DRACULA
d. Tod Browning, 1931

7 August 2009

Somewhere I have some notes written after the last time I watched DRACULA, over a year ago. I'll dig those up and append this post later. What I know is, DRACULA is a film I find difficult to assess. I can't help but respond to it viscerally. The images, and many of my emotional reactions to them, were deeply rooted in my mind as a child, where they mingled with my dreams and were confused and conflated with Dracula lore from many other sources. I can't watch the film without thinking of the clumsily painted Aurora Dracula monster model I had in about 1964, and smelling the ink they used in Famous Monsters Of Filmland back then.

The film is iconic, of course, but it is also an awkward film with an awkward pedigree. After last year's viewing, I came to see DRACULA not as the first film of its kind, but as an example of the Old Dark House genre which was already well established by 1931. DRACULA suffers by comparison with other Old Dark House films. It lacks the fluid cinematic bravura of THE CAT AND THE CANARY. It is also a singularly humorless work (save for some intrusive business from Renfield's keeper, establishing a tradition of Cockney comic relief for many Universal horrors and mysteries to follow).

More to come...