DRACULA is the "weirdest story in the world" (1931)

"Dracula Is Called Most Weird Story"
Bran Stoker's Famous Mystery Story Comes To Screen At Huron Tomorrow
 The Evening Huronite, April 13, 1931


"The weirdest story in the world" has been dramatized on the talking screen.  The story in question is Bram Stoker's immortal and nerve-tingling novel of a deathless vampire, entitled "Dracula." So if you plan to go to the Huron theatre during the week of Sunday, Monday or Tuesday prepare yourself for a truly different and exciting evening's entertainment.

Of course, if you've read "Dracula" there is no need to tell you more. All the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to keep you from seeing the picture. And if you've never heard of "Dracula" you owe it to yourself to see this uncanny dramatization of Bram Stoker's justly famous novel. For "Dracula" is a mystery story unlike any other you have ever seen. And meeting "Dracula" for the first time is an experience in theatre-going you will long remember.

Without telling you too much, suffice to say that "Dracula" is a story of a vampire man, dead more than five hundred years, who comes to life between the hours of sunset and sunrise, stalking the earth to search out young and beautiful victims. Sometimes he comes to life in the form of a wolf, other times as a soft, choking, mysterious mist, wreaking his strange vengeance on all those who cross his path". This combat of deathless forces, as you may well imagine, makes for gripping, fantastic, awe inspiring drama that arouses and maintains intense interest from beginning to end.

The role of the vampire. Count Dracula, is played with remarkable skill by Bela Lugosi, noted actor of the legitimate stage, who originally created this role in the highly successful stage version of Stoker's "Dracula." Sinister, evil and terrifying to look upon, Lugosi's Dracula is a high mark in unusual and fantastic characterization. David Manners portrays the role of the young boy who desperately attempts to save his finance from the influence of Dracula; and Dwight Frye is convincing as the lawyer who fails under the spell of the deathless vampire.

Others in the cast include Helen Chandler, in a fine role, Edward Van Sloan, a member of the stage cast, Frances Dade, Joan Standing and Herbert Bunston. "Dracula" was directed by Tow Browning, remembered for many of Lon Chaney's
successes.

THE MORGUE: DRACULA opens in Cumberland, Md. (1931)

From the June 10, 1931, issue of The Cumberland Evening Times

Moonlight Maxims

Jack Pierce, Wally Westmore mentioned in 1931 column

(Note: The following column is reprinted as it was first published, complete with typographical errors.)

Hollywood Sights and Sounds
The Carroll Daily Herald, Oct. 20, 1931

Sometimes it just happens that screen stories are timely, even though writers comb the newspapers for plot suggestions.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring Frederic March, as in production weeks before the so-called "Ape Man" broke into Hollywood news with a series of attacks on women.

But the marauder's cruelty parallels the methods of Robert Louis Stevenson's fiction character, the bestial Mr. Hyde, who was the high-minded Dr. Jekyll's lower nature.

Another screen story long in preparation, "from an original story by Edgar Allan Poe," as the trade would say, has for its murdering villain a huge ape. It's called, of course, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Another Thriller
Unrelated tr. apes and "apemen," but similarly of the movie cycle of horror stories following up on the success of "Dracula" is "Frankenstein," which features a monster created by a scientist from fragments of dead humans and given by mistake the brain of a criminal.

All these horror tales are giving studio make-up men opportunity to exercise their genius along macabre lines. Wally Westmore makes Frederic March such a grotesque Mr. Hyde that March, when in that character, shuns the studio lunchroom.

And Jack Pierce who spends three hours each morning tranforming Boris Karloff into the "Frankenstein'" monster, did weeks of research in  medical libraries to perfect his conception of an "undead"' pieced-together being.

When made-up Karloff goes to the set under a sheet, and it is just as well. I witnessed the make-up process and can report that I'd rather not meet this "monster" in a dark deserted srreet or anywhere except the screen.

The ape of Rue Morgue will be comparatively simple, but "The Invisible Man" (not a horror story) will present a real problem. This character is supposed to have ability to render himself invisible, but I am told, cannot restore himself to normalcy, although his clothes.

"Weird" DRACULA opens in Oskaloosa, 1931

 

Weird Scenes in "Dracula" Vampire Drama
The Pella Chrionicle, May 28, 1931

Fastnacht—the night of evil; swirling fog, and wolves howling in the mountain passes; a solitary traveler waiting at the crossroads; the clatter of approaching hoofs, and a coachman with feverish eyes glowing above his great muffler.

