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Variety, February 18, 1931

Dracula (1931)

Universal production and release. Directed by Tod Browning. Bela Lugosi creator of stage role, heads cast; no star. From the novel by Bram Stoker and stage play by Deane and John Balderston. Screen version by Garrett Fort. Photography by Karl Freund. Running time, 64 minutes. At Roxy, New York, week Feb. 11.

Count Dracula	Bela Lugosi
Mina Seward	Helen Chandler
John Harker	David Manners
Renfield	Dwight Frye
Dr. Van Helsing	Edward Van Sloan
Dr. Seward	Herbert Bunston
Lucy Weston	Frances Dade
Martin	Charles Gerrard
Briggs	John Standing
Maid	Moon Carroll
English Nurse	Josephine Velez

Here was a picture whose screen fortunes must have caused much uncertainty as to the femme fan reaction. As it turns out all the signs are that the woman angle is favorable and that sets the picture for better than average money at the box office.

Treatment differs from both the stage version and the original novel. On the stage it was a thriller carried to such an extreme that it had a comedy punch by its very outré aspect. On the screen it comes out as a sublimated ghost story related with all surface seriousness and above all with a remarkably effective background of creepy atmosphere. So that its kick is the real emotional horror kick, presented to be enjoyed from the security of an orchestra chair.

Such a treatment called for the utmost delicacy of handling, because the thing is so completely ultra-sensational on its serious side that the faintest excess of telling would make it grotesque. Nice judgement here gets the maximum of shivers without ever destroying the screen illusion, the element that makes it possible is the pictorial plausibility of the scenes of horror in which impossible creatures move. That is, the mute perfection of the settings carries the conviction that the characters lack.

Early in the action is the setting of a barren rocky mountain pass, peopled only by a spectral coach driver and shrouded in a miasmic mist, eloquent of dark deeds and terrifying horrors. Story proceeds thence into a tomb-like castle, which is the climax of charnal (sic) house locale. In such surroundings the sinister figure of the human vampire, the living-dead Count Dracula who sustains life by drinking the blood of his victims, seems almost plausible. The atmosphere makes anything seem possible.

Through the same significance of settings is craftily nursed until the audience sits back in a state of expectancy, anticipating the next stimulating shiver. And not without reason, for some of the horror tricks of sound and sight are full powered. There is the spectral hand reaching out from the slightly raised lid of a coffin; a coffin that disgorges rat-like creatures; there is the ominous flapping of ghostly wings as ghoulish bats circle about and the scuttling of spiders on cobwebs; a madman who shrieks in demoniacal rage for spiders to eat, and the stealthy creeping of the human vampire upon his sleeping victim.

Story is cunningly developed like the fireside ghost tale, and with just the right twist that it couldn’t possibly happen to give it the true flavor. It took the resources of the studio to tell the story right. It was beyond the stage, although the novel is said to have gin something of a similar punch.

Picture has a fragment of a prolog which turns it all off trimly for the desired effect of a cheerful play on horrors that can be enjoyed in comfort (a technique that is the essence of high comedy). After the capping shiver of the scientist laying the vampire ghost by finding his daytime grave and driving a stake through the heart of the corpse, to the accompaniment of blood-curdling moans, a conferencier appears upon the screen with a brief address. His remarks are to the effect that if what had happened on the screen comes up to disturb your mind when you get home, don’t worry, because such things as the screen showed are possible after all — gentle jest that gives the elaborate horror just the right light touch.

It is difficult to think of anybody who could quite match the performance in the vampire part of Bela Lugosi, even to the faint flavor of foreign speech that fits so neatly. Helen Chandler is the blonde type for the clinging vine heroine, and Herbert Bunston played the scientist deadly straight, but with a faint suggestion of comedy that dovetails into the whole pattern.

The scientist, as a matter of record, in the picture with his graphic details of vampirish traits and antidotes almost turns the implausible into the plausible, even while you appreciate all of its implausibility. In this, alone, the higher intellect theatergoer will be also interested.

copyright © 1931 Variety