Once London digs are established, Dracula feeds upon two young upper-class women, Lucy (Frances Dade) and Mina (Helen Chandler). But fortunately for virtuous London virgins, supernatural intellectual Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) has Drac all figured out.
How others will see it. Dracula was based on the 1927 John L. Balderston Broadway play, which in turn came from the 1924 Hamilton Deane play, and the 1897 Bram Stoker novel. Dracula was a box office success, the most famous in the career of director Tod Browning, who was previously best known for his collaborations with macabre specialist Lon Chaney.
Indeed, Chaney was slated to star in Dracula, but his 1930 death led Browning to turn to Bela Lugosi, who had played the languid vampire in the Broadway production. Lugosi's film performance became closely associated with the character, as was also the case for Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, also from 1931. The two movies established Carl Laemmle's Universal as a horror film studio.
Dracula has been remade many times over the years, but the original remains highly regarded today. At imdb.com, it has 34K user votes, a significant total for a black and white movie from the early talkie era. The user ratings are also fairly high, 7.6 out of 10. Among women over 45, the most independent-minded demographic, the rating rises to 8.0.
Detractors exist, and consider the film a slow-moving unintentional comedy. They may be right, but that doesn't condemn the movie. A sluggish pace can be atmospheric, and who is to say whether comedy is unintentional? Certainly, plain-spoken Martin (Charles K. Gerrard) was a comic character.
The ending is more widely regarded as a dud. Drac returns to his coffin, which makes him an easy target for the stake-hammering Van Helsing. The Count's demise isn't even shown on film, likely necessary to appease the censors.
How I felt about it. How annoying for Count Dracula. He travels thousands of miles to get away from villagers who are on to him. And who does he run into but Van Helsing, who soon puts an end to his adventures in London. Van Helsing knows everything, for reasons unknown, but Renfield is more of a mystery. Once turned, his initial loyalty is to Dracula. Soon, though, he is hanging around the estate of boring Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), befuddling his two guests (meticulous Van Helsing and Mina's clueless fiancé David Manners) with his inconsistently weird behavior.
We wonder why Drac treats Mina so differently than Lucy and hapless flower girl Anita Harder. Perhaps Drac misses the three wives he left behind in Transylvania, and wants Mina to become spouse #4. This would be in keeping with Lugosi himself, who was three-times divorced by 1931.
Lugosi got the most out of his star-making role. He became a household name, albeit typecast as Dracula. Director Browning's career would soon be in shambles, after Freaks (1932) was poorly received. Hammy Dwight Frye found steady work in Hollywood until his sudden death in 1943, but mostly in "B" movies.