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.

DRACULA (1931)

Director: Tod Browning

Writers: Garrett Fort adapting the stage play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston based on Bram Stoker’s original novel

Producers: Tod Browning, Carl Laemmle, Jr.

Cast: Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloane, David Manners, Helen Chandler, Herbert Bunston, Frances Dade, Charles K. Gerrard, Joan Standing, Halliwell Hobbes, (and uncredited cast) Carla Laemmle, Geraldine Dvorak, Cornelia Thaw, Dorothy Tree, Michael Visaroff, Bunny Beatty, Moon Carroll, Tod Browning, Nicholas Bela, Daisy Belmore, Barbara Bozoky, John George, Wyndham Standing, Josefina Velez, Anna Bakacs, William A. Boardway, Anita Harder, Florence Wix

A solicitor named Renfield (Dwight Frye) travels to the remote castle of Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) in Transylvania. Renfield presents Dracula with the lease to Carfax Abbey, a property just outside of London, England. Dracula is a vampire who soon dominates the will of Renfield. The pair sail to England where the vampire takes up residence in his newly acquired property. Dracula soon begins feeding on the English citizens. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

During the silent film era, Universal Pictures had made a name for themselves with macabre thrillers like The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Cat and the Canary (1927). Oddly, they seemed a bit skittish about producing a sound film based on Bram Stoker’s popular 1897 horror novel, Dracula, which had recently been the subject of successful stage plays in both England and the United States. Purely supernatural threats in American movies were considered either too distasteful or too far-fetched. Fortunately, Universal Pictures founder’s son, producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., was a horror fan and convinced his father that Dracula would work. It became Universal’s most profitable film in 1931 and established horror as a viable film genre in the new talkies era. 

Dracula was originally planned as a much more lavish project, but Universal Pictures was having a tough time turning a profit during the Great Depression. It was probably considered too big of a gamble to risk a massive investment on a supernatural thriller, so the original concept was reworked to be more derivative of the Dracula stage production. That resulted in a lot of drawing room drama that would be more economical from a set design and filming standpoint. 

Nevertheless, the opening scenes in Transylvania can’t be beat for Gothic spectacle. They are so iconic and satisfying, raising our anticipation to such heights, that we are bound to be let down by the more mundane settings once the story moves to England. This has long been the most common criticism of this film. 

However, the main fault is not so much with the change of scenery as with the minimal character and plot developments. There seems to have been quite a bit of editing done just to pick up the pace, yet a bit more time to flesh out some of the characters would be appreciated. We never really get a chance to know Lucy Weston (Frances Dade) before she becomes Dracula’s victim. Hence, her death and the loss her friend Mina Seward should feel is barely touched upon. Lucy’s resurrection is also given short shrift in this film’s need to economize or to keep things moving. Most perplexing is the treatment of Renfield. He becomes Dracula’s slave, yet he really serves no story purpose in England except to act crazy and tormented. Why does Dracula maintain contact with Renfield? Once Renfield has been confined to Dr. Seward’s (Herbert Bunston) sanitarium, all he seems capable of is annoying the staff and bungling Dracula’s plans. Renfield also keeps lapsing into despair pleading for Mina Seward’s safety when he never shares a single scene with her. Just how does this lunatic inmate of Dr. Seward’s sanitarium develop any compassion for his daughter? Another likely casualty of this reportedly chaotic production’s economy was the story’s climax. It seems rather abrupt and all too convenient for our heroes. 

Rumor has it that Universal hoped the silent film star who specialized in grotesque characters, Lon Chaney, would play Dracula. Since Chaney had also worked with director Tod Browning many times before, he should have been well suited to working with Dracula’s eventual director. Unfortunately, Chaney died prematurely of bronchial cancer before production began. 

Selecting Tod Browning to direct Dracula seemed like a good fit. Browning had a long and successful career in silent films with grotesque characters and bizarre plots. He had even directed the vampire-themed London After Midnight (1927) starring the Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney. 

Yet many say that Browning had trouble adapting to directing sound films. He was often criticized for a static shooting style. I think that Browning relied on his strange plots and the actors’ performances to maintain our interest. In the case of his most famous film, Dracula, the visuals greatly benefitted from Karl Freund’s cinematography. In fact, some cast members said that Freund actually directed them more than Browning. 

While many bemoan the heavy reliance on the stage play script for this film adaptation, we must credit the play as the source for two of this film’s stars. Bela Lugosi played Dracula and Edward Van Sloan was Professor Van Helsing in the 1927 Broadway production. 

Universal approached other seasoned film actors before hiring Bela Lugosi to play Dracula. Apparently, despite Lugosi’s fine notices playing the famous vampire on the stage, he wasn’t considered enough of a name to sell the film. However, Lugosi persistently sought the part and eventually won the role. 

If ever there was a case of familiarity breeds contempt, it is exemplified by many film buffs for at least the last fifty years regarding this film and Bela Lugosi’s starring role. The Lugosi-Dracula character and film have been around for so many generations that it is considered as traditional as Santa Claus. Now people take the film and its star for granted. They can’t appreciate the merits of 1931’s Dracula, since its success established what has become cliché after countless imitations. 

