The Romance of Dracula; a personal Journey of the Count on celluloid

by Butler, Charles E.

  Synopsis

  A coach is seen travelling through wide countryside backdrops. Inside, we see Renfield and three other passengers. A woman reads a tour guide aloud but is cut off by a passenger mentioning words such as Nosferatu and Walpurgis Night! An innkeeper greets the coach. Renfield informs the driver to leave his luggage on the coach as he is going on to the Borgo Pass. The innkeeper advises him to wait until sunrise. Mentioning Count Dracula, Renfield is told not to go.

  At night, the Count and his brides rise from their coffins taking the form of wolves and bats and sucking the blood of the living. Renfield is unafraid and accepts a crucifix from the innkeeper's wife:

  "For your mother's sake!"

  Renfield climbs into the coach and leaves amid the wailing of panicking villagers.

  Inside the castle, we see a wide selection of strange looking creatures scurrying about, in and out of coffins. Lids open and hands emerge grasping at the air. The camera stays on one coffin. As the lid opens with a creak, the camera moves to the right. A bump of a closing lid. A track back and we see Dracula, immaculate in evening clothes and opera cape. Silent. Dominant. His three ethereal brides awaiting his commands.

  A dog’s bark turns into a wolf howl on the soundtrack as Dracula's coach waits at the Borgo Pass, Dracula driving. Renfield's coach arrives and the passengers throw out his luggage, the coach in turn swiftly abandoning the scene. Renfield enquires if this is Dracula's coach. Dracula motions him on board and takes his luggage. Inside as the coach starts up, Renfield leans through the window and sees a bat as it steers the horses.

  There is no sign of the driver.

  He is deposited in the courtyard to the castle and leaps out of the coach to berate the driver for his excessive speeds: but there is no one there. A large iron door creaks open and Renfield enters the castle. He comes upon a large staircase, cobwebs everywhere. Armadillos scrabble around. An elegant gentleman walks down the stairs clutching a candelabrum.

  Renfield:

  "Count Dracula?"

  The man answers,

  "I am Dracula - I bid you, welcome!"

  Renfield explains he thought he had the wrong place as a wolf howl permeates the air:

  "Listen to them,” enthuses Dracula” Children of the Night. What music they make!"

  Motioning his guest to follow him, Dracula passes through a large cobweb, as Renfield nervously follows.

  The next set is a large dining room or main hall, cheerfully furnished with a large table. The doors open unaided. The Count is happy as Renfield states that he kept his journey to the castle a secret. Reading the lease of Carfax, the Count has the habit of projecting long, lingering stares to his visitor. He mentions he has chartered a ship to go to England. Renfield cuts his finger on a paperclip. The Count makes a predatory move towards the blood as the crucifix falls into frame making him cover his face.

  Dracula offers some very old wine. Renfield questions that he has only poured one glass:

  "I never drink - wine," sneers Dracula.

  Dracula bids goodnight and leaves. Renfield becomes disorientated and makes his way to the large windows. He opens them as a large bat stops him from leaving. He falls down, drugged. We see the brides moving forward. As they reach Renfield’s body, Dracula enters through the large door and, with a commanding sweep of his arm, silently orders them back. He bends towards Renfield's throat as the scene fades.

  A violent storm. A ship rocked by crashing waves. Words on the screen:

  'Aboard the Vesta - Bound for England'.

  Inside the ship’s hold, Renfield mentions to a large wooden crate that the sun has set. He opens the crate. Camera moves to the right. A bump. Camera pans back and Dracula is stood there listening to Renfield, asking him to keep his promises of lives and claiming loyalty. A scene change as Dracula stands on the deck watching frantic sailors fighting against the elements. We fade into another scene as we see the deck of the ship. On the cabin wall is a shadow of a man tied to the steering wheel. From the hold, we hear maniacal giggling. The hatch is open and we see Renfield, eyes wide, glaring at the camera.

  A newspaper describes the find:

  CREW OF CORPSES FOUND ON DERELICT VESSEL:

  'Schooner Vesta drifts into Whitby harbour amid storm bearing gruesome cargo.

  Sole survivor a raving maniac. His craving to devour ants, flies and other small living things to obtain their blood puzzles scientists. At present he is under observation in Doctor Seward's sanitarium near London'.

  Sound of honking traffic as the word 'LONDON' appears on screen. A flower seller is approached by a top-hatted Dracula. He hypnotises her and bends towards her as she screams. Dracula is then seen moving down a London street. A policeman blows his whistle as he comes across the girl's body, alerting a group of onlookers to gather around the corpse.

  Dracula enters a theatre. He hands over his ticket as Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake begins in the background. A box seat has as its occupants: John Harker, Mina Seward, Dr Seward and Lucy Western.

  Dracula hypnotises an usher to deliver a message. She opens the curtains to the box seat and announces that Dr Seward is wanted on the telephone. As he rises to answer the telephone, Seward is met by Dracula who introduces himself as his new neighbour at Carfax Abbey. Lucy quotes disturbing poetry, shocking her companions who bombard Dracula with questions.