The traveler enters the coach, which continues on its headlong flight; but as soon as it is again under way, the driver disappears, and his place is taken by a giant bat which flaps over the heads of the galloping horses. Silence settles over the misty land.scape. The mysterious coach is swallowed up by the dense fog, and makes its way to the crumbling castle of the terrible Count Dracula, vampire!

This is one of the opening scenes of "Dracula," Universal's strange motion picture drama which was adapted from the stage success of the same name, and which comes to the Rivola theatre, Oskaloosa, Friday and Saturday, May 29, 30.

The cast is headed by Bela Lugosi, who created the title role of "Dracula" on the stage, and other players appearing in prominent roles are Helen Chandler, David Manners, Edward Van Sloan, Frances Dade, Dwight Frye and Herbert Bunston. Tod Browning directed.

Monster Serial: DRACULA (1931)

Welcome to the first installment of MONSTER SERIAL. During the next few months I'm going to attack some of Universal's best known franchises, starting today with a look at the original DRACULA.

DRACULA, 1931
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan, Herbert Bunston, Frances Dade, Joan Standing, Charles K. Gerrard
Directed by Tod Browning

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, ALFIE? An adaptation of the 1924  stage play by written by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, DRACULA is a second generation adaptation that takes many liberties with the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker. In the film, a solicitor named Renfield falls under the thrall of a mysterious Count Dracula while visiting his home in Transylvania to discuss leasing an English abbey.The legal consultation soon turns violent as the Count and his wives attack Renfield in the night. When next we see the doomed solicitor, he's the only warm body on a ship of corpses that's sailed into an English harbor. Driven mad his experiences, Renfield is arrested and institutionalized in a London asylum. Dracula soon turns his violent attentions to the daughter of the asylum's administrator, but meets his match in Prof. Abraham Van Helsing, an unorthodox scientist with a fascination for the occult.

WHAT'S IT REALLY ABOUT? Sex. I mean, have you seen DRACULA? That photo at the top of this post pretty much summarizes the film. There are few scenes in the movie that aren't overtly about sex, particularly oral sex, starting from the moment poor Renfield sucks at a wound on his own finger. Dracula puts his mouth on half the movie's cast and doesn't appear to have a sexual preference.

Contrary to popular belief, though, it takes more than sex to hold people's attention, especially during the many decades since DRACULA was first released. If it was just some creaky old film about outdated sexual mores, who would care? But there's something else going on in the film that continues to speak to audiences, even if we have to listen a little harder these days to hear the message. DRACULA is more than just a movie about sexual confusion. It's a movie about fear of the future.

The many subtexts of DRACULA are well established. So much of what people take away from the story depends on when and where they first experience it. It's been called a story about repressive homo- and heterosexuality, xenophobia, a Biblical parable, class warfare and just about anything else you want to read into it. Complicating matters are the great many unanswered questions, the most pressing being "Why did Dracula travel to England?" The 1931 movie makes no effort to answer this question (or any of the other riddles of the novel), deciding instead to hang its entire narrative on a conflict in belief systems.

DRACULA is a movie about the fear of change, a warning for us not to abandon superstition without first putting it to the rigours of the scientific method. It's a concept that gives the film an unusual perspective, to say the least. Dracula's nemesis in the film, Abraham Van Helsing, has the unpleasant task of informing the cast that adherence to logic and reason have left them open to attack from a mythical being. This is Van Helsing's traditional role in just about every variation of the Dracula story: the learned academic who has more faith in superstition than science. In one scene, Van Helsing paraphrases Charles Baudelaire while advising that the vampire's greatest weapon is convincing the world he doesn't exist. You won't find many scientists, then or now, with the balls to say something like that out loud.

While the character of Dracula challenges the beliefs of the movie's characters, the movie stands as a (not entirely well-reasoned) defense of faith. The story demands the cast and audience believe in something that can't be scientifically proven, and invents a monster as "evidence" of the importance of faith. DRACULA is a fun film, but has a prominent anti-intellectual bias. But that's true for most horror films, which tend to devolve a game of  "Kill the Freak" during the final reels.

WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE? Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye, mostly. Lugosi's screen presence, especially in DRACULA, can't be overstated. He's amazing in the film, and brings a theatricality to the role that immediately puts him at odds with the younger, mostly American cast. I can't really call what he does in DRACULA "acting" because his performance is raw charisma, but I can't think of another actor of his time who could have pulled off this role. If you think it's easy, watch the Spanish language version of DRACULA released in the same year. It manages to do just about everything better than the Tod Browning film except in the casting of its leading man.