That often leads to disdain for the work Lugosi does here and he gets dismissed as hammy or inept. Lugosi is certainly giving a stylized performance that is trying to embody an extraordinary being of the supernatural. I would also stress that, in a picture directed in Tod Browning’s mostly prosaic fashion, Lugosi’s undead intensity is very welcome. I do agree with the criticism that some of Lugosi’s lines during his first meeting with Renfield are spoken with excruciating slowness for no good reason. Certainly the highlight of the film, once the story moves to the mundane London setting, is Lugosi’s performance. 

Of course this led to Lugosi becoming a horror film icon starring in many more films for Universal Pictures and other studios. Despite the frustration Lugosi always felt being typecast for horror roles by his Dracula success, that part has given him lasting fame beyond most of his contemporaries.

Lugosi’s fellow Dracula stage play performer, Edward Van Sloan, plays the rather one-note role of scientist and the count’s chief nemesis, Professor Van Helsing. He imparts his arcane knowledge about vampires to the other characters (and the film audience) as he tries to expose and defeat Dracula. Like the rest of the cast, Van Sloane is playing an underwritten character, but he shares the best scene in the whole film with Lugosi. When Dracula employs his hypnotic power to try dominating the professor, we are seeing a situation play out that seems ideal for the stage. Yet Van Sloan employs very subtle body language and facial expressions to show the struggle of his will to resist his vampire foe. 

After the huge success of Dracula, Van Sloan would appear in the Universal horror classics Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and the Dracula sequel, Dracula’s Daughter (1936). 

The character every bit as attention-getting as Dracula is everyone’s favorite fly-eating maniac, Renfield, the solicitor that the vampire count has enslaved and driven mad. One of the film’s best moments is Renfield being discovered in the hold of the doomed schooner that brought him and Dracula back to England. We hear that creepy Renfield laugh before we stare down into the hold to see his eyes blazing with madness. Dwight Frye is always fun to watch, even if most of his antics as the insane Renfield are inexplicable or unjustified. 

Frye made an indelible impression with his performance in Dracula. Like his co-star Lugosi, Frye was worried that he would be typecast, for he would continue to play demented and despicable underlings and simpletons in the horror films Frankenstein (1931), The Vampire Bat (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Dead Men Walk (1943). 

Helen Chandler plays Dracula’s main course, Mina Seward. Like just about every one else in the film, she is written as more of a type than a well-rounded character; in her case, it is the damsel in distress. Chandler never gets any respect for her work here, but I think she does as well as could be expected with what little she is given to do. Even the damsel in distress can be interesting if we are given enough time to get to know her. For all of the complaints about Dracula being a slow film, there is no time spent getting to really know anyone. Chandler’s best moment is when we see her succumbing to Dracula’s influence. She is treated to an eerie, prolonged close-up with her unblinking gaze focused on the throat of her fiancé as she slowly leans in closer and closer… 

As Mina’s fiancé, John Harker, David Manners makes his hapless-and-helpless-horror-movie-hero debut. Harker is probably the most derided character in this film. Aside from trying to comfort the distraught Mina, he accomplishes nothing and only creates a bit of conflict arguing with Professor Van Helsing and sulking. I actually think such behavior would be pretty reasonable up to a point. Most of us would be unlikely to accept our loved one being upset by supernatural claptrap from a stranger. Ultimately, he is also just another movie type: the handsome love interest. I guess that means Harker and Mina were made for each other. 

David Manners would continue playing similar, if more likable, characters in two more Universal horror classics: The Mummy (1932) and The Black Cat (1934), the latter also starring Bela Lugosi. 

Regardless of a lot of modern-day griping, 1931’s Dracula is still deserving of classic status. The sound era’s first American, supernatural thriller still boasts some great moments and established an immortal horror icon with Bela Lugosi’s role. The success of this film led to Universal Pictures’ fear-factory reputation as they continued producing more horror features throughout the ’30s and ’40s that endure as popular culture folklore. The importance of 1931’s Dracula as the foundation of cinematic horror ever since can’t be underestimated.

DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971)

Director: Al Adamson

Writers: William Pugsley, Samuel M. Sherman

Producers: Al Adamson, Samuel M. Sherman, John Van Horne

Cast: J. Carrol Naish, Lon Chaney, Jr., Regina Carrol, Anthony Eisley, Anne Morrell, Greydon Clark, Zandor Vorkov (Roger Engel), John Bloom, Jim Davis, Russ Tamblyn, Maria Lease, Angelo Rossitto, Shelly Weiss, Forrest J. Ackerman, William Bonner

Las Vegas entertainer Judith Fontaine (Regina Carrol) heads to Venice, California looking for her missing sister Joan (Maria Lease). She runs into hippies, bikers, and Dr. Durea, the proprietor of a spook show exhibit at the beachside carnival. Dr. Durea (J. Carrol Naish) had his brutish henchman Groton (Lon Chaney, Jr.) kill Joan and others to use their bodies for strange blood experiments. Durea is actually the last of the Frankenstein family that created a man-made monster. That monster has been exhumed and brought to Dr. Durea by Count Dracula (Zandor Vorkov). Dracula wants Durea to revive the monster and to continue his blood experimentation that will grant Dracula even greater power.

