Lugosi's DRACULA (31)

[Michael O'Regan]

Given that we were in the pre-code era, why were fangs never shown? Or, for that matter, any physical signs of a bite?
Would these have been considered too horrific?

Second question - was Lucy Westons death filmed? On screen it's only alluded to after the fact?

[bobfells]

Good questions, Michael. I have always wondered about what exactly Renfield was doing to help Dracula at the Seward Sanitarium.

[cjh5801]

I have always wondered about what exactly Renfield was doing to help Dracula at the Seward Sanitarium.

The answer to that question was obscured by some last minute editing by Universal that messed up the continuity. The published script bears this out. See the discussion on the damage caused by the poor editing here: http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuk ... yn6J_F5mSM

[Donald Binks]

The film was an adaption of the stage play. Also in those days it was considered better to be more subtle - no blood and guts - which permeate the modern "Dracula" pictures. The play was quite tongue in cheek (I saw a revival back in the 1970's). The thing I miss from the film is the curtain speech at the end delivered by Van Helsing. Hopefully one day it will be found and added to the picture

[Lokke Heiss]

Just because the 1970s revival was 'camp' that doesn't mean the '20s version was also camp, at least as obviously camp. The 70s version had fifty more years of baggage to deal with. The version with Lugosi was relatively fresh.

And remember that 'pre-Code' is a misnomer. There was a code, it just wasn't enforced in a consistent and Draconian way, which changed in 1934 when Breen put the screws in the coffin, so to speak. So there would have been a concern about blood and fangs, etc.and making this all to the point when individual states had problems with it. I think this was the first Hollywood film to put out the idea of a real supernatural monster, so it was 'daring' for its day, and the filmmakers probably had no interest in pushing their luck. In other words, nobody was thinking they needed blood and fangs.

[Michael O'Regan]

I can understand the lack of blood but would a pair of fangs really have been so horrific? A couple of pinpricks on the neck just to show exactly what the characters were talking about?

[augustinius]

Given the lack of exposure to "hard core" horror, they might well have been. In a way we really cannot recover or understand today, Dracula was horrifying beyond anything most viewers had seen in their day, and as pointed out above, it's the first film to make the horrors real -- think of films like Cat and the Canary or London After Midnight, where the horrors all turned out to be phony in some way. Finally, too, consider that Lugosi had already played Dracula onstage prior to the movie and probably didn't use fangs in that context either, so was inclined to repeat as much of his characterization in the film as possible. Actually, I am not sure I can remember ANY film vampire use fangs prior to Christopher Lee in Horror of Dracula as I think it over.

[augustinius]

According to Wikipedia I was close -- the first reference to onscreen fangs for a vampire was an obscure Mexican horror film called "El Vampiro" from 1957, therefore made within a year of Horror of Dracula.

[Michael O'Regan]

Didn't Schreck have at least a hint of fangs ( I'd have to rewatch it), or at least, longer than normal teeth?

You're right though, augustinius. It's difficult to imagine today, just how horrific the whole vampire idea must've been in 1931.

[s.w.a.c.]

Didn't Schreck have at least a hint of fangs ( I'd have to rewatch it), or at least, longer than normal teeth?

His teeth were definitely abnormal, but I think the effect they were going for was more rat-like than the now-traditional snake-like fangs.

[Michael O'Regan]

I'm not sure Lugosi would've looked any more frightening than that to be honest.


I haven't seen the Spanish version yet. That's on tonights agenda. Looking forward to it.

[All Darc]

Interesting...

If I was a director and was performing screen tets to get the right actor to the role of Count Dracula, I would make sure that they would use no point teeth for the test.
If they get good scarring result with no long teeth, they would make even better with the point teeth.


But I realy missed that Lugosi had not even one scene with a at least a bit pointed teeth appearing. Think with me, if the vampire let the two marks on the neck of his victms, he most haver the pointed teth, otherwise the mark would loock like a bite of a child in some child fighting.

[Michael O'Regan]

The Spanish version:

I'll always have an enormous amount of affection for the Lugosi version but having watched the Spanish for the first time I found it superior in many ways. It's a lot creepier, largely thanks to the chap playing Renfield - I've always found Frye's portrayal somewhat laughable. It's also more atmospheric, more dramatic overall.

It's a much sharper print. Some of the interiors at Carfax are gorgeous.

A wonderful evening at the pictures

[Donald Binks]

Lugosi eventually gave up and accepted the American pronunciation of his name. It should really be pronounced "Loog-a-chee Bay-lah" (Just thought I'd throw that in).

I think that audiences of 1927 - 1931 thought that the idea of a "living" undead was bad enough to be horrific on its own without the need for fangs, bite marks and blood. Besides, as "Dracula" was a stage play adapted for the screen - if it hadn't been necessary on the stage (who would see all this from the auditorium?) - it was deemed unnecessary to put into the film. We can leave all the fangs, bite marks and blood to Hammer Films and Christopher Lee.

[bobfells]

I would have to check the novel but I recall Stoker commenting (through Jonathan Harker) that when Dracula smiled his upper canine teeth were visible and seemed a bit elongated.

I agree that we have become so jaded with vampires that it's easy to ignore how chilling it must have been to see a coffin open - from the inside- and watch a person step out of it.

[moviepas]

Lugosi eventually gave up and accepted the American pronunciation of his name. It should really be pronounced "Loog-a-chee Bay-lah" (Just thought I'd throw that in).

Hungarian Language along with Chinese and a few others, go by Surname first and first name second. I always like the Chinese for this one: Mao's off-sider was Chou En Lai(pronounced Lie). If you reverse it to our custom of names we get Lai En Chou!!!!! Well Mao's wife had appeared in films.

