The Spanish "Drácula" (1931): Horror, Hispanic style

I wrote these Program Notes for the screening of Drácula (1931), at the Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, October 29, 2022.

This is the second joint program between the Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.  Once more this collaboration is devoted to Spanish-language cinema made in Los Angeles in the 1930s.  These two films bookend the decade: Verbena trágica (1938), featured in  May 2021, was an independent production attempting to capitalize on Spanish-language audiences in the US and Latin America once the sound technology was well in place by the mid-30s. Drácula (1931), on the other side, was made by a Hollywood studio figuring out how to keep the large Hispanic market, when the coming of sound disrupted the business model, and the films made in Mexico, Argentina and Spain seemed to challenge Hollywood’s supremacy. (1)

 

Also, like Verbena trágica, the Library of Congress selected Drácula for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it “culturally, historically, or esthetically significant”.

 

Drácula is an interesting example how film esthetics (the horror genre), an innovation (sound) and the business of the Dream Factory intersect in cinema history.  

 

Based on the epistolary 1897 novel by Bram Stoker, but rerouted through its stage play of 1924, revised in 1927, Dráculawas produced by Universal Studios, as a Spanish-language version of the English original. The studio strategy, in the midst of the Depression, was to shift to pictures less expensive than spectacular productions like All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Dracula and Frankenstein, made and released in 1931, directed by Tod Browning and James Whale, were the first titles to establish the conventions and visuals of the horror film in the sound era. They were both box-office hits and made Universal Studios synonymous with this new genre.  

 

The wonderful documentary by Kevin Brownlow, Universal Horror (1998) is a trip through the highlights of these films, featuring the parallel stories of Dracula and Drácula. Well worth watching as a companion piece to this screening. (2)

 

The Spanish version was shot between October and November 1930, using the same sets of the English version, starring Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi (the vampire reference par excellence) as Count Dracula and Helen Chandler as Mina, the virginal English woman who becomes his victim.

 

In an interesting choice of casting by producer Paul Kohner, in charge of the foreign-version productions at Universal, a very young Mexican actress, Lupita Tovar became Mina’s Hispanic version, Eva, equally virginal looking, but costumed in sexy outfits.  In her charming memoir, published in 2011, Lupita Tovar devotes a chapter to her second film for Universal, after establishing herself in La voluntad del muerto (1930), the Spanish version of The Cat Creeps. 

 

“George Melford was hired to direct, with a cast including Carlos Villarías, Pablo Álvarez Rubio, Barry Norton (from Argentina), Carmen Guerrero, Manuel Arbó, Eduardo Arozamena and me. We used the same sets and the same script translated into Spanish, but a completely different crew led by cameramen George Robinson. Paul [Kohner] was the supervising producer of both films but his heart was with our version.  We shot at night, while the English-speaking cast filmed during the day. The American version had started two weeks earlier so we were able to use the sets they had already finished with.

 

Only Carlos Villarías, who played Count Drácula, was allowed to see dailies. He was encouraged to be as “Lugosi-like” as possible. The rest of the us were on our own. Paul wanted our film to be better than the English-language version. George Robinson, our lighting cameraman, lit our sets with creepy shadows and added cobwebs everywhere. My nightgown was much sexier than the one Helen Chandler were and, perhaps because we were filming at night, our actors seemed even more menacing.

 

We had tremendous respect for our director George Melford. He was like a god to us. But there was some tension on the set because we knew we were competing with the American Dracula; we felt pressure to perform better than them. We were trying so hard. We finished our film in only twenty-two nights; the American version took seven weeks." (3)

Pancho Kohner - the son of Lupita Tovar and Paul Kohner, who were married in 1932 - recounted how Drácula, unseen for decades and hence barely warranting a mention in film history books, was found in a New Jersey warehouse in the 1970s.  The American Film Institute made a print for a Universal Studios retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. But the nitrate negative had begun to decompose and was incomplete. The only other existing print was found at the Cinemateca de Cuba, and after some maneuvering by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, navigating Cold War era restrictions, a new negative was struck in 1991. Drácula “resuscitated” in Havana, as the program notes for a screening of the restored film in Cuba cheekily noted. And the film has been available since, as a bonus material for the DVD and BluRay releases of the original Dracula. (4)

 

Those interested in the ramifications of Dracula into the Hispanic    imagination will enjoy watching, or reviewing in this context, the intriguing variations woven into the blood-thirsty count by Guillermo del Toro in his debut film Cronos (1993): the erotic angle is erased and a Catholic sense of sacrifice and redemption underpins the Mexican vampire’s last and fatal decision.  A more orthodox take on the bloodthirsty vampire is the classic mid-century Mexican horror El vampiro (1957), directed by Fernando Méndez.

 

One final note, the grandchildren of Lupita Tovar and Paul Kohner, the filmmakers Chris and Paul Weitz (About a Boy, A Better Life, Fatherhood, Operation Finale) are writing and directing Spanish Dracula, what else but the love story of their grandparents during the filming of the Spanish version. (5)

 

Notes

 

(1) As noted by film historian Lisa Jarvinen, 30% of Hollywood trade was with Latin America. The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking: Out from Hollywood's Shadow, 1929-1939 (2012).

   For a recent survey of these films aimed at the Hispanic market, see Juan B. Heinink and Robert G. Dickson, “Cita en Hollywood”, in Hollywood Goes Latin. Spanish-language Cinema in Los Angeles, edited by María Elena de las Carreras and Jan-Christopher Horak (2019).

 

(2) Universal Horror (1998), directed by Kevin Brownlow. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58L_iy6UV_4

 

(3) Lupita Tovar, The Sweetheart of Mexico. A Memoir. As Told to Her Son Pancho Kohner (2011). Chapter 15, pages 80-81.

 

(4) The saga of the missing parts, the Cuban discovery and the restoration is recounted by David J. Skal in Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen (2004) and in Spanish by Reynaldo Gonzalez “Drácula resucitó en La Habana” (1991). See also Roberto Green Quintana, “Buried in the Vaults: The Restoration of Hollywood’s Spanish-language films”, in Hollywood Goes Latin. Spanish-language Cinema in Los Angeles, edited by María Elena de las Carreras and Jan-Christopher Horak (2019).

 

(5) Mike Fleming, “Chris & Paul Weitz to Direct Spanish Dracula; Love story of their Mexican silent film actress grandmother Lupita Tovar and storied Universal Exec Paul Kohner”. Deadline, February 15, 2022.

https://deadline.com/2022/02/chris-weitz-paul-weitz-the-spanish-dracula-mexican-actress-grandmother-lupita-tovar-unversal-exec-paul-kohner-1234926792/