dracula (1931)
Hollywood's first venture onto the horror stage, Dracula's 1931 black and white film is an all-time classic that still influences popular culture today. Lugosi's slow paced Hungarian accent has been immortalized.Many still imitate Bela Lugosi's portrayal of the disciplined and gentlemanly vampire. As the first Dracula film with sound, Tod Browning's adaptation emphasizes ambient noises such as doors creaking and wind blowing. The effects for audiences at the time were described as uncanny. The ambient sounds seem to come from nowhere and at any given moment. Problems with synchronization , rudimentary sound editing and the sound quality gave the film a sense that the sounds were disembodied from what they were seeing on the screen. The disembodied and unnatural sounds add to the film's creepy effects. Although Lugosi doesn't necessarily exude the glamour and sex appeal of the murderous aristocrat that we understand as Dracula, Browning's track in shots towards Dracula give audiences the sense that the vampire is pulling us in against our will.
RELATED LITERATURE:
Spadoni, Robert. Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre. London: University of California Press, 2007.
RELATED LITERATURE:
Spadoni, Robert. Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre. London: University of California Press, 2007.