[todmichel]

Fernando Mendez's "El vampiro" isn't at all "an obscure movie", it's just the contrary in fact - it's considered as one of the true classics of Mexican cinema. It's available in at least three different DVDs (two in America, one in France) as well as its immediate sequel, "El ataud del vampiro" (The Vampire's Coffin"), also directed by Mendez.
However, the first screen vampire with canines wasn't German Robles in these two 1957 Mexican movies, but Atif Kaptan in the 1952's "Drakula Istanbul'da" (Dracula in Istanbul), directed by Mehmet Mutar. This old (by Turkish standards) movie has miraculously survived and was shown several times on Turkish TV, and also released on DVD. It's of course a transposition, not a faithful adaptation of the novel, but several elements (like the vampire "walking" on the walls of his castle) were kept, as well as the link between the historic voivod Vald Tepes and the literary vampire - and this, decades before the so-called "definitive" Coppola version!

[Einar the Lonely]

Not only fangs, also bitemarks are shown in NOSFERATU, in my opinion still the best of all Vampire movies...

[WaverBoy]

Yep, NOSFERATU wins the prize for first onscreen fangs. They may be rat fangs, but fangs nonetheless.

[Mike Gebert]

Since someone brought up Turkey, I have to point out my favorite picture of Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, which looks to have been taken by someone familiar with Hollywood glamour techniques. Here it appears on an iPhone case:



Every time we saw it (and you see Ataturk a lot in Turkey), we made (quietly) jokes about the father of the nation, Bela Lugosi. So much more badass than this.

[Rob Farr]

In Mark of the Vampire, Lugosi walks around with a bullet hole in his head. In deference to the code, there is no explicit reference to this, but that's what it is.

[todmichel]

In Mark of the Vampire, Lugosi walks around with a bullet hole in his head. In deference to the code, there is no explicit reference to this, but that's what it is.

It appears that, like his earlier "Dracula" and "Freaks", Tod Browning's "Mark of the Vampire" was drastically re-cut before release, and the bullet hole in Lugosi's head was explained by suicide following an incest.
(Spoiler) Even if this wasn't for real - after all, Lugosi and Borland are just actors playing the vampire characters in this movie - it was probably too much for some apoplectic censors in 1935.

[Titano]

I couldn't care less for fangs. Stoker alluded to rudely sharpened canines, "Nosferatu" bent the story for the better - implying the connection between vampires, rats, disease, and destuction...anything can feed on blood...

[ClayKing]

Does anyone know how Dracula was distributed in non-English, non-Spanish areas, such as France or Germany? Were sub-titles used, or was it only distributed in its silent inter-titled version with foreign language inter-titles?

[todmichel]

All surviving movie ads and heralds in old French and Belgian newspapers and magazines indicate that DRACULA was entirely dubbed in French, like FRANKENSTEIN several months later: "Entièrement parlant français", "Production entièrement parlée français".





As you can imagine, these dubbed versions are lost since decades. I saw FRANKENSTEIN during its French re-release in 1958 and it was a new (cut) print from USA, spoken in English with French subs. The same goes for DRACULA some years later.
According to old reviews, Edward Van Sloan was replaced by French writer Paul Reboux for a new filmed introduction to FRANKENSTEIN. I don't know if it was also the case for the final scene in DRACULA (missing in all prints these days, anyway).

I have heard of this silent version of DRACULA but I don't know if it was really released in France.

[BixB]

When my daughter was studying at the Selznick school in Rochester, one of her assignments was to log and try to identify a number of fragments that were compiled from different films. She brought the tape compilation home over Christmas break and among the pieces was a 3-4 minute segment from FRANKENSTEIN (the mountain pursuit) and it was dubbed in French.

[Mitch Farish]

I agree that we have become so jaded with vampires that it's easy to ignore how chilling it must have been to see a coffin open - from the inside- and watch a person step out of it.

If the stories of how the film Dracula came about are correct, and Laemmle, Jr. had gotten Lon Chaney to play the Count in the late '20s, we could be talking about a make-up that would have resembled Dracula's description in Stoker's novel - his pallid "aquiline" face, his "peculiarly arched nostrils," "hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere," his "massive eyebrows almost meeting over the nose," with a "heavy mustache," and "sharp white teeth" protruding over his lip. "For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed."

After all, Chaney was known for his elaborate make-ups, and in 1925 he did turn to the novel The Phantom of the Opera for inspiration. Chaney's involvement would have changed Dracula from an adaptation of Lugosi's stage success in 1927 into something closer to the book.

[Jack Theakston]

The problem is that MGM would have NEVER lent out Chaney, so it was Laemmle's pipe dream. Chaney had just signed a substantial renewal, and the last thing that Mayer would have wanted would have been Universal to be reaping the profits.

Plus, Chaney would have simply been terrible in the role talking.

[Mitch Farish]

The problem is that MGM would have NEVER lent out Chaney, so it was Laemmle's pipe dream. Chaney had just signed a substantial renewal, and the last thing that Mayer would have wanted would have been Universal to be reaping the profits.

Plus, Chaney would have simply been terrible in the role talking.

The other alternative I've heard about, although it is probably apocryphal, is Conrad Veidt. He was tall and thin like Stoker's Dracula, and could have spoken his lines phonetically like Lugosi. If Paul Leni had directed, we still might have had something more stylish than Browning was able to achieve - but without fangs.

[Jack Theakston]

I could see Veidt in the part. Had Leni directed it, I wonder how close to the Deane/Balderston play the film would have been.

The problem with the fangs weren't just one with Lugosi—fangs in your mouth make it completely impossible to speak. And with Chaney's effect of using wires to keep the mouth open, it would have been like listening to a 12-year-old who just got braces talking.