at the castle. It's great. You know, the door creaks
open by itself. Again, most people have probably seen some
kind of adaptation of Dracula, so you know this scene,
Renfield cautiously steps into the main hall, which looks as
if it had been deserted for centuries. Everything's covered in
just ages worth of dust, giant spider webs. You got

(01:05:31):
bats bobbing and cheapen outside the window. Uh are here,
Here's where we meet the Armadillos for the first time.
They're just crawling out of the furniture. Another beautiful set,
once again a composite shot made by I think it's
a real photograph, real photography of a stage, a sound
stage made up set on the bottom, and then I

(01:05:53):
think the painted editions are higher up in the frame.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
Yeah, it's absolutely gorgeous. The depth is amazing and is
nov in the Road to Dracula documentary. This look, this set,
like this really sets the tone for the look of
horror films, all the horror films that come afterwards, particularly
gothic horror films to come. This cathedral of the macabre.

(01:06:18):
It just yeah, you know what you're looking at here,
and it just resonates through horror cinema and things adjacent
to horror cinema, Like this is like your basic Scooby
Doo haunted house as well. So it does get deluded
to a certain extent, but here in its original form,
I mean, it's still astounding.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
Yeah, that's right. I mean it is beautiful, and it's
the mother of all movie haunted castles. So we get
the introductory scene he Dracula comes down the stairs with
the candelabra. He says, I am Dracula. He says to Renfield,
I bid you welcome. Renfield says, is just kind of
nervously stammering and you know, saying a bunch of stuff
that's not necessary. And as they start to go up

(01:06:59):
the stairs, we get the great moment where Count Dracula says,
they hear wolves howling outside, and Dracula says, listen to them,
chill the rain of the night. What music they make?
I'm sorry if I didn't deliver that right, but it's
it's I think Skull points out that actually, in a
lot of later adaptations of the Dracula story, this line

(01:07:22):
gets embellished. They start adding other words to it, where
it's like what beautiful music they make or what sweet
music they make? And the simplicity of what music they
make is so much better. I like that this Dracula
is understated.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
Yeah, yeah, and again yeah, the cryptic nature of it
and the fact that Lugosi makes every syllable count. And
I think it was Joe Dante who made the point
in the Road to Dracula that that Legosi also had
a great ability to find every possible syllable in a
word yes and bring it to full life.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
The scene also has the moment where Dracula is going
up the stairs and he passes through the spider web
without parting it, and then Renfield going through. You know,
there's a spider web across the Dracula is already gone
and he has to split the web and go through,
which is eerie, but there are actually no special effects needed.
It's just a no ominous cut. You see him walking
up toward it and it cuts away and suddenly he's

(01:08:17):
on the other side of it, but it's still intact.
And then a rubber spider scuttles up the wall. So
Renfield is brought up to a more hospitable room with
a roaring fireplace and supper set out for him. This
drag hospitality scene also appears in some form in most
versions of the story. As usual, they discuss business here,

(01:08:37):
you know, Dracula signs the lease on the property he's
acquiring in England. He works out shipping arrangements. He explains
that he's taking three boxes on the ship that he's
chartered for England, which is leaving tomorrow evening. Wow, that's
soon three boxes. I think he takes more boxes in

(01:08:57):
the book, but three, I guess that. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
It seems like you could take four, right. I must
be missing something here because he needs one for each
bride and then himself. But maybe there's.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
I don't know, that's a good point. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
Even then there were carry on lints and and so forth.
So it was like, I have four buckses and they're like, well,
we have to charge you for the fourth, when it's
like I can make do with three.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
So Renfield in this scene, of course, you know, he
gets a paper cut all those documents. That's a little dangerous.
You're gonna you're gonna cut your fingers, and he does,
and DrAk can't help himself. He starts creeping up to him,
but then the sign of the cross, the crucifix given
to him by the woman at the end, makes Dracula
recoil m And around here is where we start getting

(01:09:41):
these great close ups on Dracula's face with the light
just falling over his eyes where he seems to be
hypnotizing the person in front of him. Uh. The scene
also has the great wine exchange, you know, where he
offers wine to Renfield. He says, this is very old wine.
I hope you will like it. And Renfield's like, oh,
thank you. Aren't you you having any I never drink why.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
We know what he drinks.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
So after this, Dracula leaves Renfield for the evening, but
he's not leaving for long. Renfield, when finally alone, looks
moderately disconcerted. But then uh h. Immediately some trouble starts
creeping in. So we see Dracula's three demon brides approaching
the door through a through a misty hallway, and then
Renfield goes to the window of his room, outside of

