Like so many early talkies, Dracula plays like a stiff amateur stage play that happens to get captured on film. The more movies I see from the early talkie years the more I'm amazed Hollywood survived. It certainly went about 12 steps backward from the height of the silent era, in terms of camera movement, photography and even acting. Lugosi's goofy stare is creepy at first, but each time Browning trots it out it gets closer and closer to camp. Henfield over-acting his craziness, Harkar immediately grating on my nerves, the dames being indistinguishable from one another. And the talking, the talking, the talking. Dracula doesn't hold a candle to Nosferatu. It's not even in the same league.

"Dracula" is a classic character in itself, Bela Lugosi's portrayal of this famous character will continue to be my favorites. This was truly a role he was born to play, the way he carries himself with such sophistication and completely memorizes his audience. The scenery was stunning and Dracula's castle was absolutely breathtaking, and made you get the vibe it was trying to give off. While the acting and scenery were fantastic, it was very slow, and I felt like most parts dragged more then others, and it personally made me lose interest very quickly. However overall, the film was pretty amazing. This film will continue to be a classic and put all the remakes to shame.

I recently purchased a Universal Monster Box Set which included 1 film from all the monsters. I started at the beginning with Dracula. Let me start off by saying it blows my mind that this movie was released only 34 years after Dracula was created by Bram Stoker in 1897.This movie is grand, and ambitious for the time. There are large sets and some great shots. That being said this movie does have be graded based on it's time. Being released in 1931 it came out only 4 years after the first "talkie" or movie with audio was released. That is an amazing achievement.However watching now the acting is clunky, Dracula's feeding and "attacks" are slow and funny and there are some pretty severe limitations based on the knowledge and talent of film makers.I am excited to dig into the rest of the box set and see how Dracula compares to others like Frankenstein, Wolf Man and the Mummy.

One of the problems modern viewers will have with Tod Browning's 1931 'Dracula' (ok, at least this modern viewer), unfair as it may be, is that countless versions of the vampire tale have been told over the decades, so quite a bit of the shock value is lost. This version is told in a 'right down central' type of way, and unlike some of Browning's other seriously creepy movies from this time period which I love, it's hard to imagine anyone being scared or feeling tension which watching it. Browning tries to give us the tinglies with various things like bugs crawling about in the beginning, but too many of his effects seem like comical parodies, such as a rubber bat dangled in the window more than once. Unfortunately, I would also put legendary actor Bela Lugosi's performance in this category. His demeanor and slow cadence with words doesn't produce the intended chills, and he's not helped by Browning's tight shots on him staring into the camera. We can recognize this film as the adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel that influenced so many which would follow and give it credit for that, but it's not such a great movie to pull others together for at, say, Halloween time. You can do better for horror/scary/creepy even in the time period.