Dracula 1931

Story

A coach travels through rocky, mountainous terrain in Transylvania as five people speak inside. One young woman with glasses (Carla Laemmle) talks about the Borgo Pass, which they are approaching. One passenger wants the coach to slow down, but another wants it to reach their destination before sunset. He speaks of “the night of evil.” At a local inn, the carriage is welcomed, and luggage is unloaded, but one American, Renfield (Dwight Frye), says not to unload his; he’s going on to the Borgo Pass tonight. The drivers are upset and scared, asking if the passenger could wait until daybreak. Of course, he cannot wait, saying a coach will meet him at the Borgo Pass at midnight. One local asks who he is meeting, and Renfield says Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), and a woman crosses herself. The locals, in shock, say he mustn’t go to Castle Dracula because he and his wives are vampires. The locals warn him to wear a crucifix if he must go. The carriage heads off.

Meanwhile, inside the cellar of Dracula’s castle, we focus on a lone coffin with a hand opening the lid, and a woman emerges. Rats scurry in the nooks and crannies of the cellar, while the figure of Count Dracula emerges silently, staring. Three eerie women join him. In the next sequence, he is cloaked in a warm coat with a hat that obscures his features, mounting a carriage to pick up Renfield. Mist and fog shroud his coach. Soon, another carriage bearing Renfield approaches. The coachman quickly allows Renfield to exit, throwing his luggage outside. Silently, Dracula stares at Renfield, and the real estate agent picks up his luggage and enters Dracula’s carriage. Approaching the mountaintop castle, the carriage ride is rather bumpy. When Renfield sticks his head outside to ask the coachman to slow down, he only sees a bat flying over the horses and is horrified. Soon arriving at Castle Dracula, a huge wooden door opens, emitting shards of light against the darkness.

Renfield enters the castle and sees ornate, high walls with large columns and windows. The huge, dusty room dwarfs him, and he sees bats flapping outside the windows. Dracula slowly descends the staircase, holding a candle. Armadillos scurry about. The nobleman introduces himself and bids the confused man welcome. After hearing a far-off wolf howl, Dracula says, “The children of the night, what music they make.” Renfield ascends the staircase with Count Dracula, cutting through dense cobwebs. A spider scurries up the wall. “The spider is spinning his web for the unwary fly. The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield,” Dracula says in an East European, heavily accented voice.

The two enter a huge, high-ceilinged living room, free of dirt and cobwebs, where a fireplace burns and a meal has been set for Renfield. Renfield sits at the large table to eat his meal while Dracula disappears, only to return with a bottle of wine. Dracula is very excited to discuss the lease on Carfax Abby. Smiling, Renfield tells the Count everything is in order, while Dracula leers at him. Count Dracula quickly scans the legal paperwork. In clipped speech, Dracula says he has chartered a boat to England, and they will leave tomorrow evening. The Count shows Renfield his ornate bed mere feet from the dining table, and Renfield cuts his finger, bleeding, inciting the Count to closely examine the wound. The vampire slinks slowly toward Renfield. The crucifix falls and repels Dracula. Dracula recovers and pours a glass of very old wine for him. When Renfield asks aren’t you drinking, Dracula says, “I never drink ... wine.” Dracula then dismisses himself. After Dracula exits, the three vampire wives approach. A bat flies outside the open door. Renfield collapses as the three women approach. Dracula, emerging from the fog outside, comes inside. Dracula approaches the fallen Renfield, stalks him, and bends down toward him.

The next sequence shows a stormy sea and the Vesta heading to England. Many crewmen struggle to keep the ship afloat. Renfield, now a servant to Dracula, opens the earth box for him. Soon, a hand, then the entire figure of Dracula, emerges. Renfield begs Dracula to keep his promise and give him life. Not human life, but “the small ones.” He reminds Count Dracula of his loyalty. When the boat finally arrives in England, all the crew are dead, and even the captain is tied to the steering wheel. Renfield whispers to Dracula’s earth box that we are here. Then he lets out a demon laugh from the bottom of a staircase on the boat’s lower level. “Why, he’s mad ... look at his eyes! He’s gone crazy,” the investigators declare. Renfield is sent to Dr. Seward’s sanitarium near London.