(01:10:28):
which there are these crooked tree branches and it's a
I don't know, just a very creepy kind of landscape
out there again, like mists covering the ground. And then
a bat there's a bat. Oh, bat comes to the
window and it sort of floats in front of him.
Renfield collapses on the floor as if you know, hypnotized
into unconsciousness somehow by the bat. And then the brides

(01:10:49):
creep into the room. They're advancing on Renfield's body. They're
obviously they're going to drink his blood, but no, no,
Renfield is not for them. Dracula himself comes back in
through the window into the room, and he drives away
his wives as if to say he is mine, and
then the Count descends on Wrinfield's unconscious body and leans

(01:11:10):
over him to take him in his arms.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Yeah, it's great, Steveuince. And we never actually see him
like bite into Renfield. Correct me if I'm wrong, But
do we ever see fangs in nineteen thirty one Stracula
at all?

Speaker 3 (01:11:24):
That's a very good point. I'm afraid to be wrong,
but I think you never do. Yeah, I think you
never see them. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
If you do see them there, it's not much as
made out of it, And it almost seems like they
couldn't show for things, you know, like that would be
too much for thirty one, and therefore it's implied rather
than shown. And I mean you don't miss them because
your imagination takes you there already.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):
That's right. So we get the standard interlude of a
ship on route to England. A difference from most versions
here is that because it's Wrinfield rather than Harker who
went to the castle, Renfield is on the ship with Dracula.
There's like there are two creeps on this journey, and
he's a full on vampire thraw already. You know, he's

(01:12:10):
crouching next to the to the vampire's coffin, saying, you
will keep your promise when we get to London, won't you? Master?
You will see that I get lives.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
I think for some reason, it's not the Demeter as well,
like it venta Yeah, because they I guess, you know,
they didn't give themselves enough time to make that particular ship,
so they had to deal with the deal with another one. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):
Yeah, so, uh so Dracula is like he never answers
the question about whether he's gonna get lives, does he. He
just gives him this withering look like no promises, kid.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Yeah, we've already talked about this. We're not going through
all this again. Yeah, you get what you get. You
don't pitch a fit.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
We've got lives at home. So of course Dracula, you know,
he eats the crew along the way. When they arrived.
The only sailors left on the ship are dead. There's
one tied to the wheel, which we only see in silhouette.
But here we start to get Dwight Fry's deranged high
energy performance, like they throw open the doors down into
the hold and Dwight Fry is just standing there at

(01:13:09):
the bottom of the stairs, laughing maniacally with this unbelievably
devilish grin. It's so good.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Oh yes.

Speaker 3 (01:13:17):
We also get a newspaper clipping here to sort of
fill us in on what's going on. It tells us
that the soul survivor is a raving maniac, says quote.
His craving to devour ants, flies, and other small living
things to obtain their blood puzzles scientists. At present, he
is under observation in doctor Seward's sanitarium near London. Now

(01:13:39):
Here we also get a scene that say, in a
lot of versions of this story, the sort of first
taste of the fish out of water horror scenario, and
it's Dracula walking the streets of modern London. The old
curse has been taken out of the old world and
inserted into the modern world. So he menacingly approaches a
girl selling fla on the street corner and then slowly

(01:14:02):
envelops her with his arms to drink her blood. And
I wanted to take a moment to talk here about
the staging of how Dracula descends upon a victim in
this movie, it almost looks sort of awkward. Usually, it's
clearly a deliberate choice to make him move like this.
It is a stiff, extremely slow movement into the victim's

(01:14:25):
space and around them. He did the same thing when
he descended on Dwight Fry's unconscious body. He'll do the
same thing later when we see him leaning down toward
Mina's bed. It's just this slow, stiff, rigid kind of approach.
I don't know exactly why they made that choice or
what it means, but it's interesting and different, and I

(01:14:46):
don't know, it looks very weird.

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
Yeah, it makes me think of some of the later
scenes where we see him using his full power of
enthrallment over victims. You know, he doesn't have to lunge,
he doesn't have to move quickly because he's already snared
you with his eyes.

