Dracula (1931)

Jamie B Presents Universal Horror Month

Dracula 1931: Dracula (1931) Directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, Dwight Frye as Renfield, Helen Chandler as Mina, David Manners as Jonathan Harker, and Edward Van Sloan as Abraham Van Helsing.

I want to first thank Jamie B for allowing me to be apart of her celebration of Universal Horror month. The movie I have chosen to write about was a no brainer, Dracula.

Back in 1979, cable tv was in its infancy and VCR’s weren’t quite a thing back then so you had to rely on the four or five television stations you might have had access to. There was this one local station in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where I grew up; channel 55 that would show old horror movies every Friday night. As I was only five years old at the time, my mom would let me stay up and watch as it wasn’t a school night. It was then I watched my first ever horror movie; Dracula from 1931.

As we all know, the movie Dracula was adapted from the Bram Stoker book of the same name. The story and movie tells the tail of a Transylvanian vampire named Count Dracula who journeys to London in the late 1800’s to feed on the people of London.

Now I am not going to go into the details of the story rather I want to discuss what this movie means to me. Also, what this movie could have meant to those who watched it back in 1931 when it was released.

As a young child I was so captivated by the movie. I loved the old European setting, the castles, the fog, the storms and the spooky atmosphere. Even as delicate of a song that Swan Lake maybe, which is the opening song for the movie, still goes great with the movie. It took me to a world I did not know but wanted to be apart which could be said of many horror films I have come to love. I was already a fan of Star Wars and anything superhero related because like most kids and those adults who are kids at heart, we are drawn to fantasy and horror through Dracula gave me another version of fantasy. The movie may seem basic and really not scary, but it is the on-screen portrayal the story that makes it so memorable and adored. Maybe not a perfect adaptation but for the time it was made, a good enough adaptation.

Dracula was my true gateway into horror. It was with this movie and a few other Universal films that made me fall in love with the genre. Lugosi’s portrayal of the vampire might not quite be my favorite, that would be Christopher Lee by a slim fang. But his portrayal is the most iconic when we think of Dracula, we think Bela Lugosi. The Sesame Street character, The Count, is influenced by Lugosi as is Count Chocula from the breakfast cereal. Let us not forget that the Count Dracula voiced by Adam Sandler in the animated Hotel Transylvania is clearly referencing Bela Lugosi’s iconic performance.

Edward Van Sloan’s performance of Dracula’s main nemesis Van Helsing completes the movie as he re4peresents not only the righteousness but wisdom in knowing what Dracula is. The two actors, through their portrayals balance each other and highlight the struggle between good and evil.

The Van Helsing character provides a template for other characters we would see in the horror genre; Quint from Jaws, Dr. Loomis from Halloween, The Frog brothers in The Lost Boys and to a slight extent, Crazy Ralph from Friday the 13^th.

I will say as a side note Dwight Frye’s version on Renfield is still my favorite version of the character even if it is a bit campy at times. His performance is both psychotic while still humorous. Out of all the versions of this character this performance seems to have the most impact.

Now this movie didn’t frighten me in 1979 and it doesn’t frighten me in 2026.I wonder what this movie did to those who watched it in the theater in 1931.

Keep in mind the country and the world for that matter were in the early years of the Great Depression. Did Dracula scare them because they were already living in fear? Perhaps Dracula gave them some relatability and comfort during difficult times. Often horror helps us deal with our own fears. So, it is not a big stretch of imagination to believe that Dracula and other horror movies would do the same for those suffering during those difficult times.

The character of Dracula gave them someone to root against. With the vampire they saw a wealthy aristocrat feeding off the people. Through Dracula they drew the analogy of the very wealth and greed that caused the crash of the stock market in 1929. To most people at that time the wealthy were seen as those leaching off the lifeblood of society and causing the eventual collapse of the economy. Of course, many of us can say the same thing today. Perhaps that is why Dracula still resonates with us.

A year later these people elected Franklin Roosevelt as president who would bring forth the New Deal. Did some of the voters see Van Helsing through FDR? Makes me wonder in today’s climate, do we even have a Van Helsing to fight those battles?

Now I doubt that Stoker envisioned Dracula representing such an analogy as the book was written decades before the Depression, but he could have foreseen it. But my good friend and Dracula aficionado Monica Van Fleet could speak better on that matter.

That is my own personal take on Dracula from 1931. There were other horror movies that preceded it but this was the movie that put Universal studios on the map as that studio would become an early pioneer in the horror movie genre and to this day is still revered and Dracula helped to give birth to that legacy.