A young woman sells flowers as the odd Count approaches through the London fog. Dracula stares at her. She screams, and the vampire satiates himself with her. Whistle-blowing, a policeman soon finds the woman’s body. Dracula makes his way to the London Opera House and enters.

Count Dracula goes to a private box of seats where John Harker (David Manners) and his companion Lucy (Frances Dade), Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), and his daughter Mina (Helen Chandler) are sitting. Dracula enters the box and tells the others he rented Carfax Abby. Later, Mina and Lucy parody Count Dracula’s slow speech pattern, calling him quite “romantic” and “fascinating.”

Dracula walks slowly down a London street, as slow as his halting speech. Dracula eyes Lucy preparing for bed from the street. Soon, a bat flaps outside her open window. Soon, the creature materializes into a stalking Count Dracula inside her bedroom. His right hand extended, he crouches down, nearing Lucy in bed, who is sleeping, and approaches her neck, as the sequence fades out. In the surgical theater shown next, Lucy has died, the latest victim, loss of blood being the cause. The doctor reports that the same two marks appear on her throat, as do the marks appear on all his victims.

At Seward’s Sanitarium, a wild scream is heard by the tenants. One man says he wants his flies again. The demented man, Renfield, pleads with an attendant, Martin (Charles K. Gerrard), to let him have his spider back. But Martin kills it, saying why can’t you be satisfied with flies, but Renfield dismisses them as “poor, puny things,” not worth a thought when he can get spiders.

Dr. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) is diligently working in his lab, wearing thick glasses, telling his assembled audience, “Gentlemen, we are dealing with the Undead!” The term Nosferatu is used, and Van Sloan says, “The Undead, vampires!” Seward then tells Dr. Van Helsing that his patient, Renfield, must devour living things to sustain his life. Dr. Seward thinks vampires are supernatural myths, but Van Helsing reminds him that the myths of yesterday are the science of today.

Seward tells Van Helsing that Renfield has been missing from his room for hours. Martin and Renfield enter, and Renfield appears more settled, less of a raving lunatic, until the mad Renfield returns and demands that Dr. Seward send him away from here. He thinks his insects might drive Mina away and give her nightmares.

Wolves bay, and in the cellar of Carfax Abbey, an earth box stirs, releasing Count Dracula from his confinement. Van Helsing speaks of the howling wolves. Renfield accuses Van Helsing of knowing too much to live. Seward orders Martin to take Renfield away. Seward asks Van Helsing what excited Renfield so, and he slowly names an herb: wolfsbane. The doctor says that locals in Central Europe use it to keep vampires away.

Back in his quarters, Renfield hears wolves howling and rants, “Yes, Master!” as Dracula hides behind a tree outside. Wild-eyed, Renfield cries, “Master, you’re back ... Please don’t ask, Master, to do that! Please!” He is under emotional stress, crying. The flapping bat returns, fluttering outside Mina’s open bedroom window. Once again, the bat transforms into Count Dracula, now inside. Hands outstretched, Dracula stalks the woman in bed. He approaches her neck, and the scene fades out.

Mina describes her attack by the vampire in her bedroom, but John thinks it is only a dream. Van Helsing intervenes, and she tells him his lips touched her neck. Examining further, Van Helsing discovers the bite marks. Mina states the marks appeared the morning after her dream. In the heat of this discussion, Dracula enters. Seward introduces Van Helsing to Dracula, and Dracula admits hearing his name in the wilds of Transylvania. John opens a cigarette case with a mirror, and Van Helsing sees Dracula casts no reflection. Mina excuses herself for bed and exits. Van Helsing shows him the closed cigarette case and then says, look, opening it. Count Dracula, enraged, knocks it to the ground and stares with an intense gaze. Dracula’s normal countenance reappears, and he apologizes to Dr. Seward. “For one who hasn’t lived a single lifetime, you are a wise man,” Dracula declares before leaving. The other men describe Dracula’s look as if he were an animal or a madman. John looks out over his lawn and sees a wolf running. Van Helsing says the strength of the vampire is that people won’t believe in him.