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

Dracula vs. Frankenstein is the most well known of director Al Adamson’s films. This is due primarily to the famous monster duo in the title, not to any cinematic merit. It is a seriously compromised project because of its constant reinvention to try to turn the original attempt called The Blood Seekers into a commercially successful exploitation product. I have always wondered how The Blood Seekers, as originally completed, would have played. It had to be more cohesive than what Dracula vs. Frankenstein became.

The kid in me can still get off on the offbeat elements in the film: mad science, monsters, violence, and sexy women. The whole exploitative and schlocky vibe of this thing keeps drawing me back to it. Yet with all of that tantalizing stuff jammed haphazardly into it, I also see this film as a big missed opportunity.

As producer and co-writer Samuel M. Sherman has explained in interviews and the DVD audio commentary, the Dracula and Frankenstein characters were not part of the original film. They were added in with additional rewrites and new film footage thinking it would make the movie more commercial. Knowing that production history, one can almost marvel at the audacity of trying to reconfigure an already finished film to such an extent. The original storyline may have been exploitation fodder, but all the added Dracula and Frankenstein stuff give the impression that the whole film seems like it is being improvised.

The two horror genre veterans, J. Carrol Naish and Lon Chaney, Jr., give their last film performances in Dracula vs. Frankenstein. One can only assume that the original The Blood Seekers film would have been a better showcase for them, if it were more coherent. Perhaps scenes were cut that gave the Naish and Chaney characters more depth or motivation. 

As it stands now, the audience is expected to accept a lot based on horror movie character tropes; Dr. Durea is a mad scientist and Groton is his simple-minded henchman. The point of Durea’s blood experimentation is vague. Groton’s need for injections that transform him into a pasty-faced killer, and then are used to also calm his spontaneous transformations, is a Jekyll-and-Hyde movie gimmick. Although I love tried-and-true movie gimmicks, I just wish there was a little better setup for these characters and their motives. 

Much of Naish’s dialogue is of that roundabout drivel that is supposed to sound lofty and intelligent in low-budget schlock. Chaney has no dialogue, as he is once again reduced to the mute menace role. Unfortunately, this was a necessity because of the throat cancer that he was suffering from at the time.

Regina Carrol is a voluptuous attraction in many Al Adamson films, as she was also his wife. Her cleavage always steals the scene. The routine we see her perform in her first scene, as Judith Fontaine, was part of Regina’s act when she actually did perform in Las Vegas.

Anthony Eisley as Mike is just about the most atypical hero in any horror movie. He comes across like a slick establishment type that decided to stop parting his hair and throw on some love beads over his turtleneck pullover and live on the beach. He seems like a nice enough guy until he makes his free love move on Judith. I can’t say I blame him, but that “We don’t want to get involved, do we? Just be good friends” line before he starts tongue wrestling with her always struck me as wonderfully sleazy. Lounge lizard or hippie wannabe, it’s still all about the old in-and-out.

Russ Tamblyn emits that don’t-give-a-damn vibe as Rico, the lead troublemaker in a trio of bikers. This character was almost a reprise of his biker character Anchor from an earlier Adamson/Sherman production Satan’s Sadists (1969). Unfortunately, his Rico role was edited down from The Blood Seekers version of the film to make room for the new Dracula/Frankenstein footage. With seemingly no effort and little screen time, Tamblyn’s Rico still manages to be despicable, especially when menacing the lovely hippie Samantha (Anne Morrell).

Then we have the two title characters that keep us from ever being able to appreciate the pure cinematic splendor that could have been The Blood Seekers. Zandor Vorkov’s Dracula has been roundly condemned as the worst Dracula in movie history. With his often inane rambling dialogue that always has a spooky echo, his plastic joke shop fangs, and pasty white make-up that becomes so heavy in the final scenes that he looks like a mime, Vorkov’s Dracula probably makes the film’s most lasting impression for all the wrong reasons. The Frankenstein monster is little more than a prop in this movie. The design of the face is pretty interesting and, with 7’4” John Bloom in the role, this monster has impressive height. But the monster is shoehorned into the movie along with Dracula, and they only interact with three of the main characters; that is the three actors (Naish, Carrol, and Eisley) that would return from The Blood Seekers to shoot additional scenes.

With the budget limitations, the rewriting, the reshooting, and the re-editing, it was impossible that Dracula vs. Frankenstein would turn into a good film. An appreciation of schlock is necessary to derive any enjoyment out of it. I also derive an added interest by knowing its history of reconfiguration. It takes real nerve to graft seemingly unrelated pieces of narrative together into a film in the hopes of improving it. Everything about Dracula vs. Frankenstein has a slapdash feel to it, but I’ll be damned if I don’t look forward to watching it again.