1931's Dracula

There is something amazingly quaint about a horror movie made for a 1930's audience. Approximately 81 years old, I think one has to enjoy cinema to even attempt to watch Dracula. Made within a decade of the first talkies, it shows movies that are mostly stage plays in front of a camera. This is not Interview with a Vampire, or Blade.

I should point out I'm not a horror movie buff. Vampire movies are on the bottom of my hate list (that's where my most hated stuff goes, not at the top), just above torture-porn (which doesn't include Vampire killing movies like Blade, I like those). The horror genre has a respectable history, but not enough for me to want to see each year's batch worth of slaughtered young adults (looking at you Saw). Sci-Fi horror is in a different class and one day I'll psycho-analyze myself to determine why I like Resident Evil over any Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie.

It's hard for me to image a movie-going community where Dracula scared anyone. The bat scenes are laughable but the actors sell the drama, some times too much. I never understood the motivation for Dracula to move from Transylvania to the outskirts of London, but then again, he didn't last long. Sorry. Spoiler.

All the classic Vampire traits are present: his aversion to crosses, sleeping during the day, turning women into vampires, turning men into slaves, turning himself into a bat or a wolf (sadly off screen), repelled by wolfsbane, hypnotizing victims, and no reflection in a mirror. The story even explores the idea of curing Mina Harker, after she is turned, by killing Dracula. (Yes, the same Mina Harker from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) Of note is the idea that Vampires can only sleep when under the soil of the land they are from, so Dracula had to bring Transylvanian dirt to England. The strongest moments in the movie are between Professor Van Helsing (this one, not this one) and the Count as he begins to realize the other is a Vampire. And Van Helsing isn't surprised. He even keeps some anti-Vampire tools with him. If anything I would have liked more backstory on him. Sadly, all but one death is off screen. Considering it's for a '30s audience I'll let it slide.

THE classic Gothic horror movie that is slow and cheesy (and over-acted) at times, but worth the viewing. A Universal production that will go on to make many horror monsters of the mid-20th century famous: Frankenstein, Wolf Man, Invisible Man, and The Mummy (not this one) to name a few. These creatures are even known to cross into each other's movies, and sometimes bump into Abbott and Costello. We are still seeing many of them reinvented every year by studios. This 1931 version of Dracula is currently on NetFlix.