Comfy, Cozy Cinema 2024 - Dracula

Comfy, Cozy Cinema is a collaboration of Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
They have a list of movies to watch for September and October. I was late to the game and not having subscribed to any streaming platforms, I probably wouldn't have been able to watch everything, anyway - but even though they have chosen "Practical Magic" for their own Halloween which I don't have, they left the choice open to others participating on that day.
So my personal choice for today is an all-time favorite of mine and - surpriiiiise - its "sibling". I'm talking about "Dracula" and "Drácula", both of them from 1931.
Are you confused?

Illustrator unknown; Distributed by Universal Pictures.
Scan via Heritage Auctions. Cropped from the original image, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86980777

Quite a few years ago, I decided to add some horror genre classics to my DVD collection, for example "Nosferatu", "Phantom of the Opera", "The Wolf Man", "Frankenstein", and of course my beloved "Dracula" which I had watched on TV before when it was on, but for some weird reason didn't own yet.
I had already bought the "Tombstone Edition", so called after the tombstone shaped box with four movies including "Dracula" when I spotted another edition with - huh, two movies?
Maybe you know - I hadn't - that talkies were not always dubbed for the international market in the early days, but instead there were multiple-language versions made often using the same set, crew, and costumes, but different actors who spoke the desired language fluently. Most common were versions in English, French, German, and Spanish (since after the war, Germany has had a huge dubbing industry which I found is often unusual to American friends of mine, but that's a different story).

Many of the export versions got lost, but one of those that still exist is the Spanish "Drácula" version.
I couldn't resist checking it out and got that box as well.

Distributed by Universal Pictures.
Scan via brandonsiddall.wixsite.com., Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89223507

I don't think I really need to say a lot about the plot of "Dracula".
Renfield, a real estate agent, travels to a castle in Transylvania to close the lease of an abbey in England to Count Dracula. Unfortunately for him, Dracula is a vampire who makes Renfield his minion, travels to England with him, makes his home in the abbey and does what vampires do best, enchanting his victims and sucking their blood, until being stopped by Professor Van Helsing.

So let's talk a bit about the differences between the English and Spanish versions. There are documentaries, interviews, and articles about that, so the following will just reflect my personal opinion which I'm aware not everyone would agree with.

The movies are based on a successful stage play which is of course based on Bram Stoker's book. I have tried to read the book once, but I didn't make it through. That was a long time ago, maybe I should give it another try, but from what I read I'm not alone in having my problems with the style.
Of course the play had to cut out a lot and the same obviously goes for this movie, even more so for the English version which is only 75 minutes long compared to the 104 minutes of the Spanish version (the extra 29 minutes fill some gaps in the story)!
Apart from that the scripts are mostly very similar from what I can tell as I don't speak Spanish and rely on subtitles.

The English version was filmed during the day, the Spanish version on the same set (but not with the same crew) during nights with a smaller budget and a tighter shooting schedule. It is said, however, that the Spanish movie benefited from the crew being able to see the results of day filming and therefore refine their own work in regards to lighting, blocking, and some of the effects.

I'm by no means a film expert and therefore couldn't tell you exactly the reason why, but I agree that the Spanish version looks more polished, has more flow, and is more dramatic in some of the scenes than the English one which is said to look very stagey, much talk, very slow, and not much action. I wonder what half an hour more would have done to it. Not that you could call the Spanish one an action movie, mind you, some of the dialogue was also very slow.
That didn't seem unusual to me at all, though. This was 1931 and movies were not made the same way as today. I'm okay with a bit of overacting, extreme emphasizing of single words (for example Renfield in the Spanish movie), and dramatic pauses in sentences. I don't understand why anyone would even want to compare this movie with the ones that followed.

The actors and actresses didn't make much difference for me. Both Renfields were amazing in their insanity (although the Spanish one got more time to show it off), the English Mina was not as interesting as the Spanish Eva (who also got to wear more revealing costumes), but the others didn't even get much of a chance to shine, not even the professor (except Martin, the ward, he's fun).

Why do I still prefer the English version, though?
One name - Bela Lugosi. Carlos Villarías was alright when others didn't know yet that he was a vampire and he engaged in polite dialogue, but while Lugosi had this ominous yet threatening look throughout, Villarías just looked deranged in his vampire moments, with his eyes wide open and a weird grin on his face which looked more silly than scary to me.
Lugosi, who had also been Dracula in the stage play and had been so desperate for the movie role that he accepted a very low pay offer (originally Lon Chaney was intended for the lead role, but he died in 1930), set the standard for what Dracula still looks like in the mind of most people today, the hair, the cape, the stare, even the accent which had nothing to do with Dracula himself, but was Lugosi's own accent because he only spoke little English at the time.

There would be so much more to say, about the set for example whose elements also became part of the vampire lore, long staircases, coffins, crumbling castles, bats, wolves, and spiders (and their webs).
I have no idea, however, why the oppossums and armadillos in the catacombs of the Transylvanian castle didn't catch on ;-)
Or I could talk about the ending which is rather abrupt and quite anticlimactic.

Maybe you will want to watch the movies yourself sometime to find out more yourself.
If you do, let me know what you think!
I wonder what a German version would have been like.

P.S. Of course Bela Lugosi is staring down on my bed from my fan wall of bead loomed portraits ...