Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

This is a look at a classic comedy.

Over 25 years before Young Frankenstein hit cinemas, another classic comedy involving Mary Shelley’s creation made a memorable impression on audiences. That movie, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, was ambitious for a number of reasons. One of these was that it brought together not one but three of Universal’s classic monsters (Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and the Wolf Man) with the comedy duo, whom Universal was also making a fortune off of from the ’30s-’50s.

As World War II was ending, some wondered if either the Universal monsters or the comedy duo of Bud and Lou were going to last much longer. Hence, Universal’s idea to put both of them together in this film. Although Costello initially objected to the idea, the end result would be seen as the first in a long line of films featuring Bud and Lou sharing the screen with monsters.

This film begins in England, with Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) anxiously awaiting a phone call from a railway station in Florida. He finally gets in contact with one of its employees, Wilbur Grey (Costello), and instructs him to not deliver two crates addressed to the McDougal House of Horrors. At that moment, however, Talbot’s werewolf curse begins to kick in as Wilbur gives smart-ass remarks about how he sounds like a wolf and then hangs up.

Wilbur then sees McDougal himself (Frank Ferguson) at his desk demanding those two crates. Chick Young (Abbott), Wilbur’s pal/colleague, hurries a flabbergasted Wilbur off to fetch them just as Wilbur’s girlfriend Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert) shows up. McDougal happily informs her that the crates contain the bodies of Count Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, and that he got them at a nice price. Unimpressed, Sandra goes and tells Wilbur she’ll see him tonight, to Chick’s annoyance.

After some mishaps involving getting the crates ready, McDougal tells Wilbur and Chick to take the crates to his house of horrors themselves, so his insurance agent can look at them.

That night, Wilbur and Chick arrive at the house of horrors. The darkness, brought on by a storm knocking out the power, makes Wilbur scared of the attractions here. Chick opens the first crate, noting it’s a coffin with the crest of Dracula on it. Wilbur asks him not to open it, but Chick says Dracula is just a story. While Chick gets the other crate, Wilbur reads the placard that describes Dracula. As he does so, he hears the creaking of the count (Bela Lugosi) opening his coffin, and a moment later, the count’s hand comes out of it. Both times, though, Chick sees nothing when he’s shown the coffin. Dracula even manages to get out of the coffin and hide as Wilbur cries out for Chick, who later shows Wilbur that it’s empty.

This calms Wilbur as they start on the second crate, while Chick dismisses Wilbur over the creaking he hears while Dracula returns to his coffin. Chick picks up and reads the placard that tells of Frankenstein’s Monster, which he also laughs at. They open the crate and Wilbur is spooked when he sees the Monster (Glenn Strange) inside. This results in him hitting a nearby guillotine, which decapitates the fake head inside it. So the blade was real? This place is authentic.

They hear McDougal’s irritating voice asking why they’re in here with the lights off. Chick runs out to deal with him, while Wilbur decides to put the fake head in the coffin. Of course, the Count is inside again, and with the cape-over-the-face motif that Ed Wood was so certain would be all that was needed to make any actor look like Lugosi, he hypnotizes Wilbur into a daze and then heads for the crate. Using his ring on the famous metal electrodes on the Monster’s neck, Dracula revives him and they hide together.

Chick returns with McDougal and his insurance agent. Smacking Wilbur awake, they find that both the crates are now empty. McDougal bitches about the insurance money he’s now owed, before deducing that Chick and Wilbur must have stolen what was in the crates (so why would they go to the house of horrors in the first place, then?). He takes them to the police, while Dracula and the Monster make off with the former’s coffin.

Later, Dracula is flying to a castle in his bat form. He arrives and is greeted by Sandra, whom the Count takes to the Monster, who’s resting nearby. She tells him that her unknowing assistant Professor Stevens (Charles Bradstreet) is asking a lot of questions, but the Count says that he’ll deal with those. Sandra, in turn, informs Dracula that she’s mastered Dr. Frankenstein’s methods and has the perfect brain to put into his monster: Wilbur’s.

The next day, Wilbur and Chick are at their apartment, with the latter complaining about the night they spent in jail. Wilbur keeps insisting that he saw Dracula and the Monster, just as Sandra comes in to remind him of a masquerade ball that evening. Chick thanks her for bailing them out of jail, but she says she didn’t, leaving everyone taken aback. As she leaves, Chick understandably asks what Wilbur has that he doesn’t.

“A brain!” is her reply.