  Dracula utters:

  "To die. To be really dead. That must be glorious. There are far worse things awaiting man than death."

  The lights dim as the music begins and Dracula stares at Lucy.

  As Mina imitates the Count later, we learn that Lucy finds him fascinating. A police constable is ignored as he speaks a good evening to a passing Dracula. The Count stops and gazes at Lucy's window. Lucy is in bed reading a book. A bat flaps outside her window. Lucy falls asleep. We see Dracula in her room. He goes into a predatory crouch, making his way towards the bed. The next scene opens upon a surgical team headed by Dr Seward.

  They speak of a loss of blood and the discovery of two marks on the throat.

  The gateway to Seward Sanitarium opens the next scene. Renfield is heard pleading off-camera to the turnkey, Martin, who amid some comedy-relief throws his flies away.

  From this point on, we are witness to a kind of recurring pattern as we see Van Helsing introduced. He explains to the astonished medical board:

  "Gentlemen, we are dealing with the Undead!"

  Once we come to the next scene, the camera simply moves from one dialogue exchange to the next: Van Helsing to Seward; Harker to Van Helsing; Van Helsing to Mina. Renfield pops in a couple of times to disown knowledge of the Count and attacks a fainting maid. Dracula appears sporadically. Lucy is seen walking at night in a cemetery. When Dracula arrives at Seward's drawing room, Van Helsing notices that he doesn't cast a reflection in a small mirror and angers the Count by showing him this. Dracula reacts by knocking the mirror out of the Professor's hands claiming:

  "You are a wise man, Van Helsing, for one who has not lived a single lifetime".

  He is witnessed by Harker leaving the premises as a large wolf.

  We see Dracula hypnotise a maid to gain entry to Mina's bedroom and the same scenes are played out: Mina sleeping; bat at the Window; Dracula in predatory crouch lurching slowly towards the bed.

  The next few scenes concentrate on Mina's steady transformation into a vampire, played out on the terrace or in Dr Seward's drawing room. Mina attacks Harker but Van Helsing stops her with the crucifix.

  An escaping Renfield is followed to Carfax by a vigilant Van Helsing and John Harker.

  Dracula has kidnapped Mina. As he enters with her through one door leading to the top of a winding stone stairway, Renfield appears through another at the bottom. Harker shouts through a grill and Dracula stares at Renfield who goes on his knees and speaks of loyalty - Dracula takes him by the throat and throws him down the stairs. The Count disappears through a large door with Mina. A scream is heard from behind the door as Harker and
Van Helsing try to open it.

  Breaking in they see two coffins. Van Helsing finds Dracula in one. He lifts the lid of the second coffin and shuts it again as Harker appears. He tells Harker to hunt for a large stone.

  The camera stays on Harker as we hear Van Helsing shattering more wood off-screen. He looks in the second crate and tells Harker that Mina isn't there. Harker hands him a large stone and the camera follows him as he hunts for Mina.

  The Count moans as we hear Van Helsing hammering the stake home. In a darkened corner, we see Mina holding her heart and reacting to each blow. She screams and Harker finds her. Van Helsing announces that Dracula is dead and Mina and Harker exit up the stone steps towards the rays of the morning sun.

  After the credits, we see Edward Van Sloan emerge from behind a stage curtain as he addresses the audience:

  "Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen. When you go home tonight and the lights have been turned out, and you are afraid to look behind the curtains, and you dread to see a face appear at the window...why, just pull yourself together and remember that, after all...there ARE such things!"

  Review

  When the Hamilton Deane/John L. Balderston play was optioned for filming by Universal in 1930, the obvious choice to play the first official screen Dracula had been silent

  superstar Lon Chaney. I predict that the actor would have thrown away the stage bound script and would have gone back to the literary source as he had done with his Quasimodo and Erik, Gaston Leroux's mad maestro, in his previous successes for the studio.

  Dracula's description is a make-up artist’s dream and Chaney would have risen to the challenge. Having already played a vampire of sorts in the silent London After Midnight (1927), Chaney had left a tantalising blueprint which speculated as to how he would look as the Count. With Tod Browning standing in as director, it is accurate to assume that Chaney would have ran with the whole show and he would have utilised his amazing vocal talents to imitate the Count's "strange intonation" spoken about by Jonathon Harker in the book.

  And why not the same with Van Helsing's dialect?

  Possibly just more conjecture on my part, but, after his mimicry and ventriloquism as the disguised transvestite in The Unholy Three (1930), plus his two previous roles in Midnight, isn't it fair to assume that the actor would stretch the same boundaries with Dracula and portray both the lead roles?

  The speculations on the possibilities are limitless.

  Alas, we will never know as Lon Chaney would succumb to throat cancer just over a month before filming was to begin, leaving the world in mourning and Browning scrambling around in the dark with an unknown leading man, the finished product betraying more creaks than Dracula’s coffin lid.

  As the synopsis above shows, a scene-by-scene recording of the film would be pointless. The script allows everything to be acted out in a succession of similar shots that become tiring through their predictability. All the cast seem to be trapped on one stage following the eerie set of opening sequences. The Castle is a grand design and does lend an atmospheric air to the proceedings.

