Classic Horror films of Bela Lugosi: White Zombie

So Today I want to talk about Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó or to give him the name he is more commonly known by Bela Lugosi. Lugosi was a Hungarian-American actor,most famous for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 Universal Dracula film, some people seem to think that this is pretty much all that he did, but that is far from the truth. He started off playing small parts on the stage in his native Hungary and then he made his first film in 1917. He left and at first traveld to Germany where he made several films before finally arriving in the USA. It was there in the United States that Lugosi first took on the role of Count Dracula in 1927 in a Broadway adaption of the Bram Stoker novel, and then in 1931 he appeared in the Universal Pictures Film Dracula playing the same role. During the rest of the 1930's Lugosi continued to appear in horror films, mostly ones with an East European setting but due to his accent and his association with the character of Dracula he found himself unfortunatly typecast. He was often paired with Boris Karloff another horror legend of the time, but Lugosi struggled far more Karloff often got more money and more respect, they appeared togther in films such as The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939).

If you read through the History of Horror it wasnt always as kind as it should have been to Lugosi, for example his pay was dramatically cut in half once just because the studio heard he was in financial difficulty and knew he litterally couldnt afford to walk away, I guess its only now looking back that people really click on what a Star he was. so with this in mind I wanted to touch on some of his none Dracula roles and I wanted to start this with White Zombie, after all I have tackled Zombies quite a lot of times with this blog but this film is very diffrent.

Ok so I dont want to write everything that happens in the film from start to finish as I actually want you my reader to be able to leave this post and watch it, if it sounds like something you would enjoy that is. The film is set in Haiti, you have a couple who are engaged and have plans to marry soon, they are called Madeleine Short and Neil Parker. When they are on the way to their lodging in a coach they pass by an evil voodoo master called Murder Legendre (played by Lugosi) Neil and Madeleine arrive at the home of  a very wealthy plantation owner by the name of Charles Beaumont.

Charles loves Madeleine too and wants her for his own so he secretly goes to visit the voodoo master  Murder. Murder explains that he has used voodoo to turn anyone who apposed him or got in his way into a zombie.  Now its important to stop here and make it clear that this is not Zombie as in night of the living dead undead flesh eating zombie, no this is as in someone who is essentially medically drugged to be vacant and obediant.

Murder gives Charles a potion which he gives to Madeleine, and the potion takes effect shortly after Madeleine and Neil's wedding ceremony and she appears to die.  After her funeral, Murder and Charles enter Madeleine's tomb and retreave her. Neil doesnt cope very well with his wife's death  and so he goes to her tomb but obviously he finds it now empty. Neil goes to the local missionary who is caleld Dr. Bruner and tells him what he has seen and asks for help. Dr Bruner tells Neil about how Murder  made his rivals into zombies, who he now uses to guard him. With this explained the two men set out to Murder's  castle to attempt to rescue Madeleine and if you want to know how this all plays out, well then youll have to watch the film now wont you.

The film got a whole mixed bag when it came to reviews back in the day, some claimed it was awful and the activing was bad, others claimed that Lugosi was fantastic and made the movie but the general truth is that the reviews were simply all over the place.

White Zombie was filmed in eleven days in March 1932 and was shot at the Universal Studios lot and Bronson Canyon with apparently a Budget of $50,000 and a lot of back ground props and stuff were borrowed from other productions. Béla Lugosi and Joseph Cawthorn were the only people to be regarded as properly famous that featured the rest of the cast were actors who had seen there careers take a turn for the worst since the end of silent film era. When you put all of this togther I think the film is simply astounding, and with its voodoo style zombies its quiet diffrent from most of the zombie films out there, I do think it is very much a Lugosi picture though without him there is wouldnt be anywere near as good, which is proberbly reflected in the fact that its sequel which did not feature Lugosi is pretty much overall considerd to be a bad film, I would give this film 7 bats out of 10, if it sounds like your kind of thing give it a watch after all its go to beat being a reality TV zombie.

Hammer: Dracula Prince Of Darkness

So with Hammers first Dracula film we had Chrisopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, then we got a second Dracula film the Brides of Dracula which featured Cushings Van Helsing but didnt actually featuring Christopher Lee or anyone for that matter as Dracula and so after that we got the third Hammer Dracula film, Dracula: Prince of Darkness which saw the return of Lee, this time without Cushing (with the exception of scenes from Horror Of Dracula featuring him in the prologue). I saw this film originally years ago when I was quiet young, I however recently watched it and felt that I would like to review it as a part of my series of Hammer reviews.