Speaker 4 (01:15:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good comparison. I
don't know, I'll have to think more about that anyway.
Dracula makes his way to an auditorium in the city
center where a symphony performance is taking place. He eventually
makes his way to the box bearing our main good characters.
These are Mina Seward and Lucy Weston, two young women

(01:15:22):
close friends since childhood who will become the targets of
Count Dracula's blood hunt in London. Jonathan Harker again with
big whys he here now energy Mina's fiance. He's Mina's fiance.
There he is. There's doctor Seward, who runs the sanitarium
where Rinfield has been committed, which also just happens to

(01:15:43):
be right next door to Carfax Abbey, the estate that
Dracula has leased. In this version of the story, doctor
Seward is Mina's father in the novel, that's not the case.
I think he is. He's younger, and I believe he
is one of Lucy's mini suitors. That's the whole thing.
In the novel, She's got like five different guys who
are trying to marry her.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
Unnecessary love triangle removed. I'm in favor love Pentagon, Yeah, Pentagon.
So Dracula uses a ploy to talk himself into the
sort of opera box here to meet these characters. I
think one thing I was a little unclear on is
like why he's trying to meet them, And I think

(01:16:25):
the issue is that he knows Renfield, his vampire Thrall,
has been committed to the sanitarium the Doctor Seward runs,
and so he's trying to to like influence them related
to that, or maybe because they're neighbors.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
Now, maybe that's why.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Yeah, their neighbors's neighborly.

Speaker 3 (01:16:43):
This is neighborly, that's exactly yes, So he introduces himself
to the three younger Londoners. Doctor Seward takes a phone call,
and you know, they bring up that he's moving into
Carfax Abbey and Harker's like, oh, that's very old. Will
it need repairs? And Dracula says, I shall do very
little repairing.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
This is such a great everyone plays. The next time
you move to a new town or new home, keep
this one with you. When someone, when a neighbor like
subtly brings up some sort of repair that might need
to happen, be like, I shall do very little repair.

Speaker 3 (01:17:17):
Very good. Yeah. So, but he explains it's because he
likes the way that the abbey reminds him of the
old broken battlements of his castle in Transylvania. And then
Lucy says, oh, you know, that reminds me of an
old toast. I don't remember everything she says, but it
ends with a line about dying, and then Dracula says,
to die, to be really dead. That must be glorious.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):
Oh that's so good. And there's more too. That's great
because then Mina says, why Count Dracula, and that alone
is excellent. I love that, Oh Dracula. But then then
the Count says, they are far worse things awaiting men
than death, and oh my god, this is another moment
where I just love the ambiguity and the cryptic nature
of it. Is he talking about is he talking about undeath?

(01:18:02):
Or is it something else, like something so terrible that
we morals haven't even conceived of it yet. It's only
known to the vampires.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
Yes, that's right. So in this scene, Dracula somewhat charms them.
I clearly he becomes fixated on Lucy, and in a
later scene at home between Mina and Lucy, we see
that Lucy's kind of fixated on him, like they're making
jokes about his accent, but Lucy talks about how she's
fascinated by the Count.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Yeah, they're just both kind of hanging out crushing on Dracula.

Speaker 4 (01:18:30):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
Yeah. But then later that night, in Lucy's bedroom while
she sleeps, there's a bat floating out the window. You
don't want that. And then he appears in Legosi form
in her room, standing over her bed, and once again
he slowly descends and we cut away right as he's
over her. I guess here's a good part in the

(01:18:52):
in the plot to kind of take a step back
and acknowledge the plot falls A follows a similar structure
to most Stracks adaptations, and we can kind of note
some interesting things and differences. So at this point in
the story, usually Lucy takes ill as a result of
having her blood drained by the vampire each night. In
the book, this illness and the mystery as to its

(01:19:15):
cause are protracted, but in this movie we just We're
going to cut straight to her death and the autopsy,
and doctor Seward and colleagues note that there are two
marks on her neck, the same as with the other
victims in London that have been found drained of blood.
So from here doctor Seward recruits the aid of his mentor,
doctor Van Helsing, who deduces that they may be dealing

(01:19:37):
not with an ordinary illness, but with a vampire. No
s Feratu, and then Lucy dies. In this version, she
dies quite quickly and the vampire turns his attention to Mina,
whom he visits in the Night for blood, eventually starting
to turn her into a vampire herself. And the heroes
in the end have to solve the mystery and realize

(01:19:58):
that the only way they can save Mina is to
destroy the vampire, which they do. So things to discuss
within the structure. As the movie goes on, we got
scenes of Rinfield at the sanitarium raving about how he
wants to eat spiders. He's trying to upgrade from flies,
like he's been eating flies, but he decides they're not
good enough now he wants spiders. Of course, we meet

(01:20:20):
doctor van Helsing when we meet him here. I think
he's like doing some chemistry experiments right after the death
of Lucy, and he's like, yep, tests came back. Knows Faratu,
that's what we're dealing with. So they I don't know.
They cut over what, from my memory is a huge
section in the middle of the book to get from
like Lucy starts falling sick to they figure out that

(01:20:40):
a vampire is involved. That's a couple minutes in this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:20:45):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a quick test. But yeah,
the van Helsing here, I guess maybe it's the chemistry
set in the glasses kind of helps give him a
slight mad scientist air for me, and I guess, like
the van Helsing that I'm mostly familiar with is Peter Cushings,
and Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, of course, is very prim
and proper.

