What I Owe Tod Browning
I guess DRACULA (1931) was the first horror movie I ever saw. Not a bad starting point, historically, as it’s possibly the first American supernatural horror movie. I always had a great interest in monsters, perhaps stemming from the times I was frightened by the cyclops in THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and the giant walking statue of Talos in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, monster movies which would play on kids’ TV.
So when, one summer in the 70s, BBC2 put on a season of Saturday night double-bills, I was agog with wonder. My parents were less keen. It was ruled that I could stay up late and watch the first film, but not the second — so I didn’t get to see FRANKENSTEIN until years later. And my Dad would stay up with me.
DRACULA was, in many ways, deeply disappointing to my young self — there was little action, no fangs, and all the spooky stuff was front-loaded at the beginning. The makers seemed scared of being scary. But I was still fascinated — as the musician Moby has said, the thing about monster movies when you’re that age is that the alternative is movies with NO monsters — an alternative not worth thinking about.
And Tod Browning, whose silent Lon Chaney vehicles often featured geographically inappropriate wildlife as plot points, did successfully blow my barely-formed mind by including armadillos amid the fauna of Castle Dracula.
“Dad, why is there an armadillo?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said thoughtfully. “They must have just thought it looked strange.”
Since dads as a species are known or their expertise in every subject, this was interesting information — a question my father could answer only in the most vague and hesitant terms. An introduction to Keats’ concept of negative capability.
Still don’t know what this little guy is.
Since I have an inclination towards rationalism and problem-solving, which is often useful in filmmaking but which sometimes gets in the way of appreciating a real mystery, it was useful to me to get inoculated with negative capability at an early age. I could probably have used a stronger dose, if anything.
Theory: an injection of negative capability leaves two small puncture-marks on the throat.
US shoppers go here: Dracula – The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula’s Daughter / Son of Dracula / House of Dracula)
UK shoppers go here: Dracula [DVD] [1931]
shadowplay 
October 27, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I believe that the little chap sticking his head out of the sarcophagus is a Possum. Which are part of the nocturnal fauna of Brooklyn as it turns out, along with Racoons.
October 27, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Wow. I always imagined possums as cuter than that. I highly recommend Frank Tashlin’s children’s storybook The Possum That Didn’t, btw.
October 27, 2009 at 1:23 pm
That’s definitely a possum. Those things walk right up to you around me. Creepy/awesome little things. And cute in their own strange way.
October 27, 2009 at 1:25 pm
The gliding tracks by George Robinson for Melford’s Spanish-by-night version are so different, so smoothly efficient, from the herky-jerky ones by Freund for Browning. Which produces the eerier effects?
What do we think the pomo rendition with the Glass score filling in all those silences?
October 27, 2009 at 2:07 pm
One could say that both possums and armadillos resemble larger, more exotic types of rats, and therefore don’t look entirely out of place in a horror film. Browning’s placing them in DRACULA was I suspect more an aesthetic decision than a practical one.
For those of us who as children cultivated a love of monsters the viewing of our first horror film was a seminal event. As I’ve stated before on my site and elsewhere, my parents let me stay up late one Friday night back in 1960 (I was five) to watch Freund’s THE MUMMY. A few years back I was looking at a photo of me as a child back in 1959, and was surprised to see something I unnoticed before, that I was clutching a curled-up comic book in my hand. I was actually able to discern what it was from what little I could see of it, it was Tales To Astonish no. 4, one of those Kirby/Ditko pre-hero monster comics of the late ’50s/early ’60s. The cover depicted a robot walking up the ramp of a flying saucer, with a struggling man held under his arm. I don’t recall owning or reading this comic book, but my point is that the seeds were sown early. A few years after seeing THE MUMMY as a kid in grade school part of me wanted to become an archaeologist, so I could go digging for mummies in ancient tombs, which at the time seemed a very cool thing to do. My love of films continues unabated, horror films a bit less so. I don’t find them as satisfying as I once did, I guess the aging process does that to you, but I do still appreciate a black and white film with atmosphere, which is a good part of what fuels my pursuit at this point in time.
