Reviews

**** includes generalized mild spoilers ****

I was anticipating a great film that builds on a great tradition, from "Nosferatu" in the 1920's through Lugosi's "Dracula" in 1931 and the genuinely faithful "Count Dracula" TV miniseries of 1977, but was disappointed because of a weak script and capricious editing.

Despite the title that seems to promise a relatively faithful adaptation of the novel, or possibly the play, by Bram Stoker, a good chunk of the material, everything that deals with Vlad the Impaler is not in the originals. This, together with altered ending, the story on board the ship, the invention of the green luminous cloud to explain Dracula's ability to enter closed rooms, leaves little basis for the claim of faithfulness.

Many of the traditional details of the Dracula story are given the briefest nod, or omitted: (1) Dracula does not ever turn into a bat (2) the business of mirrors not showing the images of vampires is not used in the story (3) the business of vampires not being able to stand daylight is very much weakened (4) the effect of showing the cross to stop the vampires is very weak (5) the business of using garlic to ward off vampires is also much weakened (6) the business of using consecrated hosts to control the vampire is also practically gone.

There are many other completely unnecessary alterations of the original: (a) the relationship of Lucy and Mina (b) the disappearance of the character of the mother (c) the death of Renfield.

The most objectionable invention is the ability of Dracula to change his appearance from the wrinkled old man to a handsome man at the peak of his virility who functions in daylight and has restaurant dates with the beautiful Mina.

Apart from that, the version I saw (two hours and some minutes) suffered from a lack of continuity exacerbated by capricious editing montages.

Summarizing, great visuals, directed with a smooth pace, very talented actors, and better than average, but somehow disappointing.

September 4, 2008, I saw this again after sixty plus years, in an Internet Archive copy that has only 50 of the original 75 minutes, and was mesmerized to realize how much of my concept of Africa is due to this movie. Rivers, canoes, safaris, multiple tribes, locusts, lions, wildebeest, giraffes, impalas, elephants, flamingoes, warthogs are all here, in the heat. The sequence on the jumping impalas was most impressive to me now, as I recall nothing like it in any other movie. The only warning to the modern viewer is that the narration, while lively and fascinatingly informative, contains comments, evaluations and comparisons that seem shockingly inappropriate. Clearly this movie had an enormous influence on movie-making, from "King Kong" through "The Living Desert" to "The Lion King". This movie is the successful ancestor of anything you see on Animal Planet and most of Discovery Channel.