"Dracula" Review

During the opening credits of Dracula, a haunting, creepy rendition of the famous music from "Swan Lake" plays as the cast and main crew of the film are revealed. It is the only music played during the entire film, and afterwards, every scene is accompanied only by background sound effects. It's an eerie effect- and Dracula is an eerie film.

In the opening minutes, a man named Renfield has travelled to Transylvania to sell a house in London to Count Dracula. Though Renfield ignores the townspeople's warnings that Dracula is a dangerous vampire, they are all too correct- and Renfield is turned into a deranged servant of the Count. Upon his arrival in London, Dracula begins an assault on its citizens, such as a young woman named Lucy. His next victim is her friend, Mina, and only her husband John and the brilliant scientist Abraham Van Helsing can stop Dracula before it's too late.

The central performance of the film - and the one that everyone remembers - is Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. Lugosi is utterly spellbinding, an unsettling mix of likable and terrifying. His behavior is always polite and friendly, yet he never loses an eerie air, with a strange, hypnotic gaze (punctuated by lighting on his face). His dialogue is always extremely slow and deliberate: "I am... Dracula!" As a result, he creeps you out no matter what he's saying. And as soon as his sophisticated facade is dropped and he enters full vampire mode, the horror increases. Dracula has always been described as able to hypnotize people with his gaze, but this version of the story is the only film in which we see that firsthand: just as much as he hypnotizes people in-story, so too does Lugosi hypnotize you as you watch the film.

The cast is great all around. Mina (Helen Chandler), our leading lady, acts basically the way you would expect someone dealing with a vampire to act: unknowing, then confused, then afraid, then terrified. She's quite believable, and in the moments when she is put under Dracula's control, her behavior is chilling. Renfield (Dwight Frye), Dracula's crazy assistant, is delightfully unhinged, quite scary but also pretty funny. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), essentially our hero, is quite compelling. He seems to know everything about vampires and how to deal with them, and there's an awesome scene in which Dracula confronts him, and he shows absolutely no fear. Less interesting, unfortunately, is John Harker (David Manners), who was the lead protagonist of the novel (as Jonathan) but has almost nothing to do here, as everything important that happened to him in the book is transferred to other characters in the movie- Renfield for the opening scenes, and Van Helsing for the later ones. He's basically just there, which is disappointing. Also, Dracula's Brides are in the movie, but have no point at all- they awaken with Dracula and show up when he converts Renfield, but never show up or get mentioned ever again.

As I mentioned before, Dracula has no music accompanying it, only sound effects. This isn't always a good idea - Frankenstein, for example, would have benefited quite a bit from actually using music instead of silence - but in Dracula it works spectacularly. In only the second scene, there are several long shots of Dracula and his Brides awakening and exiting their coffins, and the only sounds are the noises made by the coffins. A few other scenes use sound effects almost as if they are used instead of music- when the "White Lady" (Lucy) begins attacking children, all we get is a brief clip of someone walking through a neighborhood as a little girl cries somewhere in the distance. It's far more unsettling than any music could have been.

Dracula earns its reputation completely. It's known as a classic, and it absolutely is. It's got Bela Lugosi- could you even ask for more?

Stars: **** (Out of 5)
Awesome