I can't say enough good things about Dwight Frye, either. His work in Dracula is a legitimate performance, presenting Renfield (no first name is ever given) as both a foppish sophisticate and an unhinged maniac. Renfield is hugely sympathetic in the film. He's not only the movie's heart, but which the story's ironic voice of reason, too. In one scene he interrupts a conersation about vampires by asking "Isn't this a strange conversation for men who aren't crazy?" It's a simultaneously witty and tragic moment. If Frye were a young man today, I've no doubt his professional calender would be a busy one.

Edward Van Sloan is also impressive as Van Helsing. There's an unspoken respect between Van Helsing and Dracula in this film, which makes their conflict especially interesting. The best scenes in the movie involve these two actors, which brings us to ...

IS IT TIME TO STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE? Outside of Lugosi, Frye and Van Sloan, the cast is terrible. Helen Chandler's life was fucked up enough without heaping posthumous scorn upon her, but she's got crazy eyes and comes across in the film like a condescending bitch. David Manners does what he can with the role of Jonathan Harker, a role that's defeated better actors*, but he mostly just stands around and adds perspective to the photography. There were a few other actors in the movie, but you'll have forgotten about them before the movie's over.

Speaking of the movie's end, I'm not sure what was taking place behind the scenes of DRACULA, but there must have been some kind of trouble. DRACULA doesn't end as much as it just ... stops. We get a two-second music cue to tell us the ending is a happy one and THE END. Had I seen this movie in the theater in 1931, I would have been sure the projectionist had dropped a reel somewhere.

I love Tod Browning. I don't think you get movies like FREAKS, DRACULA and WHITE ZOMBIE on your résumé unless you know what you're doing. But DRACULA is a jumble of unfocused ideas, ranging from the weird (the vampire beetle with his tiny beetle coffin) to the offensive (the asylum orderly who's constantly badgering Renfield and calling him "flyeater" and "crazy.")

Some of the movie's problems come from adapting the stage play, which has been popular among casual audiences despite being less-than-loved by fans of the original novel. The play makes numerous concessions to consolidate the story for the stage, concessions that were unnecessary for a movie. DRACULA has an epic feel at the start, but becomes stagebound during its second half. Not even the stellar camerawork of Karl Freund could make the climax of DRACULA look anything other than stagey.

Ultimately, the elements trimmed from the story to make it fit onto a Broadway stage undermine many of the movie's messages about faith and the misguided devotion to reason. Dracula, a creature of superstition, tried to adapt to metropolitan life and failed spectacularly. It's not faith or righteousness that triumphs, but Dracula's own inability to fit in that brings him to his doom. I don't know how long he survived in Transylvania (a century? more?) but he lasted only a few weeks in London before someone caught wise and stuck a piece of timber through his heart. If it hadn't been Van Helsing, it would have been someone else. The guy was running around the woods the woods at night in a tuxedo ... how did he expect that WOULDN'T draw attention? (This failure to adapt is directly addressed in the novel. Dracula escapes England and flees to the relative safety of his castle in Transylvania.)

VERDICT: This is certified classic, and I have no intention of disputing it's standing. I love every weird, malformed frame of film that makes up DRACULA, even if I can't endorse its every failing. If you haven't seen it, watch it. If you've already seen it, watch it again. And make sure you tell me what you think about the movie in the comments below.

Up Next: DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936)

*Yeah, I just did that.

Terror in Grayscale: FRANKENSTEIN print ads (1931)

Newspaper advertising design used to be an artform. Today, desktop publishing allows almost anyone to create stunning visual designs without ever getting their hands dirty, but once upon a time it was a physical medium that required artists to understand photography, printing press limitations, and graphic design. All of that is still true today, to a certain extent, but most of these issues can be digitally automated. Once your software is loaded with the proper press settings, most designers never have to give the issue another thought.

When FRANKENSTEIN was released in 1931, newspapers were presented with samples of artwork that could be used to promote their films. The advertising room could chop these elements into individual components and use them to build their own display ads to fit any dimension, using glue or wax to fix them to the page templates. Because of this process, a single movie could have an unlimited variety of ads running in different newspapers across the country. Movie studios would slowly demand more control over how their films were marketed, but early graphic designers left us a treasure trove of visual inspiration. I've attached several examples to this post.

FRANKENSTEIN is the "shocker of the season," 1931

 

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON
By Molli Merrick
The Montana Standard, Nov. 10, 1931

"FRANKENSTEIN" as made by Universal is proving the shocker of the season. A preview audience made up of stoic press members were a bit pale about the gills when the film reached its conclusion. When it was previewed in Santa Barbara one hears strange tales of fainting women, irate men and sobbing children.

