DRACULA (1931 - SPANISH VERSION)

Director: George Melford

Writers: Garrett Fort adapting the stage play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston based on Bram Stoker’s novel, Spanish-language adaptation by Baltasar Fernández Cué

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Cast: Carlos Villarías, Pablo Alvarez Rubio, Eduardo Arozamena, Lupita Tovar, Barry Norton, José Soriano Viosca, Carmen Guerrero, Manuel Arbó, Amelia Senisterra, Julia Bejarano (uncredited), John George (uncredited), (and uncredited players in snippets of English version footage) Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye, Geraldine Dvorak, Cornelia Thaw, Dorothy Tree 

Renfield (Pablo Alvarez Rubio) is a solicitor traveling in Transylvania to meet Count Dracula (Carlos Villarías). In the count’s remote castle, Renfield presents the lease to Carfax Abbey, the property outside London, England that Dracula intends to rent. Dracula is a vampire who enslaves Renfield. After they sail to England, Dracula moves into Carfax Abbey and preys on the locals around his new home. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

Universal Pictures’ 1931 classic Dracula made Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi a household name and established his Dracula role as an icon of horror. Its success also proved that supernatural menace was a viable American film subject in the sound era. 

While it was initially considered a risky venture by cost-conscious Universal, they stretched their Dracula dollars by making a duplicate version for Spanish-speaking markets. Using the same sets and script, Universal shot a simultaneous, Spanish-language production of Dracula with a different director, cast, and crew. After director Tod Browning’s English-language production finished each day’s work, the Spanish version was shot at night under the direction of George Melford. 

The Spanish version’s story is virtually identical. It also shares a few establishing shots with the English version. Yet it has become almost conventional wisdom for the past half century to laud this version as being superior to the English-language version. 

Here is where this flashback fanatic needs to start picking nits or I will start eating flies. As tedious a chore as it may seem to some, I am obsessive enough to have watched both versions of 1931’s Dracula within a few days of each other to accurately discern the small, but crucial, differences between these two productions. Those differences are mainly what I am ranting about here. Although they may seem trivial, those differences justify this horror junkie continuing to waste away in the blissful glow of the boob tube. It’s not just an addiction; it’s dedication, dammit! 

It has to be stated right up front that Carlos Villarías is no Bela Lugosi. The bug-eyed glares, toothy grins, and pouts he uses to display his range of emotions deprive his Dracula of all the morbid power and dignity in Lugosi’s portrayal. Villarías also has the habit of repeatedly bowing with his head or from the waist during dialogue scenes. Lugosi did this a few times to convey some regal manners, but Villarías doing it so often makes him seem much too ingratiating. His Dracula is much more likely to transform into a lapdog instead of a wolf. 

In Villarías’ defense, his Dracula is menacing and effective in one shot as he rises out of the hold aboard the doomed schooner Vesta at sea while his slave, Renfield, is shrieking with insane laughter. That is one rare sequence that may be an improvement over the English version. 

As Renfield, Pablo Alvarez Rubio is memorably mad. While he won’t make anyone forget Dwight Frye’s incandescent insanity in the English-language role, Rubio gives an intense performance that helps enliven the proceedings. Unfortunately, as in the English version, Renfield is not given any reason to be needed by Dracula in England or ever shown to have any reason to be so concerned about the safety of Dr. Seward’s (José Soriano Viosca) daughter, Eva. Renfield just becomes a dramatic prop vacillating between madness and sorrow. 

While the rest of the performers are adequate, Lupita Tovar manages to make an impression. Her Eva Seward is the Spanish version’s counterpart of Helen Chandler’s Mina. The chief difference between the two roles is that Tovar is vivacious and sports a more revealing nightgown. Her vampire-influenced lunge at her fiancé (Barry Norton) is a tad more physical, yet the long, lingering close-up of Chandler’s trancelike stare as she moves in on David Manners’ John Harker is still more unsettling. 