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):
Very Yeah. Yeah, this guy's weirder than Peter Cushing definitely.
So the mystery in this is not whether it's a vampire.
I mean, I guess some of the other like Seward
and Harker take some convincing, but Van Helsing gets there immediately.

(01:21:26):
So the mystery is not like what is hurting Lucy,
but it is who is the vampire? Renfield is the
initial subject, and this is plausible because Renfield keeps escaping
the sanitarium. The scene where Van Helsing first meets Renfield
is great, like he asks Renfield asked to be sent
away from the sanitarium? Why? He says, because my cries

(01:21:47):
at night might disturb Mina. They might give her bad dreams,
which is this great combination of sweet and threatening. You
can't tell which one it is, but Van Helsing drives
Field mad with a sprig of wolf Spain. He's like, you,
I have some of this, and how about little wolf
Spain Renfield, and Renfield says, you know too much to

(01:22:08):
live van Helsing, and this, of course confirms Van Helsing's
suspicions some vamping is going on. So Dracula attacks Mina
in the night, and after this happens, there's a haunting
scene where she explains her experience the next morning. I
thought this is a good monologue. She says, I heard
dogs howling, and when the dream came, it seemed the

(01:22:29):
whole room was filled with mist. It was so thick.
I could just see the lamp by the bed, a
tiny spark in the fog. And then I saw two
red eyes glaring at me, and a white, livid face
came down out of the mist. It came closer and closer.
I felt its breath on my face, and then its lips.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
And we compare this with what we saw from the
scene before, where Dracula is descending over her bed. And
it's funny because Dracula is often very composed and calm
and movie but he as he's leaning right over her.
He makes this grimace that I don't think we've seen
anywhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
Yeah, yeah, this is like, this is the scene where
you would see the things. I feel like if we
were going to see things. But yeah, it's horrifying and
he's coming right at us.

Speaker 3 (01:23:18):
Yeah. Yeah. And this scene leads to doctor van Helsing
doing a throat check on Mina. Like he takes her
scarf off, and what do you know, She's got some
punctures on the neck. She was hiding them behind a scarf.
Something kind of interesting there. The movie doesn't really draw
a lot of attention to it, but why was Mina
hiding the wounds? Anyway, This scene is suddenly interrupted by

(01:23:39):
a visit from Count Dracula. Mina kind of perks up
on Dracula's arrival. I remember she didn't seem to like
him that much when they first met, but now she's
kind of eager to talk to him and smiles in
his presence. Apparently Dracula has been telling Mina grim tales
about his home country and she likes that. Another interesting
choice in this scene. I don't recall if this is

(01:23:59):
in the novel or not. I don't think so. But
Dracula knows of Van Helsing. It's like, oh, yes, we're
familiar with your work, even in Transylvania.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
Well, you know, Van Helsing probably publishes in the various
occult journals, and you know, Dracula and his kind read up.
They want to stay abreast of new findings in vampire sciences.

Speaker 3 (01:24:21):
Of course, yeah, you got to know your enemy, right,
So read what van Helsing writes. Another great thing in
the scene the mirror in the cigarette case. I love
this part. So Van Helsing first notices that Dracula has
no reflection in the mirrored lid of a cigarette case,
and then he sets a trap for Dracula. Where before
they're parting ways, he suddenly opens the case in front

(01:24:43):
of him. And I love the way Legosi reacts to
this trick. It's a you know, he reacts with surprise
and alarm, and the slaps the case out of Van
Helsing's hand onder the floor, steps back and glares at him.
But then slowly the glare turns into a composed smile.
Oh and also he turns into a wolf as he's

(01:25:04):
running away across the lawn. So you know, as I said,
Harker and Sewer takes some convincing by Van Helsing that
they're definitely dealing with a vampire, but they're slowly getting there.
This leads to another lore dump. We got a lore
dump for Renfield earlier, but here's one from Van Helsing.