Ok so I try to keep things spoiler free but if you havent yet watched Horror of Dracula and dont want that film spoiling then skip this paragrape as the start of this film is the end of that one. The film starts with a prologue which replays the final scene from Horror of  Dracula, in which Dr. Van Helsing destroys Dracula by first pulling down the curtains and then using two large candle sticks to act as a cross, a cross which he uses to push Dracula back in to the sunlight that is coming through the window which kills him. These replay is accompanied by voice-over narration which tells of how Van Helsing was able to end Dracula's  reign of terror making him nothing more than a dreaded memory. I really like the way this is done, it really conects this film to the first one, it also reminds you of just how brilliantly that film ended, what once was a great ending now serves as a really awesome high impact start to this film with the naration adding a certain freshness to it, personally I think this was an awesome way to open the film.

The main story doesnt feature Van Helsing at all, it instead tells about how Dracula is reserected and then gives us a new set of characters to go against him, the closist to a Van Helsing style character being Father Sandor who goes from visiting an inn and warning four English tourists to stay away from Dracula's castle to eventually offering those who have escaped Dracula sanctuary and help to defeat him. I dont think he is as good as Peter Cushing however Andrew Keir plays Sandor well and makes him both a believeable and intresting character, you feel that he is just as knowledgable and willing to fight evil as Helsing was but he in my mind at least just doesnt feel as formidable a foe, he doesnt feel like Dracula's natural equal.

I guess your expecting me to go on and on about how wonderful Christopher Lee is now or how much I miss Peter Cushing?  Well I do and dont miss Cushing there was a nice little bit of seeing how cool he was at the start even if it was purly a recap and reused footage, yes its great to see Helsing against Dracula but its intresting to see how Dracula deals with and relates to other diffrent people. Now I find it important to note that the Dracula seen in this film is kind of diffrent to the one seen in the first movie for a start Dracula does not speak in the film, he gestures and looks and hisses apart from the hisses its almost like a silent movie portrayel of Dracula but just like with a silent film Chrisopher Lee manages to speak a thousand words with every look with every movement, he might not talk but he speaks volumes with his acting.

 According to Christopher Lee: "I didn’t speak in that picture. The reason was very simple. I read the script and saw the dialogue! I said to Hammer, if you think I’m going to say any of these lines, you’re very much mistaken."^{, this account was contradicted by the} Screenwriter Jimmy Sangsterwho claimed that "Vampires don't chat. So I didn't write him any dialogue. ''Personally I can think of a whole bunch of reasons Dracula might not talk in this film from a story point of view, maybe it was because of how he came back, maybe meeting his end and then being reserected effected him, or maybe he just didnt find anyone worth talking to that he met during this film. If it is true that Lee read the script and the dialogue was poor then I say that it was a good call on his behalf to decide that less was more and say nothing instead pouring everything in to his almost silent performance.

I didnt enjoy this game as much as Horror of Dracula but I actually have tio say that I think it was better than Brides of Dracula and certainly well worth a watch.

Hammer: Brides of Dracula

Last night I watched The Brides of Dracula which is another Hammer horror film and well its the sequel to The Horror of Dracula which I reviewed recently. It in some ways is a strange sequel particularly when you realise that despite having the name Dracula right there in the title doesnt actually feature Dracula at all. So if this films not about Dracula then who and what is it about and what makes it a sequel? Well Peter Cushing returns from the previous film once again playing Doctor Van Hellsing and thats what ties the films togther. At one stage apparently the film was going to be called Disciple Of Dracula which I actually think would have been a better title for the film as the Brides are not really the main Villian of the piece or what the focus point of the film in general.

So in my review of the first Hammer Dracula I talked about how well Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing worked alongside each other and thats sort of the downside of this film. Peter Cushing gives a fabulous performance once again but there isent really anyone around him who comes even close so it really is a one man show. Dont get me wrong Cushing acted the living crap out of the role, I dont fault a single line he utters or movement he makes the man is an acting legend and once again he puts on a motion picture acting master class but it just doesnt equal the previous film as there isent the same feeling of it being an equal battle and the same sort of on screen chemistry. I will try not to spoil to much of the plot but I want to go back to what I said about the brides not being the main antagonists of the piece. The main Villian is actually played by an actor called David Peel and is a character called Baron Meinster, who and I say this more because of the possible title than anything I noticed in the film is apparently a disciple of Count Dracula. Now anyone who has watched a lot of horror and vampire films will instantly be able to tell you that not all Vampires are equal or actors for that matter. No offense to David Peel but he is a poor subsitute for Christopher Lee, Baron Meinster apart from possibly one scene largly comes across as a cardboard cut out monster, in my oppinion you could have lifted him straight out of the film and dropped anyone dressed as a vampire in to his place and given them some simple instructions, Cushing tottally carries him (and the whole film).

