WATCHMOVIES RATING
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Dracula 1931
Dracula one of the earliest classic American horror films from Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures. A masterpiece directed by Tod Browning and taken from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.
The first feature film version of the novel was German silent film, Nosferatu: A Symphony in Terror (1922), an unauthorized adaptation of Stoker's novel directed by expressionist F. W. Murnau. In Murnau's film, the very scary Dracula (Max Schreck) was renamed Graf Orlock to avoid legal conflicts. Since then, about a dozen film adaptations of the Stoker novel, and literally hundreds of other Dracula sequels, farces, and other vampirish variations (including the "blaxploitation" Blacula films of the early 70s). With this "talkie" horror film, Hungarian stage actor Bela Lugosi (originally named Bela Blasko), who had starred in the smash-hit Broadway stage play and took over the part for the film when Lon Chaney, Sr. died, established himself as the definitive screen vampire. Lugosi hardly spoke a word of English and managed his lines using phonetics. Allthough he is the personification of Dracula in film history, he only played the part twice. The current 1931 feature and in 1945 in an Abbott and Costello comedy.
Although it's hard to believe today, segments of the film were censored in overseas viewings: a gigantic bug's emergence from a coffin, the appearance of Dracula's three zombie-like wives in his castle, Renfield's begging scene to allow him to eat spiders and flies, and the reading of a newspaper account of vampire bride Lucy's victimization of children.
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producer | Laemmle, Carl | screenwriter | Deane, Hamilton |
| musicscore | Tchaikovsky, Peter |
duration | 75 |
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color | No |
sound | Yes |
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genre | horror |
country | USA |
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