Road to Dracula, The (1999)
*** 1/2 (out of 4)
Pretty good documentary that was originally released when Dracula (1931) was first put on DVD. The documentary talks about the original Bram Stoker novel and then moves onto the plays and then we get to the movies. We of course get a lot of information about the Tod Browning film but there's also talk about the Spanish version, which was shot at the same time and we get some small talk about the silent version that was made of the Browning one. Carla Laemmle hosts the documentary and we get interviews from Clive Barker, Bob Madison, Bela Lugosi, Jr., Rick Baker, Scott MacQueen, Dwight David Frye and Gary Rhodes among others. I don't think the film is as good as many of the others released with their movies but there's still plenty of nice information to make it worth watching for fans. Of course all of the interviews are a major plus because you can't help enjoying seeing these people comment on the films and perhaps see things in them that you might have overlooked. I think some of the talk deserved more, like the stuff dealing with who actually directed the film but this is only a minor issue. There's some interesting debate on the performances in the film and many of the comments on Lugosi are quite interesting. Of course we get plenty of great clips from the movies and we even get talk about the sequels including Dracula'S DAUGHTER and SON OF Dracula.
