Dracula

While the special effects,editing and sound really FEEL like they're over seventy-five years old,the movie itself still has a good,slow,eerie feel to it. I have yet to read Stoker's novel,but I'm quite familiar with the assortment of characters(the Count,VAn Helsing,Mina,JOhn/JOnathan HArker,Renfield,Lucy,Dr.Seward,the sanitarium staff,etc.) Probably more shocking when it was originally released(one story tells of a fainting at a screening of the film),director Tod Browning's movie would be considered quaint by most standards,it still holds up in imagery and in character,with Bela Lugosi able to inject plenty into mere glances and steadily,deliberate movement. The tale of the charismatic,mysterious nobleman from Transylvania who crashes ashore off a shipwrecked cargo vessel onto England,moving into an abandoned estate in sub-urban London's Carfax Abbey feels as common and comfortable as an old slipper. The acting isn't all that exceptional,save Lugosi,Dwight Frye(as the doomed,bug-eating lackey Renfield,whose back-story seems somewhat different than I recall from other versions of the story)and perhaps Edward Van Sloan(As the fiercely incorruptible Van Helsing),but that doesn't hinder this film's message or its mood. It works on a very basic premise,that being that this Dracula sort is one effective and lethal operator.

I think that one who appreciates film legend and lore needs to take a look at this offering,for the sights and sounds are as true and necessary to the progression of film horror and melodrama as any from the "Golden age of film".