Mina exits the house and finds Dracula standing near a tree. She embraces him and stands within his cape. As Van Helsing explains vampire lore to the others, a slow, crazed laugh comes from a nearby room: Renfield. Wild-eyed and mad, Renfield exits his room. Renfield pleads with John to take Mina away from here, just as the bat appears outside a window again. Again tormented, Renfield pleads with an unseen Dracula that he wasn’t going to say anything. He declares total loyalty to his Master as John scares away the bat. Van Helsing asks what Renfield’s relationship is to Dracula, and the real estate agent panics, saying he has never heard of him before. He says God knows that everyone with a weak mind is no match for evil. Renfield laughs maniacally as the maid enters and says Mina is on the lawn. She is found alive and brought inside the house.

Suddenly, a mysterious woman in white attacks small children, and she is most likely Lucy. Mina tells Van Helsing she saw Lucy on the terrace, emerging from the shadows. Mina tells John their life together is over. Mina’s bedroom has been cloaked in wolfbane, and she must wear a wreath when going to bed. The windows must remain shut.

It’s now dark, and Count Dracula rises from his earth box. Then, immediately, Dracula appears on the lawn in a cloudy mist, producing an army of rats (never seen) for Renfield. Renfield raves about thousands, even millions, of rats. Dracula willingly gives Renfield these animals on the condition that he swear to obey his command. Martin arrives to fetch the madman.

Dracula’s voice bellows, “Van Helsing!” Dracula appears from the terrace. He warns Van Helsing to return to his own country. The vampire declares that Mina’s blood runs through his veins. Van Helsing threatens to unearth every stone in Carfax Abbey to find and destroy Count Dracula by driving a stake through his heart. The Count raises his right hand to transfix Van Helsing. Helsing, in a trance, slowly advances on Dracula, but he has the will to pull back to safety. Dracula says his will is strong. Van Helsing pulls a crucifix from his jacket pocket and dramatically repels the Count.

Mina, instead of going to sleep, gets dressed and ready to venture outside when John comes to her room. Mina appears to John rakishly dressed and appearing energetic and vital. While she shows Harker the stars, she is obsessively eying his neck. They sit on a bench outside. Mina states how much she loves the night and fog. And as she speaks, the bat returns to fly near her. As John fights off the bat, Mina is communicating with it, speaking aloud. Overhearing her speak to John, Van Helsing and Seward hear her tell John to get Van Helsing’s crucifix away from him. Mina’s bulging eyes come closer to Harker’s neck. Mina screams as Harker intervenes. Mina sobs uncontrollably. Mina confesses Dracula opened a vein in his arm and made her drink.

Mina, in bed, brushes wolfbane away as Dracula watches. A nurse stands guard outside her bedroom. The nurse, transfixed, opens the French doors to Dracula. He immediately approaches Mina in bed. As he draws nearer, he bends toward her neck. As John and Van Helsing approach the Abbey, they spot Renfield sneaking around and follow him. Dracula and Mina step outside her bedroom into the mist. They enter Carfax Abbey, stopping at the top of the stairs. Renfield enters the room and notices the couple. Dracula descends a huge staircase as Renfield quickly ascends. Renfield apologizes to Dracula for leading Van Helsing here, but Dracula raises a hand, halting Renfield from approaching. Dracula stalks Renfield like a wild animal as Renfield pleads his loyalty. Dracula grabs him by the throat and throws him down the stairs, Renfield tumbling and slowly rolling. Dracula, carrying Mina in his arms, flees. He descends to the bottom of Carfax Abbey with his victim. Now in the Abbey’s cellar, both men search for Mina. Van Helsing finds Dracula lying silently in his earth box. The doctor asks John to find a stone to help him drive a stake through Dracula’s heart. Dracula groans as the deed is done. John finds the still-living Mina, and they warmly embrace. Van Helsing joins the romantic couple and encourages them to leave while he finishes his work. The lovers climb the same staircase they recently descended, but this time the stairs are strewn with light. Cut to the Universal logo.

As an epilogue, the actor Edward von Sloan appears to the audience in a suit, seemingly assuring everyone of their own safety, but finally adds, “There are such things,” playfully ending on the note that vampires do exist.

