After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferal of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead. Hilarity ensues.
Trivia: Universal Studios commissioned a new musical score from composer Philip Glass. It premiered at The Brooklyn Academy of Music on 26 October 1999. The original plan was to make a big-budget adaptation of "Dracula" that would adhere strictly to Bram Stoker's novel. However, with the Great Depression, Universal didn't have the money to make such a sprawling film. Instead, they opted to adapt the much less expensive Hamilton Deane stage play. The large, expansive sets built for the Transylvania castle and Carfax Abbey sequences remained standing after filming was completed, and were used by Universal Pictures for many other movies for over a decade. Bela Lugosi was so desperate to repeat his stage success and play the Count Dracula role for the film version, that he agreed to a contract paying him $500 per week for a seven week shooting schedule, an insultingly small amount even during the days of the Depression. The studio did not want the scene where Dracula attacks Renfield to be filmed due to the perceived gay subtext of the situation. A memo was sent to the director stating "Dracula is only to attack women".
Dracula, I don't think I need to say any more. It is a classic movie. It is also the root of a lot of Dracula cliches. Dracula's long cape. The Gothic style of Dracula's castle and Carfax Abbey with long sweeping staircases. Dracula's stilted slow speech patterns and accent. But some of the Dracula movie staples were not seen. You never see his fangs, or the twin puncture bite marks on the women's neck. You do get the feel that it was filmed on a sound stage. I know that is a modern day bias, but everything felt a little claustrophobic, which I guess creates a better atmosphere for a horror movie. And as for the horror, (Again with the modern day bias) nobody seemed to be in real life threatening danger, I would classify it as a psychological thriller (of course, I would classify Silence Of The Lambs as a psychological thriller, were as IMDb says it is horror). All in all it is a good movie, and Lugosi is very creepy as the Count.
Posts
Welcome, Foolish Mortals!
14 years ago
2 comments:
Dad asked if I had the date of the Glass Score right. He is good at spoting inconsistancies in my posts and making me better at writing these posts, but this time I got him.
From Wikipedia:
Due to the short-lived limitations of adding a musical score to a film's soundtrack, during 1930 and 1931, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. In 1998 minimalist composer Philip Glass was commissioned to compose an original score for the classic film. The score was performed by the Kronos Quartet under direction of Michael Riesman.
Of the project, Glass said:
"The film is considered a classic. I felt the score needed to evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th century — for that reason I decided a string quartet would be the most evocative and effective. I wanted to stay away from the obvious effects associated with horror films. With [the Kronos Quartet] we were able to add depth to the emotional layers of the film."
Oh man! I forgot to mention the Armadillos! Apparently Count Dracula is found of armadillos, several live in his castle even though armadillos are not from eastern Europe, so he must have them imported.
Post a Comment