I know people, myself included, who, every Halloween watch classic horror films movies like
Dracula (1931),
Frankenstein (1931), and
The Mummy (1932). I just watched the latter for about the tenth time—it still satisfies. I also watched the terrific UK thriller,
The Clairvoyant (1935), with Claude Rains and Fay Wray. If you haven’t seen it, find a copy. I predict you’ll love it.
With Halloween just a few days away, there’s no better time to pick
up some horror-themed film history. Might I recommend two recently
released books from BearManor Media? One is
London After Midnight: A New Reconstruction Based on Contemporary Sources, by Thomas Mann. It is an intriguing work of literary-filmic archeology.
Tod Browning’s silent horror film,
London After Midnight
(1927), starring Lon Chaney, has intrigued silent movie fans for
decades. The movie is considered lost, and remains one of the most
famous and sought after of all lost films. Every April 1st, it seems,
somebody announces they have found it. Eureka!
The last known copy of
London After Midnight was destroyed
in a vault fire in 1967. Today, all that remains are surviving film
stills, an illustrated novel, scripts, and other ephemera which give
some feel for the actual film; however, gaps in the plot and other
inconsistencies and missing elements leave viewers wondering how the
actual film unfolded. (This, despite the fact that Turner Classic Movies
aired a valiant reconstructed version, using the original script and
film stills, in 2002.)
In
London After Midnight: A New Reconstruction Based on Contemporary Sources, Mann offers a reconstruction based on his transcription of a rediscovered 11,000-word fictionalization of the film published in
Boy’s Cinema,
an English publication, a year after the film was released. Mann’s
detailed comparison of surviving sources sheds new light on various
“unsettling” aspects of the film, like the discovery of a second murder
victim, a plot element not in the final film. Mann’s transcription of
the story is included in the new book.
Another intriguing book from BearManor Media is
Ed Wood and the Lost Lugosi Screenplays
by Gary D. Rhodes. Here, noted film scholar and Bela Lugosi authority
Gary D. Rhodes brings to light two of Ed Wood’s unproduced scripts for
the famed Dracula star, namely
The Vampire’s Tomb and
The Ghoul Goes West.
Rhodes is ably assisted by horror movie expert Tom Weaver, Lugosi
biographer Robert Cremer, and Hollywood historian Lee R. Harris. Each
dig deep into these unfilmed films, and in doing so, unearth all manner
of previously unknown information and visual artifacts.
Ed Wood and the Lost Lugosi Screenplays reproduces the two screenplays, and puts these horrific treasures on exhibit for the first time.
Another recent title well worth checking out is
Expressionism in the Cinema,
edited by Rhodes and Olaf Brill. Published by Scotland’s Edinburgh
University Press (and available in the United States), this wide-ranging
collection reworks the canon of Expressionistic cinema—which means it
goes beyond the handful of German titles likely familiar to film buffs.
The book’s fifteen essays revisit key German films like
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920),
Nosferatu (1922), and
The Hands of Orlac (1924), and also provide new consideration of more obscure titles like
Nerven (1919),
The Phantom Carriage (1921) and other films produced outside Germany—notably in France, Sweden, Hungary, Austria and elsewhere.
For me, the real eye opener is Rhodes’ contribution to the book, “
Drakula halála (1921): The Cinema’s First Dracula.” Yes, you read that right. There was a “Dracula film” before F. W. Murnau’s classic
Nosferatu (1922), and before Tod Browning’s familiar
Dracula (1931).
Drakula halála, or
Dracula’s Death (sometimes translated as
The Death of Drakula—following the Hungarian spelling), is a Hungarian horror film written and directed by Károly Lajthay. Like
London After Midnight, it is presumed lost.
Drakula halála tells the story of a woman who experiences
frightening visions after visiting an insane asylum, where one of the
inmates claims to be Count Drakula. Echoing
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
the woman has trouble determining what is real and what is not, and
whether the inmate’s visions are real, or merely nightmares. The film stars Paul Askonas as Dracula, with Carl Goetz as the "funny man" or "meat man." At the other end of the decade, Goetz played the important role of Lulu's pimp in the expressionist-tinged
Pandora's Box.
Though the
plot of
Drakula halála does not really follow the narrative found in Bram Stoker’s famous novel,
Dracula (1897), the film marks the first screen appearance of the vampire character we know as Count Dracula.
Released the following year,
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) was in fact an unauthorized adaptation of
Dracula,
with names and other details changed because the studio could not
obtain the rights to Stoker’s novel (for instance, “vampire” became
“Nosferatu,” and “Count Dracula” became “Count Orlok”). In his
fascinating essay, Rhodes argues that
Drakula halála beat
Nosferatu to the punch. Or should I say, it got the first bite.