During the Great Depression, crime films revolving around the mafia came into fashion and many scholars interpret the latter’s popularity at the time as expressing the populace’s resentment of the world at large after having been victim to dashed hopes and dreams. The emergence of the horror film shortly thereafter is a mere logical progression in this respect as Tod Browning gives Bram Stoker’s pulp vampire tale life, which turned out to be a surprise hit for Universal as the work not only returned more at the box office than any other film in 1931 but, more importantly, severed as the catalyst for the horror genre to progress into what would be its heyday, now loving referred to as the Golden Age of Horror.

   Renfield (Dwight Frye) travels through the Carpathian Mountains before arriving at Castle Dracula in order to finalize the sale of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi). After drugging his guest, Dracula--a vampire--makes Renfield one of his servants as the two travel from Transylvania to London by way of the Vesta, the count feeding upon the ship’s crew before the derelict vessel docks at Whitby Harbor. It is in London that the Count demurely forces his way into the lives of Doctor Jack Seward (Herbert Bunston); his daughter and future son-in-law, Mina and John Harker (David Manners and Helen Chandler respectively); Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan); and Mina’s friend, Lucy Weston (Frances Dade). It is during this time that the Count seduces and turns Lucy into a vampire as Van Helsing diagnoses Renfield as such. Shortly thereafter, before Van Helsing can act, the Count likewise preys upon Mina. As John attempts to flee with Mina, Van Helsing prepares to apprehend Dracula before more deaths occur. 

   The success of Tod Browning’s film is manifold, yet, irrefutably, the film’s crux lies in Lugosi’s characterization of the figure of Dracula as the character’s personality, class stature, and sexuality create a fascinating portrait for, not only female audiences, but the casual viewer as well. It is the Count’s meditative, at times reluctant, delivery--laced by his accent (his phonetic pronunciation, whether its basis is to be found in the actor’s infantile control of the English language or merely a premeditative contribution to the character, bombards his delicate enunciation before he finalizes a statement after a brief, hesitant pause)--that is second only to his fluidly suave persona, the figurehead of which is his unremitting gaze as it literally hypnotizes females throughout the film as Lucy confines to Mina that the Count is “fascinating” as she fantasizes about being whisked away to Dracula’s new home in England. 

   The theme of sexuality is morbidly, yet unabashedly, placed on the screen as never before as we watch Nina longingly stare, enraptured, at the Count as he addresses Van Helsing before she clutches her breasts, barely veiled in her nightgown, and moans as her lover meets his death at the finale of the feature. Shot and treated cinematographically as were scenes involving sex acts during the period, the camera cuts away each and every time Dracula feeds upon his victims, which--much like a hickey (also known as a “love bite”)--leaves a discernable wound on his prey’s neck. In a perversion of traditional views upon sexuality, we watch as the Count waves away his three brides (thus defying our cultural demand for monogamy) in order have the body of Renfield unabated (thus, the motif of homosexuality is breeched, which even made producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., the person who championed the work in the wake of his father’s apprehension to such a project, uncomfortable). However, ultimately, the character of Dracula encompasses nationalistic xenophobia in Browning’s presentation of a foreigner who is threatening to violate anyone he chooses, by way of his perverted sex act in which he penetrates his victims with his mouth, thereby contaminating their blood (thus our cultural and racial purity). His influence then becomes remarkably evident in that his victims’ sexual mores are likewise dilapidated as we watch as Mina lustfully stares at John as he urges his fiancée to go away with him. 

   However, not only does the image of the Count freely violate our culture standards of sexual decency, he openly desecrates our religious foundation as a Christian society as well. Mockingly shrouded like a priest, we witness the character who, in a morbid rendition of Christ’s resurrection, has come back from his grave as he lifts his cape--his arms outstretched, perpendicular to his body--as he stands in a gothic cruciform. As is evident by the sardonic grin of hedonistic elation which the Count displays in knowing his guest’s fate, we watch as Dracula sadistically revels at the sight of Renfield enjoying his last meal comprised of bread, wine, and blood. Finally, as Renfield, now a minion of the antagonist, describes how his master communicated to him in action instead of speech, we envision Renfield’s illustration of Dracula parting a horde of rats as their red eyes fill the land much in the same manner that Moses did with the Red Sea.

