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Directed by Karoli Laythay.
Erik Vanko (aka Paul Askonas) as an insane asylum inmate who claims to be Count Dracula. No resemblance to the Stoker novel beyond the reference and inspiration.
1972 was a great year. As for satanic rites, I am not into that stuff.
And here's the cover for the first French edition of the novel :
Published in 1919.
It's one of the few Drax movies where he actually has a large scale scheme.
Luckily, one print survived and was copied over the years. This version takes place in Germany in the 1830s, and some names and events are changed, but I thoroughly enjoy it.
Nosferatu was also the start of this popular misconception that the Renfield character was sane before getting in contact with Dracula and that his madness is created by Dracula. I even had to correct my literature teacher in college, telling him that no, the narrator in Dracula's Guest was not Renfield.
The craziest Renfield.
DRACULA (1931)
Directed by Tod Browning, and starring Bela Lugosi, who had also played the character in a 1924 Broadway theatre play which the film was based on as much as the book itself. Also partly based on the unauthorized German Nosferatu from nine years earlier. (The scene where Harker cuts himself and Dracula draws nearer due to bloodlust is from that film, and not in the book.)
Dracula is Hungarian in this version.
Audience reportedly fainted in the cinema at the time, even if critics claimed the theatre version had been even more frightening.
I've watched it several times, and it's quite fascinating. In many ways, Melford uses more creativity with several shots. Lupita Tovar is certainly intended to be more voluptuous and sexy than Helen Chandler, and Pablo Alvarez Rubio's Renfield seems to be trying to out-do Dwight Frye.
It's longer than the English version and follows the shooting script more faithfully.
Carlos Villar looks good in Bela's costume and toupee, but has nowhere near the screen presence of Lugosi.
Overall there's no question I prefer the Lugosi version in spite of it's simplicity compared to the Spanish version. You really can't beat the combination of Bela, Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan. I feel Tod Browning captured a perfectly atmospheric Dracula film without the bells and whistles the Spanish speaking version gives us.
Interestingly, the professor s name is here Von Helsing.Bela Lugosi does not appear, but a wax bust in his likeness is used in a scene.
This is the first film where the count turns into a bat or mist, and the first film where Dracula goes to America. The character Dr Brewster can be seen reading the novel by Bram Stoker.
She's always interesting.