Critique

It really does not matter if Dracula was only good or a classic film; it inspired and created the horror film genre. But the Universal Dracula is indeed a classic, reinventing material from Nosferatu, the Bram Stoker novel, and adding unique touches of its own. Unfortunately, the movie’s screenplay was mainly based on the play adaptation by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderson, and sacrificed much of its sense of cinema, the new, emerging art form. Director Tod Browning still managed to craft a visual delight, especially during the film’s first half hour, both preparing for Renfield’s arrival and then entering Castle Dracula, where the film is at its finest. Gigantic cobwebbed high walls, shadows, and the splendid dialogue by Bela Lugosi make the film special. The film, only three years after sound cinema was born, may be crude with its minimal musical score, theatrical dialogue, and what would be considered stiff acting; the film manages to exude an air of death where the dark mood is enhanced by its long silent stretches.

Bela Lugosi plays the European Other perfectly, delivering his lines of dialogue as though he had just set foot on American shores. Even though publicity states Lugosi learned the English language phonetically, compare his mastery of the language one year later in White Zombie. I feel his performance was not dictated by misuse of the English language but by a superbly crafted one. Equal to his otherworldly line delivery, Bela Lugosi offers a daring physical performance where he walks in slow motion, frames his hands and arms in a feral position, and makes his countenance appear spiritually decayed. Spotlights on his eerie eyes and the angles of his face enhance his one-of-a-kind performance. The manner in which cinematography suggests (but does not show) his transformation into a bat and a wolf only broadens the supernatural elements. The use of cobwebs and mist only reinforces the film’s sense of an evil world unknown to man.

Even without the benefit of pearly white fangs, blood, Dracula not actually shown biting his victims, and stakings conducted off-screen, we still get the power and force of that unknown vampiric world and the cult it created. Bela Lugosi still manages to create a dead persona quite effectively. We still are subject to a world of the Undead. But Universal wanted to present this film as a Valentine’s Day treat, presenting Lugosi as a dark European romantic. The emphasis is not upon his disease, but on his seductive powers as a dark Valentino figure. Even the two leading women talk of him as quite “romantic” and “fascinating.” The horror genre was formed in wet cement; it had not hardened into a distinct genre we know today.

Besides star Bela Lugosi, the other stellar performance in the movie is Renfield, played by Dwight Frye. While females are drawn to the strange Other sexually, males are subservient to him, serving his every whim for favors and a piece of power. Dracula becomes Master while men such as Renfield become their slaves. Frye’s interpretation of madness focuses on wild, outrageous rants and insect-eating (becoming a predatory beast like Dracula, but on a much smaller scale). His pleading and ultimately his death scene on the high stone stairs is one of the movie’s key scenes, illustrating the power the vampire king has over puny humans. It is not that vampires are shown to be superior creatures, but human beings are shown to be very weak and groveling.

Christopher Lee was considered the first feral and romantic creature of the night, but in the sequence of striking the mirror out of Van Helsing’s hands, the confrontation with Renfield on the staircase, and the nocturnal attacks on the two females, Dracula can be pretty feral and romantic too. But Lugosi’s otherworldly voice, with a heavy accent and clipped American dialogue delivery, solidifies his masterful performance.

Even though the horrifying sequences are not depicted at the time, they become just as terrifying because horrors in the mind are spookier than those shown. The editing showing a giant bat and the very next scene we see Lugosi is most effective. His slow bending down to bite a neck, which ends the scene, makes viewers wonder just what Bela Lugosi does. The imagination is more terrifying than what the eyes see.

But even in the early sound era before Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, Dracula started the successful run of Universal horror films and established a new genre that exists to this day. Unlike earlier horror films, Dracula existed to inspire a world of monsters created and overseen by “Junior” Laemmle. Without the stellar success of Universal’s Dracula, would the other Universal monsters have emerged (the Mummy, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, the Mummy), and would such films as The Raven, The Black Cat, The Old Dark House, and The Invisible Ray still have been produced to carry on the tradition, still enjoyed over 90 years later? Dracula had a lot riding on its coat tails. Thankfully, it delivered!

RENFIELD (DWIGHT FRYE) MEETS COUNT DRACULA (BELA LUGOSI) IN HIS UNIQUE CASTLE.

COUNT DRACULA TOWERS OVER RENFIELD IN THE CELLAR OF CARFAX ABBY.

COUNT DRACULA DELIVERS THE VAMPIRE'S KISS TO LUCY (FRANCES DADE).

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