Released in 1913
American
Sound, black and white
75 minute run time
Directed by Tod Browning
Starring: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners
(watched via streaming on Netflix)
Raised on horror films such as Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and even Hellraiser, I've grown up with a healthy respect for jump scenes, graphic violence, and buckets of gore in my horror films. I expect vampires to have demonic faces like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, eat by tearing out giant chunks of flesh as well as blood like in the Lost Boys, and be ridiculously strong and fast like in True Blood (okay, that's a little more recent than the others, but its on my mind so I'm including it). To see a vampire movie like the original Dracula, where the mood is somber, the conversations quiet, and the monster basically a guy with a bad complexion and some bat-like tendencies, is a strange and interesting experience. It just seems so SLOW. I expect something big and loud and nasty to happen and it doesn't and I wait and wait and wait and still nothing happens and then something does but its just Drac and some dudes chatting and I'm like "What the hell? Shouldn't he be throwing them across the room and ripping people apart?" But no one ever gets ripped apart. This just isn't that kind of horror film. Its dark, its broody, its literary, but its never gory and never graphic and its just as fascinating without those modern components.
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