Dracula (1931)

IMDb plot summary: The ancient vampire Count Dracula arrives in England and begins to prey upon the virtuous young Mina.
Directed by Tod Browning. Stars Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye and Edward Van Sloan.


I recently watched Nosferatu and read Dracula by Bram Stoker and, unfortunately, this measures up to neither one. It deviates in some interesting ways from the book - Dracula is an invited guest to their house at the beginning, for instance - but the vampire himself never manages to be very scary. I'd be more willing to be merciful toward it and say that early horror movies just won't be considered scary by today's standards, except for the fact that 1) Renfield is extremely creepy and 2) Nosferatu scared the crap out of me last week. So obviously horror doesn't *have* to be dated. In light of that, most of this movie just doesn't work for me. 1.5 stars.

Best Part: I did like Renfield. He was fascinating to watch whenever he was on-screen.
Worst Part: There seem to be many things left *unfinished* in this movie. Just as one example, at the very end, Jonathan and Mina leave the tomb, ask Van Helsing if he's heading back with them, he says, "Not presently," and they leave. And the the movie ends. Wait, what? I thought it was going to reveal that he was also a vampire or even that he just wanted them to have alone time. But, nope. Apparently that had nothing to do with anything. He's just staying in Dracula's tomb for completely innocent purposes. There are lots of "Huh?" moments like that in this movie.
Flickchart: #1342, above No Reservations and below On the Town.