None of these things deterred Carl.Laemmle Jr. from showing Frankenstein exactly us was. It is the studio's contention that 'Dracula"—famous for its horrific content, went over big. "Dracula" pales into insignificance in view of the ghoulish qualities of this Mary Shelley story.

Colin Clive is one of the handsomest of the English acting contingent but the film contains no sex-appeal whatsoever. Its plain blood-curdling grand-guignol material nnd you are warned about it before it unfolds, Boris Karloff as the monster does a magnificent piece of acting' and his make-up surpasses even the expert work of this kind by Lon Chaney. But ye sadists will have a very, very pleasant evening of it, what with the digging up of dead bodies, torturing of the living, the hangings, drowning of an unsuspecting 4-year-old in a peculiarly romantic manner, and final burning and crushing of the monster himself in a finale that is just "booful" if you're given to that kind of entertainment.

When there was a brief torture scene in "Moby Dick" I remember quite a loud howl of protest. And when Lon Chaney made "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" public spirit ran high over the flogging scene. But times, apparently, have changed and we may devote five or seven reels to such gay themes without protest.

Paramount is planning to film the  "Portrait of a Man With Red Hair'" by Hugh Walpole—a tale which has a sinister torture chamber as one very important angle of the plot. In fact, that room and what goes on in it, explains the man with red hair, so it would be difficult to eliminate it from the picture.

Perhaps gang-war pictures accustomed us to bloodshed and cruelty. If so, the new cycle of Hollywood horrors will carry on the good work. Since producers arc making them on the strength of previous box-office records of like things, there's no argument as to the public's acceptance of them.

Lugosi vows to never again play DRACULA (1931)

Spooks Will Invade Strand Theatre 
Wednesday 10:30 p.m.
The Kingsport Times, June 12, 1931.

One of the most famous of all actors on stage or screen would like to forget the character that made him famous! Audiences on Broadway were thrilled for more than two years by his artistry; millions of picture fans throughout the country are being fascinated by the startling impersonation he gives on the screen. But the character haunts him, and he never wants to play it again.

The actor is Bela Lugosi, and the character is Count Dracula in the most startling of all plays or pictures — "Dracula." Bram Stoker, the famous English novelist, wrote it first as a novel — this terrifying narration of an "undead" being who rises from his grave at night and through his horrible influence brings death and suffering to his victims.

For more than a thousand nights, Lugosi played it in the theatre. Then when the Universal Studios decided to produce the great story as a picture, Lugosi was the natural choice for the role he had made so famous on
the stage. At first, it was difficult to prevail upon him to appear on the screen. He had lived with the horrible vampire character so long on the stage that he wanted to forget, and how could he forget if  he played it again on the screen?

But he finally consented, and  for weeks at the Universal City studios while the picture was in production, he lived again the startling', fantastic role of Count Dracula. Those who have seen both play and picture assert that his impersonation for the films is even greater than his stage work.

But, now that the picture is finished and shortly to be shown at the Strand Theatre, Lugosi says he will nver play the role again.And Lugosi's determination is in itself a great tribute to his ability as an actor. If he had  been able to act the part mechanically —had not thrown himself heart and soul into the role—it would not have the terrors that it now has. But a great artist does not play mechanically, and Lugosi is a great artist.  Thus, each night in the theatre and for many days at the picture studios, his nervous system has been  subjected to a terrible strain.


"Dracula" brought him fame and fortune, but Lugosi, wants more than anything else, to escape from Count Dracula. It is well, however, that he die not reach this decision before the marking of the picture—well for the millions of fans who will be fascinated by his great work on the screen.

When "Dracula" is shown at the Strand Theatre, local theatre-goers will see one of the most remarkable casts ever assembled. Besides Lugosi, two other, players of the original stage cast appear — Edward Van Sloan and Herbert Bunston. In addition, there are many other favorites, including David Manners, Helen Chandler, Dwight Frye, Francis Dade, Charles Gerrard and Joan Standing.Tod Browning, creator of weird and unusual films, directed the picture.

In addition to .the feature, "Dracula," there will be a stage show in the form of Ali-Din. Ali-Din will present a spook party featuring spirit slate writing, talking skulls and handkerchiefs taring into snakes.

The admission will be the same to everyone. No half fare tickets will be sold as the program is not recommended for children under twelve. The box office opens at 10:15 — program starts at 10:45.