{"id":1611,"date":"2018-10-12T12:02:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T16:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=1611"},"modified":"2018-10-12T12:02:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-12T16:02:15","slug":"universal-classic-monster-movies-an-ocf-classic-movie-review-part-2-dracula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/12\/universal-classic-monster-movies-an-ocf-classic-movie-review-part-2-dracula\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Classic Monster Movies \u2013 An OCF Classic Movie Review \u2013 Part 2 \u2013 Dracula"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re-posted from October 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dracula is the King of Monsters.\u00a0 He is obviously royalty.\u00a0 He has all the trappings.\u00a0 His castle, his formal evening attire, even his diction and good manners.\u00a0 He is called Count Dracula in the Universal film but his legend descends from a real prince.\u00a0 Vlad III (the Impaler) was ruler of Wallachia in present day Romania.\u00a0 He was called Dracul (Dragon) for his defense of Christians against the Turks but his cruelty against just about anyone he came in contact with was legendary.\u00a0 The legend of the vampire (nosferatu) is central European in origin and goes back very far into the imagination of primitive people huddling in the dimly lit hovels and fearing the long winter nights for all the real and imagined terrors that lurked right at their doorsteps.<\/p>\n

Bram Stoker took this legacy and created a gothic novel that followed the conventions of his time and populated it with upper class British characters right down to the damsel in distress and the square jawed leading man ready to save her from a fate literally worse than death.\u00a0 It cried out for a stage adaption and of course it got it.\u00a0 And then some.\u00a0 Several productions were launched and in 1927 a company opened the play in the United States.\u00a0 And interestingly enough three of the lead male parts reprised their roles in the Universal film, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Edward van Sloan as Dr. Van Helsing and Herbert Bunston as Dr. Seward.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s now look at the film.\u00a0 What are its chief characteristics?\u00a0 It\u2019s an early talkie.\u00a0 The sound is not perfect.\u00a0 Whether an artifact of the age of the prints used or of the original production there is considerable background noise.\u00a0 The sets for the most part are the studio versions of city streets and upper class drawing rooms.\u00a0 The sets used for the village and castle in Transylvania are unconvincing but highly evocative.\u00a0 My one pet peeve with Castle Dracula is that while showing all the creatures crawling around in the cellar we are given a good look at some armadillos.\u00a0 These are New World creatures and what they would be doing in central Europe is very hard to imagine.\u00a0 The set for Carfax Abbey is equally entertaining and in fact is probably built on the set for Castle Dracula used earlier.<\/p>\n

With respect to the actors, they are exaggeratedly and understandably stagey.\u00a0 After all, most of them were stage actors.\u00a0 They exaggerate their words and gestures to such an extent that sometimes it appears to a modern audience as parody.\u00a0 This is probably the result of both the stage and silent film legacy of most of the cast.\u00a0 Probably the most entertaining performance is given by the Cockney Orderly who watches over the madman Renfield.\u00a0 He is an exaggerated lower-class everyman who adds comic relief and a really terrible accent to the film.<\/p>\n

And finally the special effects.\u00a0 At one point, Renfield looks out the window of the stage coach he is travelling in to Castle Dracula and sees a bat flying above the horses.\u00a0 It is hard to minimize how laughably pathetic it looks to anyone used to the magic that CGI can perform today.\u00a0 I think the strings are actually visible, but maybe it was just my scornful imagination.\u00a0 There is at least one more bat flyby in the film and it doesn\u2019t improve over the first.\u00a0 \u2018Nuff said.<\/p>\n

Okay, now I\u2019ve run down everything about the film.\u00a0 It sounds like a hot steaming mess.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, it is and it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 All that I\u2019ve said is true.\u00a0 But it still remains an entertaining experience.\u00a0 It is a time capsule of what our great grandparents looked on as theater.\u00a0 The British basis of what was considered civilized and urbane is on display.\u00a0 And you can see the tension between reason and science on the one hand and the instinctual and irrational forces at work in the universe.\u00a0 And it\u2019s interesting to note how young women are the weak point in the rational structure being undermined by the powers of darkness.\u00a0 Really the story isn\u2019t that different from our own morality tales about the dissolution of the world of light into the abyss.\u00a0 It\u2019s only different in that it has a happy ending.\u00a0 Today the forces of darkness would win and we would cheer them because of how cool they dress.\u00a0 And the characters get to mouth some very entertaining lines.\u00a0 In one exchange between the main protagonists Dracula declares in his best Transylvanian English, \u201cYou are wise for one who has not lived even one lifetime, Van Helsing.\u201d\u00a0 For me that\u2019s worth the price of admittance right there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Re-posted from October 2017   Dracula is the King of Monsters.\u00a0 He is obviously royalty.\u00a0 He has all the trappings.\u00a0 His castle, his formal evening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237,4,243],"tags":[428,418,427,200,429,417,430],"class_list":["post-1611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-bela-lugosi","tag-dracula","tag-edward-van-sloan","tag-fantasy","tag-renfield","tag-universal-classic-monster-movies","tag-van-helsing"],"yoast_head":"\nUniversal Classic Monster Movies \u2013 An OCF Classic Movie Review \u2013 Part 2 \u2013 Dracula - 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