VHS : Dracula (1931) (Aniv)
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In association with Amazon.com
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starring: Anna Bakacs, Daisy Belmore, Herbert Bunston, Moon Carroll, Helen Chandler
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780783238708
Format: Black & White, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered, NTSC
ISBN: 0783238703
Label: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Universal Studios
Release Date: August 28, 2001
Running Time: 75 minutes
Sales Rank: 39523
Studio: Universal Studios
Theatrical Release Date: February 14, 1931
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
When Universal Pictures picked up the movie rights to a Broadway adaptation of Dracula, they felt secure in handing the property over to the sinister team of actor Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning. But Chaney died of cancer, and Universal hired the Hungarian who had scored a success in the stage play: Béla Lugosi. The resulting film launched both Lugosi's baroque career and the horror-movie cycle of the 1930s. It gets off to an atmospheric start, as we meet Count Dracula in his shadowy castle in Transylvania, superbly captured by the great cinematographer Karl Freund. Eventually Dracula and his blood-sucking devotee (Dwight Frye, in one of the cinema's truly mad performances) meet their match in a vampire-hunter called Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan). If the later sections of the film are undeniably stage bound and a tad creaky, Dracula nevertheless casts a spell, thanks to Lugosi's creepily lugubrious manner and the eerie silences of Browning's directing style. (After a mood-enhancing snippet of Swan Lake under the opening titles, there is no music in the film.) Frankenstein, which was released a few months later, confirmed the horror craze, and Universal has been making money (and countless spin-off projects) from its twin titans of terror ever since. Certainly the role left a lasting impression on the increasingly addled and drug-addicted Lugosi, who was never quite able to distance himself from the part that made him a star. He was buried, at his request, in his black vampire cape. --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Renfield
Guess who's a scarier actor than Bela Lugosi? Dwight Frye. I saw this when I was a little kid and I didn't even notice Mr. Lugosi. For all I cared, they could have cast Chico Marx or Lou Costello in the title role. I'm still having nightmares about the entymophage, his eyes protruding like Peter Lorre's, pleading for mercy in his husky falsetto.
Rating: - "There are far worse things awaiting man that death"--Dracula
I bought this 2-DVD set for a friend and ended up liking it so much I got one for myself. It is an excellent tribute to the Bela Lugosi classic. You can watch this film many different ways on this collection. The classic version, one with a different musical score (by Philip Glass performed by the Kronos Quartet), with two different commentaries, and with "monster tracks" which are pop-up text of informational tid-bits on the different players and scenes. Not only that but this collection also ... Read More
Rating:  - Piano Music on the Main Menu
I think the other reviewers have said it all about this edition. It's a solid version of a great film.
Does anyone know what the piano music accompanying the DVD's main menu is (and where I can find it)?
Rating:  - Lugosi is inspired, but DRACULA S##KS
If Frankenstein gives you the underground creeps, and The Mummy keeps your nerves all wrapped up, while Creature From The Black Lagoon makes you search for dry land, this ancient version of Dracula has lost it's bite. Bela Lugosi literally sustains the sense of creepiness all by himself in one of the most unlikable casts ever assembled for a Universal horror picture classic. Nothing is deadlier for a horror tale where the so called good guys are achingly so intolerable in character and demeanor, it ... Read More
Rating: - Gothic horror at its finest
Tod Browning did more than perhaps any other filmmaker to develop the "horror" genre, and this Gothic horror masterpiece is one of the crown jewels in his filmography.
Perhaps the first genuinely "supernatural" American horror films (previous American horror films always explained away the existence of spirits or demons by attributing the scary goings-on to escaped mental patients or psychotics). Universal was perhaps the perfect studio to produce this film, as the large influx of German ... Read More
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