   The Count appears omnipotent for the effects of his influence are readily seen throughout the film yet we are never permitted to witness firsthand the malicious deeds which allot the Count his control (part due to the camera refusing to permit such an act to be seen, which implies that it is too morbid to be witnessed). Ironically, it the weak will of others which fuels the Count’s prowess as epitomized in Dracula’s admiration of Van Helsing’s resistance to the antagonist’s hypnotic allure. Furthermore, the aristocratic Count, in his elitist stature, only--literally and metaphorically--feeds upon the lower classes (including his neighbors), which perhaps triggered a resounding, sympathetic tonality with viewers during the Depression atop the presentation of a character who is depicted in a socially-condemnable act of drinking, issued at the end of the Prohibition Era. 

   One of the most contributive efforts of the screenwriters in the effectiveness of the figure of Dracula is their creation and development of the character’s mythos as we are informed that crosses and Wolfsbane repulse the vampire, a vampire casts no reflection in a mirror, all of the vampire’s victims will be returned to normalcy if the master is killed, and a such a figure cannot enter a household without being invited.

   Yet, for all that went into the figure of the Count, the script pauses to allude to the master of the stage, Shakespeare, as seen in Dracula’s possession of three wives, à la Macbeth’s witches, and Renfield’s retort of “Words, words, words” to Seward, the character directly quoting Hamlet’s rebuttal to Polonius in an almost effigetic manner. 

   However, for all the film’s successes, it suffers on many counts (no pun intended), making it, arguably, a happenstance creation which coincidentally falls together in the proper proportions. First, Browning’s work houses many hard edits, first seen during Dracula’s acceptance of the lease on Carfax Abbey before continuity is breeched when Renfield’s bed is instantaneously turned down between cuts. No character is nearly as well drawn as Dracula and only Van Helsing and Renfield evade being qualified as stock figures as the males scamper frantically to save their helpless maidens. During the Count’s voyage on the Vesta, the scene is interlaced with grossly obvious stock footage of a raging sea (from Edward Sloman’s 1925 feature, The Storm Breaker). Browning’s static camera all but admits that the work was adapted from Hamilton Deane and John Balderston’s 1927 stage play. This is contrasted by sporadic sequences of Karl Freund’s fluid camera work (some state that Freund directed more of the picture than Browning, foremost of which is film historian David Skal). Lastly, the film resides in blatant silence for its first act (Dracula is devoid of a soundtrack--thus forcing the audience to confront what is being presented without the possibility of diversion--which is partially due to the studio attempting to cut corners during the Depression atop Browning’s uneasiness with inserting music without apparent impetus at the beginning of the sound era) before we are bombarded by verbosity in the final chapters of the film. Ironically, the culmination of all of the film’s obvious cinematic faults results in the disruption of the viewer’s narrative equilibrium, which unintentionally adds to the tension and atmosphere of the production as a whole.

   Though an uneven production, the iconographic depiction of Tod Browning’s titular character, brought forth by an emerging B-movie actor, Bela Lugosi, Dracula is as recognizable, if not moreso, than the image of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein and stands as the symbol for malicious, directed evil as the Count revels in his usurping of sexual mores, religious reverence, and ability to expose the lack of will in others which is ultimately more revealing in his audience appeal due to the Freudian (more specifically, Lacanian) paradox that Dracula’s presence is synonymous with death. What is sadly ironic is that the character would never be granted another solo outing (much like the Wolf Man) as the studio shifted to the character’s offspring before the paterfamilias is placed alongside other Universal monsters even though the figure single-handedly helmed the first true epoch of the horror film. As such, I grant the film praise, not as a work of art, but a work which heavy posits influence upon is successors to an almost dictatorial degree, in a manner not unlike the power upon which the film’s antagonist exerts upon his victims.

   Trivia tidbits: Universal considered many other actors before casting Hungarian underdog (which they finally consented, by and large, due to his low price) as the Count, the most plausible of which included Lon Chaney Sr. (he died during pre-production) and Conrad Veidt, the somnambulist from Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The project was also considered by Paul Leni, the director of Mystery of the Wax Museum and The Cat and the Canary.

 -Egregious Gurnow

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