“I’d like to know where it is,” is his reply to Wilbur’s smiling face. There’s another knock at the door, and Wilbur thinks it’s Sandra coming to kiss him goodbye. Instead, he ends up kissing the lips of Joan Raymond (Jane Randolph), who says she bailed them out, and tells Wilbur she finds him fascinating. This is all a ruse, of course, as she’s an insurance agent who got them out of jail hoping they’ll lead her to the missing exhibits. But her faux googly-eyes at Wilbur prompt him to ask her to the upcoming ball, leaving Chick in the cold, even when he points out that Wilbur already has a date.

Not long after Joan leaves, Talbot arrives and informs Chick and Wilbur that he’s the one who telephoned them earlier, and that Dracula brought the Monster from Europe and is hoping to revive him. Wilbur gives Chick an I-told-you-so look, although the latter is still unconvinced. But Talbot can’t explain further at this point because (of course) the moon is full. He begs Wilbur to lock him in his room, which is across from theirs.

After Wilbur does so, he sees Talbot left his bag and goes back in. Wilbur narrowly avoids the Wolf Man as he leaves the bag with a note. The next morning, Chick and Wilbur are astonished by how messy Talbot’s room is, but don’t pay much mind to his Wolf Man story.

That evening, Wilbur, Chick, and Joan go to pick up Sandra at what is, unbeknownst to them, Dracula’s castle. Wilbur is irritated by the eyes Stevens and Joan give each other, but she and Sandra get acquainted as they freshen up. During this time, Wilbur picks up the ringing phone, which turns out to be Talbot. He informs them that they’re in Dracula’s castle, and Dracula is using the alias Dr. Lejos, which prompts Wilbur to try to leave, but Chick is pissed enough to search the place with Wilbur to put all this nonsense to rest. Their search leads them to a basement staircase that itself leads to a boat and dock.

The duo are briefly separated by a revolving door, during which time Wilbur sees Dracula and the Monster approaching him. He’s reunited with Chick, but the latter, once again, doesn’t see anything when Wilbur shows him.

At the same time, Sandra discovers Joan’s ID card while the latter is going through Frankenstein’s notes (which I guess Sandra keeps in the same room where she freshens up).

Everyone meets downstairs and Chick stops Wilbur’s attempts to tell Sandra what happened by saying Wilbur fell. This prompts “Dr. Lejos” to make an appearance, saying that Wilbur must be careful. Sandra introduces everyone, and “Lejos”, upon meeting Wilbur, suggests that everyone else go on ahead and he’ll follow with Wilbur and Sandra. But the latter surprises him by insisting that she’s ill and must go to bed. As the others depart, Sandra informs Dracula that Joan is an insurance agent, Stevens keeps asking questions, and Wilbur must have found out something. She says that they must postpone their plans, but Dracula is insistent to the point where he bites her neck in order for her to do his bidding (which also leads to the famous blooper of Dracula appearing in the nearby mirror).

At the ball, Wilbur and Chick go off to change into their costumes and run into McDougal, who briefly argues with Chick and tosses Wilbur around, wanting to find his exhibits. Talbot shows up and asks Wilbur and Chick what they found at the castle, but Chick says there was nothing to find. Talbot is distressed, especially after Chick shows off his own wolf man mask.

Dracula arrives with Sandra, and is immediately confronted by Talbot. Joan’s ears perk up when Talbot says Lejos is really Dracula, but the Count invites her to dance, saying he’ll explain everything. Sandra takes Wilbur to a secluded area and attempts to bite him, but Talbot and Chick soon approach. As she runs off, the trio attempt to look for Joan. But Talbot gets his werewolf groove on again and attempts to attack Wilbur, although the latter thinks it’s really Chick in his costume and even manages to punch him in the nose.

At the ball, there’s a cry for help. It turns out it’s McDougal, who’s been injured but not fatally. Chick arrives and soon everyone starts to think he’s the culprit when they see his wolf man mask in his hand. Wilbur arrives, but McDougal says he’s in on it, too, prompting the duo to flee.

They head to the river, where Chick is convinced of all the supernatural things going on when he sees (and subsequently faints at the sight of) Dracula hypnotizing Wilbur into returning to the castle along with him, Joan, and Sandra.

The next morning, Chick meets up with Talbot and they head for the castle to mount a rescue.