(01:25:24):
It's like, you know, yeah, vampires have to drink blood
to survive. They sleep in their native soil every day,
which means he must have brought some soil with him
from Transylvania. They're talking about this, but they get interrupted
by maniacal laughter when Dwight Fry comes in again. Hilarious
keeps escaping. He's here once more.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
They I guess they just have a trust policy, you know, yeah,
the sanatorium, like stop leaving. You're not going to leave
this time, right, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:25:50):
I promise they're on the honor system. Yeah. But Renfield
in this scene, this is the part I was talking about,
where he does a face turn, like he explains to
the heroes that Dracula is targeting Mina and he can't
let Dracula take Mina. I guess maybe Renfield loves her
or just feels protective of her in some way.

Speaker 1 (01:26:09):
I guess so.

Speaker 3 (01:26:10):
But in the scene, Dracula reappears in bat form and
menaces Renfield, which makes him clam up and declare his
loyalty wants more to the Master. And then suddenly everybody
goes running because a maid calls out that Mina has
been found dead. Oh no, which leads to this horrifying scene,
another great Dwight Fry moment, where like the maid is

(01:26:32):
left alone in the room with Dwight Fry and he's
grinning maniacally and doing this horrible laughter, and she faints
and then he's like crawling on the floor toward her body.

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
Yeah, like he's an anaconda that is going to go
to swallow her hole. It's super creepy.

Speaker 3 (01:26:48):
Love it. Yeah, But fortunately we find out that Mina
is not dead, as she was near death, but they
got there just in time. So some other stuff goes on.
There's a side plot with Lucy being a vampire who's
running around stealing children and stuff. But one thing that
they do in this movie is there's no garlic for Mina.
When they set a trap for Dracula and Mina's chambers

(01:27:10):
with stuff to repel him. It's wolf Spain. It's just
all wolf Spain.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
Yeah, I mean, I can understand people being a little
bit too familiar with garlic. And why would this scare
away of vampires. Maybe we go with wolf Spain because
it has a little more mistique to it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that too. Now here's
where we get to. There's another Renfield escape scene, of course,
and then he is describing the appeal that Dracula made
to him. He says, he came and stood below my
window in the moonlight, and he promised me things, not
in words, but by doing them. He's talking to Van Helsing.
He says, by making them happen. A red mist spread

(01:27:46):
over the lawn, coming on like a flame of fire.
And then he parted it, and I could see that
there were thousands of rats with their eyes blazing red
like his, only smaller. Then he held up his hand
and they all stopped, and I thought he seemed to
be saying, rats, rats, rats, thousands, millions of them, all
red blood, all these I will give you if you

(01:28:07):
will obey me.

Speaker 1 (01:28:09):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:28:09):
I love that. That's the thing that Renfield. You know,
some people when they make a deal with the devil,
they want riches, somewhat, you know, power. He wants rats.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
Yeah. In that line, he promised me things, not in words,
but by doing them, like oh, it's just perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:28:27):
But promised in return for what I think it's for.
I believe Renfield sabotaged the protections that against Dracula that
were in Mina's room, like he got rid of the
wolf Spain or something. I don't know. Somehow Dracula got
into Mina's room and I think Renfield was involved. And whoops,
he has turned to Mina into a vampire now, and
so this is going to accelerate us toward the conclusion.

(01:28:48):
The only way to get Mina back is to destroy
the vampire. Now, there's a scene where we have were
like Harker is left alone with Mina here and she's
creepy now right, Like she doesn't like the smell of
wolf Spain. She's really interested in Harker's neck. She keeps
staring at it. And Chandler is good in this, Like
she puts on the creeps and she keeps him close.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:29:11):
She's talking about like I love the fog. I love
nights with the fog. And it's like you never you
said in the past that you hated the night time
in the fog, And she's like well, I like it now,
But anyway, we're going on toward the conclusion. We know
that we gotta have a final showdown where the heroes
find Dracula's coffins and Carfax Abbey and drive the steak

(01:29:33):
into him. Before that, one one great moment as we
get the sort of the death of w Renfield, like
Dracula is taking Mina back to his lair and he
confronts w Renfield on this long, creepy staircase and Renfield says, no,
please don't kill me, master, I can't die with all
those lives on my conscience. And Dracula just I think,

(01:29:54):
breaks his neck and throws him down the staircase and
Renfield tumbles like a doll.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Great saint, Great Saint again. Like this said, the set
is amazing that there's real tension in minutes there.