October 27, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Oh, and David, as you may or may not know there’s a sticker, trading card size, of the DRACULA poster you’ve opened your post with, contained within the last package I sent you (along with a few others).
October 27, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Possums aren’t cute. They’re like giant. coarse-haired nocturnal rats. Near the river, they turn up along with skunks, snakes, and the occasional deer. I just give them a wide berth, as they do me. I don’t dislike them as much as squirrels (everyone thinks they are cute which shows the limits of the human imagination), who are terribly destructive – they’ll gnaw holes in eaves to escape the cold. Frankly, I wish we had hedgehogs instead.
October 27, 2009 at 2:47 pm
oh man–I hate that Philip Glass score
one of the primary things Drac has going for it (aside, that is, from Lugosi’s menacing mug, Freund’s camera work, Dwight Frye’s laugh–and his demented crawl across the living room, Van Sloan’s sturdy stodginess, Helen Chandler’s wacky eyeballs and David Manners swatting at plastic on the balcony, muttering “my that’s a big bat”) is that atavistic silence
October 27, 2009 at 2:49 pm
oh!
put me on the pro-possum side (I’m also extremely pro-squirrel–and also an admirer of armadillos, in ANY context)
October 27, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Do we need to get too hung up on the ‘realism’ of Dracula’s castle? It may house possums and armadillos, which don’t live in Transylvania, but it’s also full of vampires – who, sad to say, are rumoured not to live (or should that be un-live?) anywhere at all.
I’ve spent weeks at a time in Transylvania and never once saw a vampire. It certainly wasn’t for want of looking!!
October 27, 2009 at 3:01 pm
You’re quite right amagramsci. For me one of the chief attractions of Dracula has always been Dwight Frye’s delicious over-the-top hamming.
I hope I’m not alone in my familiarity with the Spanish language version, shot at the smae time on the smae sets? It was directed by George Melford of East of Borneo fame. And the leading lady, Lupita Tovar, was the mother of
(wait for it)
Susan Kohner!
October 27, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Possums should have been cute, but then the tail and snout were added. They’re poignant, anachronistic, likable animals, lumbering around waiting to get hit by a car. They seem to have an affinity with cats; I’m not the only one who’s seen cats and possums cautiously hanging out together.
October 27, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Can we get a possum David?
October 27, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Can we? Huh?
October 27, 2009 at 6:48 pm
First horror film.I snuck out of my bedroom at age six to watch BRIDES OF DRACULA. A travelling projectionist was showing a 16mm print of the film on a massive stretched sheet on our veranda. It was my brother’s birthday. This was at our house in the Philippines. No TV. A generator ran the projector and the few house lights. The night sky was solid with bats. Lizards had taken to their evening positions on walls and ceilings. DRACULA, with it’s lounging possums, armadillos and easy pace would have been much easier for me to comprehend than this jarring, color drenched British import. I’ve had a thing for Freda Jackson ever since. The following week I was actually allowed to see MACISTE CONTRA LOS VAMPIROS.
October 27, 2009 at 6:58 pm
OK, I think I need to hear everybody’s first horror film experience now!
Fiona: no possum. And no opossum neither. Our Siamese would disapprove.
My next screening of Dracula will be with Chandler and Manners in mind, since I loved them so much in The Last Flight.
As for the Glass, it fills the silences, which makes the film seem more modern and probably more accessible for those who haven’t dabbled in the 30s enough — but that’s just what’s wrong with it. I’m all for audio hiss and dead air in a 30s soundtrack.
October 27, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I grew up on the hiss and silences of thirties film, which is probably why I don’t mind them at all. In fact, hearing certain bombastic scoring turn me off a movie quicker than a 10-minute music-free section.
October 27, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I think I mentioned my first sci-fi and horror movie experiences a week or two ago, and the first I remember that’s considered of any quality was Florey’s Beast With Five Fingers. Later came Dark Shadows (vampire TV soap opera) and Hammer films. By the time I saw the original Dracula, I couldn’t take it for anything but camp.