As Dracula and Sandra prepare for the operation, Stevens is knocked out when he finds Joan and Frankenstein’s notes. Chick and Talbot arrive and free Stevens, but before they can reach Joan, Dracula hypnotizes Wilbur into going to the operating room. But he’s soon freed by Chick and Talbot, just as the latter becomes the Wolf Man again. The Monster, meanwhile, has become powerful enough to break his bonds, and he proceeds to toss Sandra out a window. As he goes after Chick and Wilbur, Dracula and the Wolf Man fight until the latter grabs the Count in his bat form and they both fall into the water below.

The Monster chases Wilbur and Chick to the pier where they ward off McDougal. Chick and Wilbur get into a boat and sail off, while Stevens and Joan set the pier on fire, which the Monster soon crashes through.

Wilbur goes into I-told-you-so mode again, but Chick says that since all three monsters are gone, there’s nothing to worry about now. But the film ends with the duo being scared off by the Invisible Man (Vincent Price), who says he’s sorry to have missed the fun.

Before this film, Universal had three official crossovers with its monsters: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, and House of Dracula. The monsters in all three of these are Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man. This is rather tame compared to the crossovers Marvel has done in recent years, but at the time, it was a big deal. But as entertaining as those films are, the Wolf Man has the most screen time compared to his colleagues. This is one reason why this film is great: all three monsters have a chance to shine, and even the Invisible Man’s brief appearance is memorable (all the more so as Price became a star just five years later with House of Wax).

The success of this film led to Universal teaming up Abbott and Costello with its other monsters. We’d later see Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The duo even crossed paths with the Creature from the Black Lagoon when the latter appeared on the Colgate Comedy Hour.

What makes this film fun, though, is that Abbott and Costello do their thing but never at the expense of the monsters, reminding us of why both these franchises have endured.

Great Trailers for Bad Movies

We've all seen and even loved movie trailers. Yet, they don't seem to get as much attention as the movies they are promoting. Whether the movie in question becomes a classic, an embarrassment, or forgotten, its trailer usually isn't given much lip service after the fact except by movie fanatics such as yours truly. Still, as Jamie Lee Curtis said in Coming Soon, even bad movies should have a little good footage.
So, to ring in 2014, I have decided to look at trailers that did a great job whetting my appetite for films which, alas, turned out to suck. Ironically, USA Today recently posted an article on the same subject.

1. Dune (1984): This film, directed by David Lynch and based on the classic epic book by Frank Herbert, had the same anticipation that would greet Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. The previous year's release and success of Return of the Jedi only added to the potential for this flick to be another science fiction classic. Sadly, the film's budget and jumbled narrative (the exposition given by Virginia Madsen at the beginning of the film can be seen as an omen of what's to come) ended up turning this film into a bomb. Lynch, depending on what source you read, either was disinterested in the film from the start or was frustrated with the restrictions the studio and legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis put on him. While Lynch's original, longer version is now available, he's kept the film at arm's length since its release. In either case, a complex read such as Dune could not possibly have fit into 2-3 hours of screen time (imagine if Jackson had made Lord of the Rings only that long). But the movie's trailer did a great job at projecting the epic feel that the story should have had:


2. The Godfather Part III (1990): The only thing more anticipated that this movie, which was released Christmas Day, was Christmas itself. Francis Ford Coppola, of course, had scored Oscars for writing The Godfather (1972) and writing, directing, and producing The Godfather Part II (1974). By the start of the 1990s, though, he was in need of money, which is the main reason he accepted Paramount's long-standing offer to direct a third Godfather movie. Like the Star Wars prequels, the film falls flat on its face even though it tries to bring back many beloved aspects of previous installments. In the plus column, Al Pacino is great reprising his star-making role as Michael Corleone, and the climax at the opera looks great.
Many say that Sofia Coppola, who plays Michael's daughter, is the worst part of the movie, but I thought the worst part was the movie's attempts to bring the Vatican (specifically the real-life events of the Papal Banking Scandal and the death of Pope John Paul I) into the narrative. Even putting aside the fact that Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, which was released the same year, became the classic everyone thought this movie would be (in the same way that 2012's The Avengers was the great superhero film that everyone expected The Dark Knight Rises to be), the film's trailer only heightened our anticipation for what should have been a wonderful Christmas gift:


3. Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992): It's sad that I have two films from Coppola on this list. As far as I'm concerned, though, this film had even more specific criteria to meet than The Godfather Part III. This is because Coppola and screenwriter James V. Hart kept insisting that this film was the definitive adaptation of Stoker's classic book. But, despite great production values and a perfectly cast Sir Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, the film was a huge letdown because it was NOT the definitive take on the book that Coppola and Hart said it would be. The main reason for this disappointment was due to the misguided decision of having Mina (Winona Ryder) as the reincarnated love of the Count (Gary Oldman). Perhaps the film's tagline, 'Love Never Dies,' should have tipped us off, but, as anyone who has actually read the book can tell you, there is no such past romance between these two characters. Making this aspect the main focus of the film makes Dracula far less menacing than he is in the book (never mind Bela Lugosi's or Sir Christopher Lee's famous portrayals of the character). The trailer seems to at least promise us a thrilling joyride:


4. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002): The fourth and final movie from Star Trek: The Next Generation came with the tagline 'A Generation's Final Journey Begins.' Sadly, the film itself, like the previous three TNG movies, becomes only concerned with being an action movie at the expense of both a coherent story and the aspects which made TNG such a great series. The film involves Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew fighting a man named Shinzon(Tom Hardy), whom the Romulans made to resemble Picard years earlier before discarding him. But now Shinzon re-emerges with a plan to conquer the Federation.
But the reason this film lacks the effectiveness of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), which was the final voyage for the original Trek crew, is that none of the events have any emotional impact, especially the climax when Data (Brent Spiner) sacrifices himself. The only scene that I truly liked was the ending when Picard bids farewell to Riker (Jonathan Frakes) as the latter heads off to captain the U.S.S. Titan with Troi (Marina Sirtis), who is now his wife. But its trailer at least gave us the hope that the film would be as great as Star Trek VI. Alas, this film reinforced the idea that TNG's curtain call should have been its magnificent series finale "All Good Things..."


5. The Star Wars prequel trilogy (1999, 2002, 2005): Like The Godfather Part III, the Star Wars prequels had a great deal of hype before they came out. But, while Coppola returned to the Corleone Family to raise money, George Lucas decided to make the prequels because Jurassic Park (1993) had shown how far his company, Industrial Light and Magic, had come in the field of special effects since he made the original Star Wars trilogy. Lucas had, more or less, exiled himself from moviemaking during that time, despite his input in films such as the Indiana Jones series and, infamously, Howard the Duck (1986). The sad thing is he did not take the time to hone his writing skills during his self-imposed exile. As a result, all three prequels were plagued with the same problems, such as bland acting (wasting Sir Christopher Lee in these films was unforgivable) and overused SFX. The first prequel, The Phantom Menace, is regarded as the worst of the three films, but the following two, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, really weren't any better, because, as the documentaries behind each movie will show you, Lucas spent most of the time parked in front of a green screen simply saying 'Action!' I suspected I'd be disappointed in Sith by the time it came out, but felt I should see it for, if nothing else, a sense of closure.

In Search of Dracula (1975)

"Just a word, ladies and gentlemen. A word of reassurance. When you go to bed tonight and the lights have all been turned out and you look behind the curtain and you dread to see a face appearing at the window, just remember: There are such things!"
-Christopher Lee.

It is the month of Halloween, and one film which is ideal viewing is this wonderful documentary on Dracula. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Calvin Floyd and based on the book by Raymond McNally, this film examines not only the 1897 Bram Stoker book which started it all, but also vampire lore from long before its publication.

It also points out how Dracula was inspired by Vlad Tepes, the 15th Century Prince of Wallachia, who became infamous for the manner of which he disposed of his enemies such as the Turks.

It also looks at other notorious killers, such as Peter Kürten, who became known as the "Vampire of Düsseldorf" due to his drinking the blood of his victims and who, some say, became the basis for Fritz Lang's great movie M (1931), although Lang himself would claim this was not the case.

Naturally, the film looks at the famous screen depictions of the Count, including Nosferatu (1922), Dracula (1931) with Bela Lugosi, and Horror of Dracula (1958) with Christopher Lee, who, appropriately, narrates this documentary as well as appears as Vlad and the Count. Curiously, the scenes with Lee in the cape are from Scars of Dracula (1970).

Although The Satanic Rites of Dracula was released two years earlier, one could call this Sir Christopher's true swan song as the Count because it reveals the Count's origins and why the character has endured for over a century.

