Horror Madness, Round One: Dracula Vs. The Wolfman
Round one begins with two Universal horror classics! See the introduction and full slate here.
Will it be Tod Browning’s Dracula?
Or George Waggner’s The Wolfman?
So, the winner is Dracula. Were you expecting it not to be Dracula? Of course you weren’t. But let’s back up and go through it anyway.
You see, I actually wasn’t sure it would be Dracula. I think The Wolfman might be the better film. Which isn’t Dracula’s fault, exactly. It was released in 1931, just a few years into the sound era, and the kinks hadn’t all been worked out. There are quite a few clunky holdovers from silent film that could have been excised, like interstitial title cards. The sound editing is poor. The actors all seem uncomfortable with the dialogue, which is for the most part badly written. The special effects consist mostly of copious fog and goofy rubber bats.
The Wolfman was released ten years later, in 1941, in a different filmmaking universe. Makeup, sound, and special effects had advanced almost beyond recognition. The performances are confident and self-assured, and much of the camera work is genuinely striking:
The Wolfman also has Claude Rains, one of the best actors of his era (and someone we’ll be seeing more of later in this series), as the titular wolfman’s father. Their central relationship provides the film with an emotional resonance that Dracula can’t quite match. You can see a little of him here:
Fun fact: another Wolfman cast member is Count Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi, looking a tad worse for wear in a supporting role as a fellow werewolf and unfortunate ethnic stereotype:
So, The Wolfman is better shot, more organized, much better acted, and makes better use of its visual effects. Dracula is pretty much a goddamned mess, and a poor adaptation of the classic source material.
Dracula, however, has scenes like this:
And this:
When nobody is talking, this movie is the shit. Bela Lugosi never could get the hang of dialogue on film - even after his English improved, his performance style was too broad and hammy to be cinematically effective. But he was magnetic - while not handsome, his Count Dracula is seductive and sophisticated. He wasn’t the first sexy vampire, but he was the watershed one, and the character he created influenced every single vampire film that came after him. Just about every thing we think of when we think of this character is owed to him.
If Tod Browning had just made a silent film (as he probably would have preferred), it would be an unqualified masterpiece. The sets and art direction are beautifully atmospheric and spooky. And Lugosi, when he’s good, is great.
The Wolfman has fewer problems, but is a little too clean and tidy - horror should be at least a little messy, a little off-kilter. The forest set never stops looking like a set. Lon Chaney, Jr. is perfectly fine in the title role, but he has nothing like Lugosi’s charisma (he’s no match against Claude Rains). And while it certainly influenced the cinematic approach to werewolves (visual references to it abound in some of the films we have yet to explore), The Wolfman didn’t transform its sub-genre the way Dracula did. It’s fine, it’s competent. At times it’s very good. It’s never brilliant - it never transcends. Dracula transcends.
So we have a competent mediocrity, versus a brilliant mess. I’ll take the mess.
Sorry Wolfman, Dracula moves on to Round 2!