Finally, October has arrived. It is now time for me to reveal my number four pick for this year’s Halloween movie marathon. Oh, and if you’re reading this and just now noticing that this is week two of the series, feel free to check out week one’s pick for some information about this mini-series. Let me tell you, making such a difficult choice nearly drained the life out of me. I was stuck between a small selection of films from Universal’s Legacy of Horror, and ultimately the one I’ve chosen won out. I feel very strongly about these films and hopefully you’ll see why.
Number Four – Dracula (1931)
The major reasons why Dracula takes my number four spot is because it is so historically important to the horror genre, the late Bela Lugosi, Universal Studios as a company, and film in general. For those unfamiliar with its history, I’ll do my best to break it down piece by piece.
Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DC Cinematic Universe, and series such as the Transformers movies, there was one glorious and lengthy franchise known as the Universal Classic Monsters. Some might even say that this was the earliest and most impactful cinematic universe (sorry, Marvel fans). This franchise officially spanned from the 1920's to the 1960's, although it has many spiritual successors being produced even today. More on that later. This franchise has also been colloquially and officially referred to as Universal’s Legacy of Horror, a title which I feel gives it the grace it deserves.
The Classic Monsters include the likes of the Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and, of course, Dracula. These are the most iconic monsters; however, the franchise technically began with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). After initial films such as 'Hunchback,' The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, etc., the monsters began to star in crossover battles and encounters. There were even sequels and spinoffs such as Dracula’s Daughter and Bride of Frankenstein. Between the characters it brought to the forefront of pop culture and its role in cinematic history, the Legacy of Horror changed the way horror was both conceived and perceived as a cinematic art.
Here, the Legacy intersects with its actors. The famed monster actors of this era include the likes of Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney Jr., Elsa Lanchester, and, of course, Bela Lugosi. Two of these fine men and women probably stick out the most to a modern audience: Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, whose most iconic roles were Frankenstein and Dracula, respectively. Because of this, I narrowed down my selection between Frankenstein and Dracula. I ultimately chose Dracula because I wished to shine a spotlight on Bela Lugosi.
Bela Lugosi was born in Hungary before immigrating to the United States from Germany. He starred in a few well-received films and Broadway productions before eventually getting casted by Universal Pictures for the titular role in Dracula. Universal continued to cast him in other films, especially against Boris Karloff. Even when Lugosi was the star, Karloff would be paid better. Furthermore, the Hungarian accent that heightened his performance as Dracula was then turned against him, leading him to be typecast as a horror villain. Karloff, born William Henry Pratt, happened to be a native English speaker from England, which gave him an advantage over Lugosi in that regard. Later, due to injuries he sustained when serving in the military, Lugosi fell into drug addiction, and casting offers dwindled until he made most of his living from stage productions. For a short while before he died, there was a renewed interest in his film career; however, Karloff had the benefit of positive public perception throughout his career. Thus, I felt I had to highlight Bela Lugosi. The best way to do that for this countdown was by talking about the film that simultaneous made and destroyed his career.
Dracula commences in the midst of the action with a group of travelers being forced to spend the night in a small Romanian town since their driver is afraid of Walpurgis Night. However, Renfield (Dwight Frye) pushes on to arrive at Castle Dracula, inadvertently giving Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) a means to travel to London. When the duo arrives, Dracula meets Mina Seward (Helen Chandler), her fiancé John Harker (David Manners), and Lucy Weston (Frances Dade). Dracula begins to prey on the women and the town at large, leading the survivors and Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) to attempt to end his feast.
Exquisite thematic shots and beautiful soundtrack tend to reveal major moments, characters, and places in the story. At times, this soundtrack overpowers the spoken dialogue, but it adds such cohesion to the emotion of the film that I can hardly blame it. It also is entirely in black and white, but sometimes so much black is used – the color of a costume, or the darkness of the set – that it becomes difficult to see what is happening. Although this is likely a purposeful choice, I wasn’t raised on black-and-white films, and some of the nuances of old cinema must be lost on a modern audience. Another such nuance is the style of acting and drama. The actors’ performances are fantastic, but they gain an otherworldly, if not understandably old-timey, quality due to the stark differences between cinema of the 1930s and cinema today.
What isn’t lost on me is the transatlantic accent, or at least what I assume was the transatlantic accent. Perhaps it is the predecessor to the transatlantic, since its rise in cinema occurred in the 30s. Another key accent is, of course, Bela Lugosi’s prominent Hungarian accent. It does add a sense of mystique to Dracula, what with his introductory line being a simple and unnecessary introduction. Dracula having a pronounced accent of some kind – Hungarian, Romanian, or something else – has become a common cliché, and one that I have no complaints about. In fact, most of this movie operates under clichés. I am not a Dracula novel / film-history scholar, so it is hard to say whether or not these things were cliché before the film’s release. It is these clichés and the role Dracula played in history that have influenced me to give it the number four spot more than anything else.
Earlier I mentioned that the Legacy of Horror has many spiritual successors, as well as other movies that fall within Universal’s general legacy of horror movies. In 2014, Dracula Untold was released starring Luke Evans as an initial attempt to reboot the Legacy of Horror into a franchise that could become recognizable and compete against the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When that movie was a critical and box office failure, Universal attempted once more to restart the newly-named Dark Universe with The Mummy, featuring Sofia Boutella. After this also met poor reviews and low box office returns, the fate of the Dark Universe is in peril. At the very least, we can always watch the classics – the Universal Classic Monsters, that is.
Indira Ramgolam is a freshman in Columbia College.