October 27, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I didn’t really see any horror films growing up. I found supernatural films boring and depressing. NOSFERATU was the film that brought me into horror films and it’s still the scariest Dracula film.
October 27, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Agree that the Murnau is the eeriest — probably because he’s really serious about it. The Lugosi IS camp, but it’s also endearingly peculiar in a way that doesn’t quite fit that model, or any other.
October 27, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Possum story:
When I was in college back in the Eighties there was a woman who was in a printmaking class I’d taken, middle-aged, and very chatty. Don’t know how it came up, but she started telling myself and a few of the other students there working an anecdote about these night-time intrusions, noises in the dark but no idea why. Investigating they discovered a possum beneath the couch, I think he’d been coming in through the chimney, and when they’d shone a light on it he (she?) looked positively demonic underneath there, the light shining in its eyes and a look of antagonistic ferocity on its face. That was bad enough, but then she told us why it came in. It had been snacking on the feces in the cats’ litterbox.
October 27, 2009 at 7:57 pm
My Dad worked in a video shop during the 80s. Every Friday and Saturday he would allow me and my brothers 2 videos each night. He never checked what we took. By the time I was 12 I had seen, Driller Killer, Texas Chainsaw, Last House on the Left and a host of gory Italian exploitation films. The gorier the cover was the more likely it was that we would rent it.
October 27, 2009 at 8:09 pm
See? Cats and possums: best friends forever.
The closest thing I have to a first horror movie memory is seeing an episode of “Outer Limits” in which a housemom is vacuuming the living room, as they did in those days, and this … entity oozed into the vacuum cleaner bag and … it blew up, and she fled screaming and possibly dead. It gave me vacuum-cleaner-phobia, and our vacuum had a suspicious, bulgy kink in the hose.
October 27, 2009 at 8:21 pm
my first horror film was Scanners, which I saw (as the second half of a double bill with Raiders of the Lost Ark) at a Drive-in in suburban Montreal when I was 7 (1981)
I don’t remember being too interested in either of those (although I did of course take note of the exploding heads)… Frankly, my nightmare-life had already been colonized by the suffering rabbits of Watership Down
I saw the Lugosi Dracula on Vermont PBS not too long afterwards–probably that fall–sparking a lifelong obsession!
October 27, 2009 at 9:21 pm
First filmic horror experience: 1960. Aged 4. I started crying, cowering in fear.
Bette Davis in B & W on British TV yelling at Errol Flynn in “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex”. Bette’s voice, shaved chrome dome, wild eyes, imperious manner. Together: More terrifying to a sensitive wee lad than Karloff, Lugosi, and Chaney combined.
October 27, 2009 at 9:30 pm
The most perverse of all Florey films: MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (32). And Freund’s lighting is expressionism distilled to its essence.
October 27, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Armadillos are what usually make those “bump in the night” noises,more like rustling in the bushes,when you’re out camping in Texas…Some folks even make Chili out of ’em…
Movies like She Demons and Frakenstein’s Daughter and Plan Nine From Outer Space are the first horror movies I’m aware of seeing and they are the ones that terrified me the most!..Scary looking women!..They were what turned up on Zacharele at night when we lived in New Jersey..Stuff like Frankenstein and The wolfman were usually run on the million Dollar Movie in the afternoon..They never scared me..The Universal monsters were like brothers!..THey ran Ghost of Frankenstein all week I remember..
October 27, 2009 at 10:01 pm
I was scared of Cruella De Vil. We got a Disney comic each week, and my parents had to staple together the pages that had the 101 Dalmations strip so I wouldn’t see CDV. Even then, I was scared because I knew she was still in there.
The first Universal that scared me was The Mummy, purely because of the burial alive bit. I was starting to think these films were a little dull when along came the monster mash-ups, and those had some of the appeal of Godzilla movies later.
The trouble was, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein were both the second film on the BBC2 double feature, week one and two. But Son of Frankenstein blew me away: I loved Ygor, loved Krogh, I was already I think a Rathbone fan, and the fight at the end was SO exciting!