Still More Underrated Movie Lines

Here now is the third installment in our series of lines from famous movies that aren't quoted often, but I'll never get tired of hearing.
1. The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973):
The penultimate entry in Hammer's Dracula series and the last one to star Christopher Lee as the Count. By this point, Lee was frustrated with the series due to how far it had strayed from the material in the original Bram Stoker novel. The fact that this film (which was released in the U.S. with the generic title Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride) and its immediate predecessor, Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), were set in contemporary times certainly suggests that the filmmakers were desperately looking for ways to keep the series going. But this film's biggest weakness is not its cotemporary setting, but its plot, which has the count attempting to introduce a plague to kill humanity, even though doing so will deprive him of his sources of blood, a little tidbit even Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) points out to him in the film's climax.
But, like Halloween II, this film still manages to be entertaining in spite of its gaps in logic thanks to its stars. I also liked the musical score by John Cacavas, even if it doesn't necessarily make me think of the Count the way James Bernard's great score in the first film in the series, Horror of Dracula (1958), did.
A wonderful line comes from Lee at this movie's climax when his plans to kill Van Helsing and his granddaughter (Joanna Lumley) are thwarted:
"My revenge is spread over centuries and has just begun!"
This is a great line because of Lee's delivery and because it was one of the few lines from Stoker's novel to find its way into a film script.
But the quality of the series would continue to go down with the next and final entry in Hammer's series, the watchable but unspectacular Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), which combined the vampire genre with kung fu (the film was a co-production between Hammer and Hong Kong's Run Run Shaw studio). Lee declined what was essentially a two-minute cameo in the movie (Dracula was played by John Forbes-Robertson), which is just as well because, that same year, Lee had one of his best roles as the title character in...

2. The Man With the Golden Gun (1974):
Roger Moore's sophomore outing as 007 is often criticized for its weak leading lady (Britt Ekland), but I thought its weakest aspect was Bond's ally Hip (Soon Tek-Oh), who, at one point, simply abandons 007 in a weak setup to get Bond to outmaneuver persuing bad guys by himself.
Fortunately, this film is still watchable thanks to the great interplay between Sir Roger's Bond and Lee's Scaramanga. While Richard Kiel's Jaws (who appeared in the next two entries in the series) gets all the attention (and is a great character), I always thought Scaramanga was the best Bond villain from Moore's Bond films.
Lee said that he played the character as the dark side of Bond, and, indeed, unlike his fellow Bond villains, he admires 007 to the point where he has a full-scale figure of him in his home.
This makes the scene where Bond and Scaramanga dine together unique among the other similar scenes in the series. Scaramanga points out that they are similar even though Bond acts on behalf of queen and country. Bond gets one of his best lines when he points out a major difference between them.
"When I kill, it's under specific orders from my government-and those I kill are themselves killers!"
While some foolishly say that Sir Roger's Bond became too much of a joke, this line proves that he could be as serious as the other 007s.

3. The Thing (1982):
This film, about a group of men fighting a shapeshifting alien which has infiltrated their isolated outpost in Antartica, is certainly one which gives remakes a good name. It is superior to the original The Thing From Another World (1951), because it does not relentlessly copy it and it retains the spirit of the original 1938 John Campbell story Who Goes There?.
Kurt Russell is obviously the lead but, while he's good as always, the best line comes from David Clennon's Palmer, who says
"You gotta be fucking kidding!" after seeing the title character revert to a, shall we say, bizarre form to escape from their efforts to kill it. As one of my colleagues noted, that line is the best f-bomb in movie history. This is because it perfectly reflects what both the characters and the audience are thinking at this point in the film. In addition, the line comes naturally from the situation, unlike many other films which fall all over themselves trying to come up with a line the filmmakers hope will be a classic one.
But there's an equally great line later in the film. After Russell's MacReady deduces that they can determine who is still human by testing samples of everyone's blood, he goes through the remaining staff members until base leader Garry (Donald Moffat) is left. Once it is revealed that he is still human, Garry rants in an initally-calm tone:
"I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!!!"
Like Palmer's line, this line is great because it comes naturally from the situation.

4. Frantic (1988):
While the film was not as intense as In the Line of Fire (1993), which surprised me given Roman Polanski's real-life involvement with this sort of ordeal, Harrison Ford was perfect casting as the doctor whose wife (Betty Buckley) is abducted while they are vacationing in Paris.
While the movie's villains are underplayed and the U.S. Embassy officials Richard Walker (Ford) turns to for help are stereotypically useless, Ford has many great moments which make it easy to side with him. One such moment is when he attempts to phone the Embassy for help and is repeatedly asked how to spell his wife's name and the location he's calling at. Walker then understandably says:
"With an 'S' for Shithead!"
If only everything around Ford in the film could match his great performance, this movie would probably have been as successful as basically all the other films he put out during the 1980s and 1990s.