  The large hall is welcoming enough and Dwight Frye and Bela Lugosi play out their scenes with just the right touch of camp. The brides silently prowl around and promise real menace that, sadly, is never delivered. Karl Freund's excellent camerawork complements the tension admirably, working manfully to make sense of the film’s theme that is obviously misunderstood by the director.

  The arrival of the Vesta is treated with a convincing storm (the footage taken from Universal’s The Storm Breaker: 1925), and news items inform us of the eventual landing in Whitby. Renfield is incarcerated and should really have the key thrown away.

  But when Dracula dons his top hat and walks down the Broadway version of a London street, the film loses any credibility that it might have otherwise possessed. A Cockney flower seller, born in the US of A, succumbs to Dracula's rape unexpectedly. Off-screen horrors are explained away in long snatches of dialogue. Van Helsing appears and, a plus for the film, is the perfect physical embodiment of Stoker's imagination. But the film falls apart when comedy relief intervenes in the shape of Charles Gerrard's bemused orderly who states that "...everyone is crazy!"

  After Lon Chaney's untimely death, contracted B movie artists like Ian Keith, Paul Muni, Conrad Veidt and Victor Jory were tentative choices to play Count Dracula. Veidt was the genre’s first star after his appearance in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and Victor Jory had toured with the play alongside Lugosi, interestingly made up to resemble Count Orlok in Nosferatu.

  As fate would have it, Bela Lugosi received the part that would haunt him to the grave. He isn't romantic but he does have an otherworldly feel about him. He has no fangs and uses hypnotism from a distance to put his victims into a slumber before slowly sneaking up and biting their necks. He doesn't bother to hide his identity with a muffler like other Counts when he meets Renfield at the Borgo Pass.

  He sneers condescendingly at his guest, drugging him with wine, before making him his slave. Renfield begs his Master to keep ambiguously confusing promises as they travel to England. We know, by Lugosi's expression, that he won't. His opening scenes with the lunatic are the best in the film, and have been quoted as such, time and time again, alas, apart from Karl Freund's excellent camerawork, not for the right reasons.

  This Count is the equivalent of a 1930s bad guy. He goes after what and who he wants without worrying about the effect it will have on others. He is lonely and is attracted to Lucy because of her similar interest in all things morbid. She finds him fascinating, as he does of himself. What a victim! Someone to hand out constant praise to him in the next thousand years or so?

  For the movie-going public however, Lugosi was Dracula and Dracula was Lugosi. No other actor has ever been so closely identified to his fictional character on screen. Shorn of Stoker’s historical background, he very quickly becomes relegated to a place found in B movie hokum. In the film, his vampire is utilised unimaginatively as a peripheral bogeyman and is even robbed of a decent death scene - the only clue we get to his demise is a low, off screen moan. In the 1936 re-issue of the film, even these moans were censored as being too horrific.

  His runaway success with Dracula entitled Lugosi to pick and choose his next roles. Turning down Frankenstein's monster in James Whale's masterpiece, inadvertently making an international star of Boris Karloff, he opted instead to hammer nails into his own cinematic coffin by taking on the part of Dr Mirakle in Robert Florey's now obsolete footnote, Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). It would be another five years later that Bela Lugosi would play a vampire in the interesting remake of the Browning/Chaney vehicle, London after Midnight.

  Mark of the Vampire (1935), again directed by Browning, cast Lugosi as an actor who portrays the mute vampire Count Mora, hired as a confusing plot device to trap a killer. The best Lugosi vampire movie is the wartime pot boiler The Return of the Vampire (1944) made by Columbia and directed by Lew Landers.

  He played Dracula, for the second and final time in Charles Barton's Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (1948).

  Dwight Frye is the classic Renfield of the cinema. He isn't the best, but he is the most quoted amongst aficionados as the most memorable, playing out Harker's scenes at the village, amid national costume wearing peasants, and later becoming mystified by Dracula's use of the English language.

  He informs the villagers that he is bound for Castle Dracula, then swears blind that he has kept his journey secret when questioned by the Count himself. He intones that he has been loyal many times, but it is never explained in just what way. At the asylum, he goes overboard becoming the caricature that is played out by impressionists across the world.

  Using Stoker's dialogue regularly out of context, he chews the scenery unforgivably, and it is understandable that he would get on the Count's nerves. He infuriates everyone around him and becomes a tiresome double act with the unfunny Martin. You actually feel like applauding when Dracula takes him by the throat a
nd throws him down the stairs.

  Two years later, Frye would repeat the role under the name Herman Gleib, in the independent thriller, The Vampire Bat (1933), and continue starring in horror films, most notably as Fritz, the hunchback assistant in Frankenstein (1931); but generally as a non-plussed villager, for the next ten years until his death from a massive heart attack. His final film being Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man (1943). Rock star Alice Cooper would pay homage to the actor in his song, The Ballad of Dwight Fry, unconsciously dropping the 'e' and reverting it to the original spelling.