October 27, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Guy, love the possum tale! There’s something scary about ANY animal living in your home without your knowledge. Mind you, with our cat’s habits, perhaps having a possum about the place to “clean up” wouldn’t be a bad idea.
October 27, 2009 at 10:16 pm
My own initiation was “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” in 1970, when I was 6.
My brother and I were sent off to a matinee at the local theater, which still had one large screen. Maybe the adults didn’t understand the premise of the movie (“cute monkeys, right?”) or maybe in that era, bloodshed and nuclear apocalypse were considered OK entertainments for 6-year-olds.
I know it’s a mediocre film, especially the early part that takes place in ape city, where some plot elements from the first film are recycled, only with less conviction.
But I WISH a movie today could grip me the way that one did. Now, I can analyze the story as I watch, I can predict what is going to happen next, I can wonder how a particular effect was accomplished. I still love movies as much as I ever have, but real excitement is hard to muster. It’s more like considering the hypothetical excitement of a hypothetical six year old.
Even after 40 years, I can still remember closing my eyes at the moment where the mutant guard is impaled by the spikes on the jail gate. And when James Franciscus is gunned down. Later that night, I had a spontaneous screaming fit — I was certain a faceless mutant had just looked in the window.
That movie scarred me for life! But they are scars I am very fond of.
October 27, 2009 at 11:07 pm
When I was six or seven my dad would watch horrors on TV and let me sneak in and watch parts – only ones I’m sure I saw are Texas Chainsaw Massacre and 2,000 Maniacs. No big deal in small doses, but when I was eight I went with him to theaters for Poltergeist II then Cronenberg’s The Fly, both traumatizing.
October 27, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Possums used to live in my walls and watch me through holes. They look far more demonic than Pogo, given the right lighting.
My friend Pip was forbidden to see horror movies. One night, his parents went out and left him with his grandfather, who promptly fell asleep, leaving Pip free to watch “Attack of the Mushroom People,” a.k.a. “Matango: Fungus of Terror.” He didn’t eat a mushroom for twenty years.
October 27, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Renfield was what always gave me the creeps in the Lugosi Dracula..The other night I watched Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman for about the 1160th time!..and actually felt a little taste of what audiences might have felt when they first saw it..I was actually getting fearful of the Wolfman!.
So often I’ll run across old timers that’ll say..oohh i saw Frankenstein back in 1931 when I was a boy..and I couldn’t sleep for a week!…or something like that..and I just can’t imagine it..for me I’m just fascinated by the overall gothic package..lights,sets atmosphere,music..or lack thereof..
October 28, 2009 at 12:36 am
A friend’s mum told me she was very scared by the Karloff Frankenstein, which she must have seen in a post-war re-release. “It might not seem scary now, but the idea of that dead body starting to move…”
October 28, 2009 at 1:23 am
A few years back I was watching DOORWAY TO HELL, an early talkie, a gangster film starring James Cagney, being shown on TCM. Well, imagine my surprise when Dwight Frye appears, he played a gangster named Monk in the film, and he’s toting a violin case with, what else, a tommy gun inside, but of course. This may have been the first screen instance of what became the cliche of cliches in gangster films. Sad that he died so relatively young, he had performed on Broadway in comedies before his screen career, and had hoped to God that he might perform in one onscreen, as opposed to the “idiots and half-wits” he’d been typecast into doing. His exchange with Thesiger in the crypt with the other grave-robber in THE BRIDE is deliciously funny, I only wish it could have gone on longer.
October 28, 2009 at 2:29 am
I have a possum in my pants.
October 28, 2009 at 3:11 am
I love Frye as ‘gunsel’ Wilmer (even better than Elisha Cook Jr) in the first version of THE MALTESE FALCON (31). Not much about it is very good (other than possessing an interesting Pre-Code frankness about sexual matters), but he certainly is in his few minutes of screen time.
