Summer of Monsters: Dracula *Part 1*

I and my son sat down a while ago and watched Dracula. Which is the first Monster movie in this Summer of Monsters! I'm going to be covering all sorts of movie monsters and what not can always hit me up on social media and let me know what you think. I have a link up above this blog post with paths to where I am online. I wanted to start at an older horror film so I noticed I have a bunch of black and white movie copies of old Universal films and so here we are.

This is the Tod Browning directed Dracula and actually is considered to be the "It" version of when you tell the Dracula story. There are a couple of things that I noticed right off the bat. Looking back at them now I actually shouldn't have been so surprised nor should you.

The film is a black and white and so there for I believe had the censor or maybe it didn't. I don't recall seeing the censor pop up like you do with some of the older films. It's big on atmosphere and there isn't any violence. The act of him biting someone and at least draining isn't shown on screen. So it does leave it to your imagination. Which  I believe a bit more fun to do as it puts holes in the audience and lets the imagination run wild.

Having said that though it's not very scary and the effects as it should be is laughable. They just dangled something toyish in front of the screen and then cut away or added smoke and then boom there is your vampire. I am pretty positive though for its day it was "awesome" as far as scares go.

It's a short film and not very long, one you could end in I believe just over an hour. It's light and breezy. The acting is a bit strange and weird. I don't think they have any forms of method acting as they are now. This is back when you just kind of acted out the lines and that was it. I believe in a few decades they would develop "method acting". If you don't know what that is check out Al Pacino or other serious actors.

The funny or at least interesting bit is that he's after women. He makes the men go nuts and crazy but he's the "pure" woman. Which I would take it is the birth of the whole "virgin" story lines in horror movies. One of the things about horror is that if you have sex or you do the dirty in a horror film you're going to die. The character will be killed off because they did the dirty.

Then of course to the fight of the light and darkness. Van Helsing is really a bad butt character. One that knows what the evil is and how to get rid of it. Also too obtains some lightness in the face of all that darkness.

Either see it for what it is a bygone era of Hollywood or see it for its cheese. It's still pretty good. It also made Bella Legosi a star and cemented his take on the Dracula character. There are tons of Dracula variations and I thought why not start at the beginning of them all.

I hope that you will have fun with these monster movies series. I hope to have one out I think every two weeks or so. What is your favorite monster? Have any recommendations, and or want me to try out a monster film...or just film, in general, let me know down below or here.