Carlos Villarías stars as El Conde Drácula, a more genial and more sensuous vampire than Lugosi. After arranging a real estate deal with the mad solicitor Renfield (Pablo Alvarez Rubio), Drácula travels from Transylvania to England, where he preys upon socialite Eva Seward (Lupita Tovar), her fiancé Juan Harker (Barry Norton), and her physician father (José Soriano Viosca), who has already enlisted the help of Professor Van Helsing (Eduardo Arozamena) in understanding the unscientific maladies plaguing London since the Count’s arrival.
Drácula uses the same script as Browning’s film, but it’s more than twenty minutes longer because its script wasn’t “censored” in the way that Browning’s was. We spend more time with Eva and Juan, establishing their relationship and their reactions to the grim circumstances befalling them; consequently, they’re much more interesting here than Mina and John were in Dracula. There’s a much longer sequence where Eva begs Juan to leave her to her fate, and the moment when she very nearly bites him is much more intense and erotically charged.
Indeed, at the risk of indulging a caricature, emotions are running much hotter overall in Drácula. Eva is lustier than Mina, El Conde is more overtly passionate than Lugosi’s slow-burn charisma, and we actually see the physical evidence of Drácula’s bite – his kiss, if you will – multiple times. In fact, Drácula is entirely less coy about the erotic dimension of El Conde’s kiss, perhaps because Villarías is ten years younger than Lugosi. Surprisingly, though, Drácula is missing the brief sequence where Dracula menaces a flower girl outside a London theater, almost as though this Drácula is much too sophisticated to indulge in a quickie with an anonymous victim. Yet there’s an additional death in Drácula; where Dracula left the fate of Lucy Weston largely unresolved, Drácula makes sure to let us know that the vampiric Lucía has been staked by Juan and Van Helsing.
In a bit of performance review, Lupita Tovar is very nearly better than Helen Chandler as Eva/Mina, though in part because she’s given so much more to do (or at least, so much more of her work made it past the editor’s desk). Eduardo Arozamena plays Van Helsing as more avuncular than Edward Van Sloan, who you’ll recall made that movie for me. Yet in a real surprise for me, Pablo Alvarez Rubio steals the show as Renfield, whose descent into madness is more drastic than Dwight Frye’s. Renfield comes off much more sympathetic in Drácula, as we see him wrestle with his vampiric possession amid genuine concern for Eva’s wellbeing (only glimpsed in Frye’s performance). Yet when he’s mad, he’s mad; the sequence aboard the boat is all the more chilling in Drácula because it’s scored by Renfield’s unbreaking and genuinely alarming shrieking cackle.
With so much about Drácula emerging as more engaging than its better-known English version, it’s almost a shame to say that Carlos Villarías just doesn’t live up to Bela Lugosi. In fact, like poor George Lazenby in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Villarías ends up being the one actor you can’t help but wish had been cast with the original. To be fair, Villarías is perfectly serviceable as Conde Drácula, his bug eyes and vamping posture suitable for any creature of the night. Instead of the pinprick spotlights that gave Lugosi his haunting stare, Villarías is granted extreme close-ups on his eyes, the sort of editing trick that Dziga Vertov must have loved. But having just seen Lugosi do the same performance, and make such weirdness out of it, permits this vampire to fall a bit flat.
Director George Melford (who, incidentally, didn’t speak a word of Spanish) apparently had access to Tod Browning’s dailies, and it does show. Melford’s direction is more cinematic than Browning’s, and he has better command of the film’s soundscape, most notably in the creaking doors and coffins that are silent in Browning’s version. Melford also interposes a musical refrain every time Drácula rises, a Wagnerian game with the audience to let us know that this motif means danger.
Drácula is not without its supporters, and there are many who feel it’s infinitely superior to the Tod Browning version. I’ll say it’s certainly more watchable and by far more cinematic, but without Lugosi it’s not the hit it could have been. If anyone with technical savvy can “deepfake” Bela Lugosi into Drácula, then I’d say we’re really onto something. Without him, though, it’s an engaging enough sidebar for Monster March to indulge.
Next week for Transylvania Tuesday, it’s all in the family with Dracula’s Daughter (1936) starring Gloria Holden. For bonus Dracula shenanigans, Silly Sunday has Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange.
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