Speaker 3 (01:30:05):
Yeah, yeah, it's wonderful. And then of course we get
the final staking, the final staking of Dracula in his coffin,
and Mina is rescued from from her demonic fate and
reunited with John. So there is a happy ending. But
like many adaptations of Dracula, I thought we would mention
this the final staking of Dracula in his coffin has

(01:30:26):
always felt a bit anti climactic. You know, in this case,
it's not even done by the young hero who's to
be reunited with his love. Is done by Van helsing Uh.
And I don't know, it's like it happens off screen.
You just hear Dracula yell and then you know it's
kind of a hammering and a yelling and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
Yeah, it's kind of like what happens to the villain. Well,
we hunted him down and killed him in his sleep,
like it's you know, it's it doesn't feel as heroic.
I still love it, but but you know, it makes
you in a way. Maybe it's the thing that make
people love Dracula so much though, because like a lot
of these universal horror films, we identify with the monster

(01:31:07):
so much, and subsequent generations identify with the monster, you know,
the creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein's Monster, and Dracula, like,
we feel a certain amount of sympathy for him at
the end because he is this outsider character who cannot
quite make a life for himself in this new place,
and then he's hunted down and killed by the local inhabitants, Like, yes,

(01:31:29):
they were eradicating because he's a bloodsucking demon, but still
feel you feel for him in a way because he
is killed in his sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):
I absolutely see what you're saying. And of course Bella
Lagosi makes the character more interesting and fun and likable
than he would be otherwise. I still think the universal
Dracula in this movie is a less sympathetathetic character than
the other monster. As you mentioned, he's less sympathetic than
Frankenstein's creature certainly. I would also say less sympathetic than

(01:31:59):
the creature from Black Lagoon who's just hanging out at home.
People go to where he is and bother him. Yeah, uh,
and certainly less sympathetic than some Dracula adaptations that would
come later. That it make him a more explicitly like, tragic,
wronged and romantic figure. I mean, in this movie, there's
no mistaken he's the bad guy. Like he yes, he's

(01:32:20):
going out of his way to hurt other people.

Speaker 1 (01:32:23):
And I think that's ultimately the way I like my
I mean, I like some romantic Draculas, and Gary Oldman's
Dracula is terrific. Yeah, and that in Coppola's version, and
you know that plays up the tragic aspects of the character.
But you know, I love it when when you have
like a Christopher Lee Dracula or the bell Legosti Dracula
that is that is more just absolutely evil, or even

(01:32:44):
the Dracula in Blacula that we previously talked about in
the show, where that is a really evil Dracula.

Speaker 3 (01:32:50):
Oh oh, you're talking about Dracula himself, not not the
not Mama Walde.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
No, yeah, yeah, yeah, the racist Dracula from the film.

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
Evil racist Dracula, who's like I I love drinking blood
and I approve.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
Of the slave trade. Yes, that Dracula.

Speaker 3 (01:33:04):
But anyway, coming back to this thing about the anti
climactic ending of staking the Dracula in his coffin, I
feel like this is actually a change from the nineteen
twenty two nos Feratu that was like a good a
good change to you know, to invert the ending where
instead of attacking the vampire in his sleep, you force
him to stay out too late. That is more like

(01:33:26):
the vampire is undone or is destroyed by being trapped
by his own greed and violence.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 3 (01:33:34):
Anyway, that's the universal Dracula.

Speaker 1 (01:33:37):
Love it absolutely. I mean, it's a classic. It's an
icon for a reason. And if you haven't seen it,
if you haven't seen it in a long time, it's
well worth looking up. I mean, maybe save it for Halloween,
but you know why deprive yourself. Go ahead and watch
it now. All right, We're going to go ahead and
close the book on nineteen thirty one's Dracula. Just a
reminder that Stuffed to Bow Your Mind is primarily a

(01:33:58):
science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Dracula has come up in a number of them. He
even came up in our episodes on Dust from last year.
But for the most part, we don't talk about Dracula
in every Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode, but he
does come up generally, though. We set aside most serious
concerns on Fridays when we have a Weird House Cinema

(01:34:19):
episode and we just talk about a nice weird movie.
If you want to keep up with the various weird movies.
So we've discussed on Weird House Cinema. We have an
account on a letterboxed that's Weird House. You can find
us there, and we have a list of all the
films that we've covered so far, and sometimes there's a
peek ahead at what comes next.

Speaker 3 (01:34:36):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.