Bela Lugosi played Dracula on the stage and screen, Bram Stoker wrote the novel, but precious few have heard of Tod Browning, who directed the iconic 1931 film that permanently established in our culture what a vampire should look like — Bela Lugosi.

The iconic Dracula as portrayed in that film has outlasted imitators as diverse as Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, Christopher Lee and even Gary Oldman, or the star of the already-forgotten “Dracula something” film from last year. “Tod Browning’s Dracula,”  376 pages Tomahawk Press, 2014, by Gary D. Rhodes, of Queens University, in Belfast, Ireland, is a worthy attempt to resurrect the prestige of the original “Dracula” director, who created a dark, Gothic masterpiece of a film within the cultural guidelines of a movie that would likely be rated “G” if released today. 

This is a great book, and one that you probably can’t find at your local brick-and mortar-bookstore. Readers can buy the book from the publisher here or via Amazon here. Rhodes, who has researched Lugosi’s life extensively — he’s written a biography and several other books on his career — has a genre devotee’s love for detail and film minutiae. He spends the early portion of the book tracing the cultural evolution of vampires through the preceding centuries. It’s quite interesting to discover that a generation prior to Dracula’s release, the term vampire had been hijacked from its morbid intent in Bram Stoker’s novel and instead was the preferred term of screen and stage “vamps.” Anyone remember Theda Bara? She was perhaps the first screen “vampire,” Rhodes notes.

Nevertheless, Universal Studios, for whom Tod Browning toiled, was making a film about an undead man who lived in the dungeons of old castles, with undead wives, rats, and insects, and periodically went out at night to suck the blood out of human beings. Stoker’s novel, a huge seller 110-plus years ago, is an intense tale with gore and horrifying passages. Today, we know very well about the power moralists had to censor films 85 years ago. Capturing the novel’s terror on film was the dilemma. The book details how carefully Browning devised a tale that could both shock and horrify audiences yet get past the moralistic censors. Universal, a little uneasy of pitching a film with a star who sucked blood, attempted to sell “Dracula” as a “strange romance;” a nod to the Thed Bar “vamp” years?

It didn’t work. Audiences both flocked to and were horrified by “Dracula,” and it made Universal, a studio reeling from the Great Depression, a lot of much-needed profits. The “strange romance” definition moved into the memory hole and “Dracula” assumed its still current standing as a horror classic.

Reading “Tod Browning’s Dracula” will remind film fans of this film’s staying power. There’s really no gore, Bela Lugosi does not show fangs, and there’s a “happy ending.” Less-sensitive viewers will look at today’s “torture porn” and mock “Dracula,” and its cousins “Frankenstein,” “The Mummy,” and “The Wolf Man” as “tame.” But they are really not. As Rhodes shows in his book, these films were carefully prepared by directors such as Browning to have the proper atmosphere and menace to pierce into our deepest fears. And he succeeds at that. No one takes films such as “Friday the 13th” or “Saw” seriously after a year or two, but 84 years later, we’re still appraising the classic chiller “Dracula.”

Rhodes also draws comparisons between Browning’s “Dracula,” and the once-lost Spanish-language version of the film, a much longer film with a distinct cast. It’s fun to watch, and pops up occasionally on Turner Classic Movies, but it’s not nearly as good as Browning’s version. In fact, a portion of Rhodes’ book is dedicated to defending Tod Browning’s film from some genre revisionists who have criticized the film the past couple of generations. “Tod Browning’s Dracula” is exhaustively researched, analyzed and defended to the point that the author easily tosses aside the criticism Browning and Lugosi have received from a few.

“Dracula” was the first great sound horror film. Its power has not waned and its influence on our culture extends far beyond its film genre. It was appropriately selected for preservation by the Library of Congress. Gary D. Rhodes book is an excellent opportunity to learn more about — or get to know — this historic work of art. To read another, more genre-intensive review of this book, go here.

dgibson@standard.net