October 28, 2009 at 5:20 am
I thought Doorway To Hell starred Lew Ayres and Cagney had a beefy supporting role in it. Am I mistaken? Thought it wasn’t a bad little movie. Frye was around a lot in early sound, and I agree about Maltese Falcon, the only things I found better in it were Effie (who doesn’t love a young, sexy Una Merkel?) and Dwight Frye (though he didn’t get half enough to do). The film seemed to suffer from that early-sound paralysis I see a lot of, and Ricardo Cortez seemed a little oleaginous to be a good Spade. Both films also suffered from Robert Elliott speaking with irony so leaden that his lines landed with a thud.
October 28, 2009 at 5:24 am
Una Merkel is a marvel
I like all three versions of the Falcon (Warren William plays his version of the protagonist very similarly to his Perry Mason–and man do I love those WW Masons!)… although I still like the novel best of all
October 28, 2009 at 5:26 am
I’ve got an armadillo in my trousers. It’s really quite frightening actually.
October 28, 2009 at 6:32 am
That possum picture… The skeleton hand has 5 fingers.
October 28, 2009 at 10:46 am
Glad to know I wasn’t the only child scared by Bette Davis. I was 4 years old, and her screaming fit in MR SKEFFINGTON had me hiding behind the sofa in terror!
October 28, 2009 at 11:33 am
5 fingers — it’s either “the beast with…” or the grave of Hannibal Lecter (who has an extra digit on one hand).
Dwight Frye’s stage reputation was as an all-rounder, the man who could play anything. So naturally movies typecast him as quickly as possible into the narrowest imaginable range. Although he still distinguishes Fritz from Hans from Renfield…
I enjoyed the alternative Falcons, but they’re quite disturbing too. The first one is so close to the plot of the book that it’s like watching an impostor. Everything is right except the whole approach. Spade is a slimeball, Guttman has no authority, everything is off. The Warren William one is crazy, and Spade is a monster, even though it’s all played for laughs. He cuckolds his partner right in front of the guy, then treats the subsequent murder as a joke… Nothing is more chilling than Warren William in ebullient mode.
David W, when you’re hiding behind the couch, watch out for possums!
October 28, 2009 at 11:52 am
On a visit to New Orleans, I rented a car and went for a ride in the bayous. On a small road at Vachier, there was a man out front of his house who was busy dressing a possum, peeling the skin off the animal. He had blood on his arms up to his elbows. Bit like a horror movie, I thought. As we drove by, the man stopped, smiled and waved at us.
I was told that possum makes a decent stew.
October 28, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Seems I recall Granny (The Beverly Hillbillies) thought the same.
October 28, 2009 at 1:11 pm
David,
I was going to bring that up, dammit. Warren William is the coldest damn Spade I ever saw, not only cracking jokes when he finds his partner dead, but also ditching his secretary from their date and picking up a new girl (who he chats up during his date with said secretary) after sending his secretary off to tell the widow about the murder. He also mocks the police when he’s being questioned. I think the worst miscasting/performance in that movie is Bette Davis. The second worst is Arthur Treacher.
I always figured that the Satan in the title referred to William. He’s a right funny sonofabitch, though.
Anagramsci,
The Masons are a crazy lot, aren’t they? I love them, no two are alike.
October 28, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Bette might have worked as Miss Wonderly in a straight-faced Falcon, even up against the oily horror that is Cortez. (What were they thinking, they at least could’ve had George Raft.)
October 28, 2009 at 2:21 pm
re: Satan Met a Lady
let’s not forget that Hammett introduces Sam Spade by remarking that he “looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan”
October 28, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Wasn’t Raft at Paramount back then?
October 28, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Borrow him! Of course, Warners already had Bogart, I think, so the idea of somebody beating Huston to the punch was not impossible. Hell, I’d take Allen Jenkins over both Cortez and Williams in the part!