I know some people might have issues that this whole review has just become a piece in which to praise Cushing but heck its my review, watch the film and see what you think.  I just feel that Cushing had really gotten the role of Van Helsing and made it his, he had become the character and knew how he would act and what he would say. The ending to this film originally was going to be that all of the vampiresare killed by a swarm of bats released straight from hell via a black magic  ritual. This ending was rejected by Peter Cushing, who said that Van Helsing would never resort to using black magic, that it didnt fit the character and I have to admit that I do think it would have been tottally out of context and well jaring to see this version of Van Helsing do something like that (Hammer did stow the idea away and use it in a latter Vampire film). To me this is the mark of a good actor, one who gets a real feel for the characters they play and begins to breathe real life in to them and make them more than just an image on the silver screen. So I guess I will leave things here, its not a bad film, in fact it is enjoyable, heck if you like Cushing you will proberbly love it, it just doesnt compare to the first entry in the series.

Hammer: Horror of Dracula

I have often found myself talking about Peter Cushing on this blog, I have talked about him as an actor I admire, I have talked about his image being used after his death in a StarWars film and I have talked about the rose he commisioned for his late wife. I guess you can say that he has become one of the most repeated subjects on this blog, the last time I mentioned him was when I talked about the birth of the film studio Hammer and there birth. I ended this piece by talking about The Curse Of Frankenstein stating that it was a genre defining picture,which allowed us brits to usher in the return of gothic horror. I couldnt help but mention that this was due to three individuals one of which was  the director Terence Fisher and the other two were the fabulous actors Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Well the success of  The Curse of Frankenstein gave Hammer the freedom to explore more adaptations, this led to them making Dracula (AKA Horror of Dracula) which was released in 1958. It stared Christopher Lee (Dracula) and Peter Cushing (Van Helsing), again as well as once more being directed by Terence Fisher. 


This film is a brilliant piece of cinematic history and as far as I am concerned it sets the standard for further Hammer vampire films. If you have never seen a Hammer horror film, then you are in for a heck of a treat filled with impressivelavish costumes and sets, plenty of buxom ladies, some of the red stuff (in this case, very bright red) and a penchant for period settings. Dracula presents all this with gusto. So just like in Curse of Frankenstein, Lee is the monster, and Cushing is the doctor but unlike that film Lee is not a sympathetic Monster here, no he is a dangerous Vampire to be feared while Cushing is a much more sympathetic Doctor, in curse of Frankenstein he was a man who thought he could play God but here he is a man who feels like he is serving the will of God and protecting people from the unholy. Both of these actors give brilliant performances here and they play against each other brilliantly, they dont seem to try to out act each other or to be the star of the piece no instead they seem to work in harmony feeding each other perfectly.

So is this Dracula a film adaptation of the classic Stoker novel? Well the best answer is not exactly. It taskes characters and themes but it is not a beat for beat adaption. The film takes place in Germany and Van Helsing and Harker are colleques studying the legend of Vampires.  The location of Dracula is found out and Harker takes a post working at Dracula's castle, he kills a female vampire (A bride of Dracula I guess) but then before he can find out the Count gets his revenge by biting and Killing Harker.  Van Helsing goes in search of Harker, finding his diary and his corpse the second of which he stakes. Van Helsing then visits Arthur Holmwood and his wife Mina to inform them of Harekers death. Arthurs sister Lucy was engaged to Harker and was living with them due to her recent illness, one which has left her pale and weak. I wont go further into the story and what happens as well I strongly think that this is a film that needs to be seen (yes I am avoiding spoilers for a very old film here).

So is Christopher Lee a better or worse Dracula than Bela Lugosi most people will ask, well he is a totally diffrent kind of Dracula. Lugosi was hypnotic and charming and to a certain degree sympathetic but Lee in this film was something else he came across as violent, dangerous, physical and well animalisti, he was a sex and violence Dracula. Against this we have a Van Helsing who instead of a little old man who happens to know the truth and is just wise and holy we have a Van Helsing here who is not just an expert but also an action hero, to me this film is the start of the idea of the kick ass vampire slayer which is now so common in all forms of media.

Once again I find myself toasting the work of Christoper Lee and Peter Cushing and this is only the first film in Hammers Dracula franchise.