PopHorror Let's Get Scared
In my years of experience with the horror genre, I will always hold the Universal Monsters very close. When I was growing up, our school library held these orangebooks with all their monsters on each cover, and a short story version of each. I constantly rented these books. However, the monster that got me the most was Tod Browning’s Dracula. It is one of my most cherished movies of all time.
Let’s find out why in the review.
Synopsis
After his attack on Renfield, Count Dracula makes his way into London. The count feeds as much as he can and turns innocent souls toward total damnation, forever to be cursed to live life for eternity. Before he takes over the city, a doctor named Van Helsing focuses on all he has learned as a monster hunter to beat the bloodthirsy ghoul.
Tod Browning directed the film, which stars Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye.
Looks That Kill
Dracula opened me up to a whole new world. By then, I had horror experience, but the first time I saw Dracula, I was actually scared. I learned to love him because of one man, and that man is Bela Lugosi. I dove into all his classics, such as White Zombie. However, none of them scared me as the character. In a funny way, my idolization of the man made me strongly dislike almost every vampire movie ever made, because they never piqued my interest. I found other vampire films to be mostly boring with too much dialogue. It may seem pretty silly because Tod Browning also made a vampire movie with mostly dialogue. No one fit the character more to me.
Dracula was an instant classic that helped start a revolution of monsters and madmen. Honestly, I have never met anyone who said another person fit the role. In Dracula, there were tense moments that scared you as a kid. The scene that got to me the most is that first opening of the coffin as he awoke to greet the night sky. Tod Browning’s Dracula had everything you needed to scare someone in the 1930’s. I imagine it was easier to spook the audience back then. People lost sleep, and there were even legends of medical aid being parked outside theaters to tend to audience members who may have passed out during the movie out of pure fear.
In The End
Today, these movies look silly to anyone outside of a few devoted horror fans, but back then the crowds ate these films up, from Phantom of the Opera to Frankenstein and beyond. Dracula followed these films closely, but also took a legendary story and provided its own changes.
You can throw Christopher Lee at me, and I’ll avoid it. You could also throw in a boring 1990’s movie that was a sensation, and to me, boring as hell. I am really picky when it comes to movie monsters. It is honestly better to be a slasher fan at the time, or the dreaded elevated horror. I will still show my love to the movies and stories that crept into our minds and made a tiny little hole in your head to know the movie, even if you aren’t a fan, you know what you represent as Dracula.
There is only one king of the vampire genre, and it isn’t Brad Pitt.