October 28, 2009 at 6:27 pm
so many interesting things going on in those 1930s Perry Masons–with William going hog wild, and actors like Olin Howland and Gordon Westcott delivering unique performances to match… and of course Michael Curtiz’s Case of the Curious Bride is a celebrated trousseau fulla tricks!
too bad they couldn’t leave Claire Dodd alone in the Della spot–she was great in the role, and it’s not as if they ever found anything good for her to do in the A-picture world
re: 1931 Falcon–I think I like Cortez more in the part than most of you…he’s sleazy alright, but that’s what Spade’s supposed to be like… he’s no Philip Marlowe… still, I’d have to revisit the film before confirming that…
I do know that I think Roy Del Ruth is an underrated director–he did some of the best stuff at Warners during the early 1930s
October 28, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Allen Jenkins didn’t get to Warner until 1932 – I believe he came straight from the original Broadway cast of Blessed Event.
As for Del Ruth, Bureau of Missing Persons is, like Blessed Event, another good one and it doesn’t suffer from any paralysis that I can see. For some reason, he could get better performances from Jenkins than any other director (if you can stand to watch it, try Maisie Gets Her Man, a film I plan to write about – it has an interesting backstory).
Spade is supposed to be sleazy, which is why he didn’t work as a hero until Huston converted him into one. It was a canny move, but somewhat false to the source. My only problem with Cortez is that smirk of his never lets off. I could believe that’s why Warner tried to turn it into comedy later, just to take the sting out of how much of a bastard Spade was.
October 28, 2009 at 6:56 pm
agree 100%—I love the 1941 Falcon, but, despite the word-for-word use of Hammett’s dialogue, it really ISN’T a faithful adaptation–and it’s not just because the Flitcraft story is missing (not that I have any problem with this–the novel will always be faithful to itself, if that’s what we want, and Huston went and delivered a brilliant riff on the material–precisely by putting a half-Marlowe on the Spade role)
I think I may revisit the 1931 version this weekend–just to see where I stand on that smirk
Bureau of Missing Persons is a stunner–as are several of the Cagney/del Ruths
I’d love to read about Jenkins & Maisie–where will this writing appear?
October 28, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Watch this space for news of Mr Medin’s forthcoming blog. I’m looking forward to it!
Del Ruth did some of the most enjoyable Warners precodes, so it was fascinating to see how wrong he could go with Falcon. Some aspects may be closer to the book, but the whole feeling is miles from Hammett. The Huston version may also depart, but it does so successfully. Part of the appeal of Spade is that he’s unpredictable and frequently unheroic — maybe Cagney would have been an interesting choice?
Claire Dodd is a great Della, but I sort of enjoy the wildly inconsistent tone of the Perry Masons, so constantly changing Dellas adds even more gay variety. And Ann Dvorak is always welcome.
The idea that Jenkins came with Blessed Event seems reasonable: it looks like all the blocking in that film has come straight from the stage, with Del Ruth working overtime to cover all the actors’ moves. And it works!
October 28, 2009 at 9:15 pm
no doubt about Dvorak DC–she definitely added excitement to the Della-go-round
and I absolutely agree re: the value of Huston’s departures… in fact–I don’t see any reason to film a book (or story) unless you’re going to push off against the material and do something that the original doesn’t do… My latest crush, in this regard, involves A Woman’s Vengeance–Aldous Huxley’s extraordinary adaptation of his own The Gioconda Smile… the film somehow gives us everything that’s in the story while completely reassessing the effects of the drama’s primal act upon its cast (each of whom, in the original story, is isolated to the point of imperviousness to even the strongest stimuli… but their emotions and worldviews are definitely in flux in the film) Together, the two pieces present Huxley’s idea with stereoscopic fullness… Huston and Hammett (with a little help from Del Ruth, Dieterle and Warren William) work the same magic on the Falcon
looking forward to the Medin blog!
October 28, 2009 at 11:06 pm
It’s going to be all-’30s, all the time. Except when I cheat and go to 1940 (Hey, it’s still the ’30s, there was no year zero!). The Maisie piece is being written (even if it’s a 1942 movie) because of where a lot of the source material and characters come from. Let’s just say they was stolen (or never credited or uncredited) from a rather well-known magazine writer and an extended piece he wrote in 1938.
I just have to watch the movie again to get all the details nailed down, but Jenkins especially impressed me as having caught the character from the written story.