Tod Browning’s “Dracula” from 1931 is a classic and leaves a much needed legacy of Old Hollywood horror as the basis of the myths and lore we carry about some of popular culture’s most favorite monsters. What’s more, Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula still remains the template image for the way people envision the classic vampire (none of that “Twilight” shit) and Dracula himself, in the same way Boris Karloff still is the model for the Frankenstein monster.
And yet the film is horribly dated and overrated. It’s a much maligned classic that is beyond cheesy and feels long even at 75 minutes.
The opening scene is riddled with a bad sense of spatial continuity and painfully thick foreshadowing. The character Renfield (Dwight Frye) hardly even gives a reason for venturing to Dracula’s decrepit castle before blatantly accepting the fact that its riddled with cobwebs and phantom stagecoach drivers. And Lugosi’s iconic line, “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make,” which still remains chilling, comes so soon in the movie I was tempted to turn it off right then. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Dracula (1931)”