5. A Few Good Men (1992):
Naturally, the most famous line from this film is Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) tells Dan Kaffee (Tom Cruise) that he can't handle the truth.
But there's another line from earlier in the film which my sister loves. After an earlier court hearing, Kaffee's colleagues Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollack) and Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore) have an argument about if the marines they are defending are truly innocent. Weinberg then asks Galloway why she is so taken in with their clients' plight, to which she answers:
"Because they stand on a wall and say 'Nothing is going to happen to you tonight-not on my watch!"
When she introduced this film at the Academy Awards a few months later (Men was one of the Best Picture nominees), Kathy Bates rightly noted Galloway's contribution to the film's story by saying "A few good men...and one woman."

Dracula (Spanish-1931)

"Soy Dracula!"

-Conde Dracula

I'm not exactly what you would call a fan of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, but I enjoyed both Twilight (2008) and New Moon (2009) and will no doubt see Eclipse (2010) if and when the urge to do so arises.

With the pending release of the first half of the saga's final chapter Breaking Dawn, I thought it would be appropriate to look at a trilogy of little-known gems from the vampire genre.

The first of these is one that has a direct link to the most famous vampire film of all-Dracula (1931). As I'm sure everyone knows, this film made Bela Lugosi a star with his take on the Count. It also became famous as the first Dracula film with sound. Lugosi, despite the typecasting that would later all but kill his career, was one actor who was able to make the transition from silent to sound pictures due to his distinguished voice.

Since sound movies were in their infancy in 1931, though, many films were filmed more than once in other languages (at least until dubbing became more practical). Laurel and Hardy made several of their films in Spanish and German, as did Buster Keaton. These name stars would usually be surrounded by newer casts who spoke the appropriate language in the non-English versions of their films. The stars would read their lines off blackboards.

Dracula, likewise, would have a version in Spanish to tap into the lucrative foreign market(although Universal executive Paul Kohner used this film as an excuse to keep Mexican actress Lupita Tovar in Hollywood; the two later married). This film used the same sets and script as the English version. The crew, directed by non-Spanish speaking George Melford, would work at night when the crew of the Lugosi film left.

This tactic gave them an advantage because they were able to look at footage from that film and determine how they could improve on certain shots. As a result, much of the camera work in this film is better than in the Lugosi film.

One of this film's greatest moments is when Renfield(played by Pablo Alvarez Rubio) first encounters Dracula (Carlos Villarias) in the Count's castle. In the Lugosi film, we clearly see the Count approaching before Dwight Frye's Renfield does (which, I suppose, is meant to be the classic "Behind You!" motif). In this film, though, we don't see Dracula until Renfield does; hence, we are as startled by the Count's appearance as he is.

There is, however, one moment which is superior in the Lugosi picture-when Van Helsing (Eduardo Arozamena) reveals that he knows Dracula's secret by having him look into a mirror. In this film, Dracula slowly turns his head at the mirror Van Helsing is holding and then stares at it for at least three seconds before finally taking his cane to it. In the Lugosi film, though, Edward Van Sloan's Van Helsing shows him the mirror and Dracula instantly smacks it to the ground with a murderous look on his face. That look still gives me the chills and is appropriate for someone who dislikes mirrors.

Another plus to this film is that the ladies are more appealing than those in the Lugosi film. Tovar's Eva is a more sensual female lead than Helen Chandler's Mina.

This version is also, shall we say, more explicit. For instance, we actually see the vampire marks on the ladies' necks here (that must have been tough getting past the censors at that time).

I do agree with the consensus, though, that the only thing keeping this film from becoming as embraced as its English-language counterpart is the lack of Lugosi as the Count. Villarias just doesn't hold a candle to Lugosi and, at times, is more laughable than scary; particularly when he's gritting his teeth.

This film is one of the few alternate language versions of a Hollywood film from the 1930s that is available today. It resurfaced on home video in 1992, which was, coincidentally, the same year that the great-looking but dramatically lacking Bram Stoker's Dracula was released.

Both the 1930s Draculas are now together on DVD. I'd say film historian (and Universal Horror expert) David J. Skal said it best(in the DVD's documentary The Road to Dracula) when he compared the Lugosi film to a familar house and the Spanish film to new rooms that were suddenly discovered in it.