The differences that so many applaud in the Melford-directed version really amount to just a few more moving camera shots, the aforementioned short scene aboard the Vesta, and a nicely done effect of mist rising out of an opening coffin to materialize as Dracula. The bit of Dracula walking through the giant spider web is also shot and edited a bit more effectively in the Meford film. That’s it, folks. I do not find anything else in this Spanish version to be more accomplished than the English version. However, I do find plenty of ways it does not measure up to the much-maligned, Tod Browning-directed film. 

Browning has always been bashed for not being comfortable transitioning from the silent films he made his name with to the sound era. He has been accused of having his camera be too stationary, as if he is shooting from a fixed position watching a stage play. That is precisely how many of the shots in Dr. Seward’s residence are framed in Melford’s version. We often have characters shown at such a distance during dialogue exchanges that we almost expect to see stage footlights at the bottom of the screen. Browning was not particularly dynamic in staging similar scenes, but he framed his shots much better than this. I suppose Browning’s cinematographer, Karl Freund, had a hand in those decisions. Nevertheless, such scenes often play better in Browning’s film. 

Many of those same scenes are played at a slower pace and last longer in Melford’s film. Browning’s English-language version has always been accused of being slow and stagey, yet that more relaxed quality of performance in the Spanish version usually slows things down while lacking vitality. I suspect that both versions, using the same script, had scenes written and filmed to last the same length, yet the English version probably had more snippets cut out of it to pick up the pace. But it also seems to me that many scenes in Browning’s version are performed at a brisker pace or with more urgency. 

The confrontation between Dracula and Professor Van Helsing, as the vampire tries to bring his nemesis under his hypnotic control, is probably my favorite scene in Browning’s Dracula. In a series of medium shots, Browning allows it to play out from start to finish with Bela Lugosi’s Dracula bringing all of his dark power against the mental resistance subtly conveyed by Edward Van Sloan’s Professor Van Helsing. 

That scene falls flat in the Melford version. It cuts back and forth between that confrontation and one of Eva about to make her bloodthirsty move on her fiancé, Juan Harker. This may have been a way to create a distraction from the fact that Carlos Villarías can’t match the power of Lugosi in that scene, but one can easily tell that it just does not build to a satisfying climax. Melford also shot the sequence with more angles, but that does not compensate for the performances. Browning may have kept it simple, but he allowed his actors Lugosi and Van Sloan to carry the scene. 

Another disappointment in Melford’s film is the exposure of Dracula as a vampire when he casts no reflection. Again, when Browning shot it, he framed his performers at the right distance in the camera and then let the confrontation play out. Lugosi’s Dracula suspects nothing, is surprised, and then lashes out in anger breaking the mirror. To appreciate how good Lugosi is, just watch the same scene shot by Melford. Villarías either chooses or is directed to play it wrong here. His Dracula shows so much apprehension (without cause) as he slowly looks into the mirror, that it makes no sense for him to seem surprised by Van Helsing’s ruse. People probably think that Villarías’ Dracula winding up with his cane and smashing the mirror Van Helsing (Eduardo Arozamena) is holding makes the scene more dynamic, but Lugosi just impulsively swatting away the mirror with his hand and then regaining his composure and arrogance in a single sustained take is far more effective. Of course that also requires the Lugosi presence to make it work. 

Speaking of the Lugosi presence, the eerie, silent stillness of Dracula in some shots of the Browning film eclipse just about everything in the Spanish version. There are numerous wonderfully lit shots of Lugosi’s malevolent features that are never really attempted in the Melford film. The best we get are repetitive close-ups of Carlos Villarías’ glaring eyeballs. 

Director Tod Browning’s Dracula is probably most appreciated for the performances of Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye. While hardly as great as it could have been, it still has many virtues that become more apparent when compared to director George Melford’s Spanish version. Melford’s film has a longer running time while not fleshing out any characters further or providing much additional narrative. It is only remarkable as being a parallel version of a classic horror film with a few interesting variations. The English version is still superior.