Thanks to our kindred spirit, It Came From Hollywood, for sending over these stills.
In the early days of talkies, Studios would shoot foreign-language versions of their films for the international market. These included French, Spanish, German, and Swedish. For the Latin American markets, the Spanish version of Drácula was directed by George Melford. He didn’t speak the language so communications went through co-director Enrique Tovar Avalos and interpreters. The lead blood sucker was Carlos Villarías as Count Dracula and his victims were Lupita Tovar as Eva (aka Mina), Barry Norton as Juan Harker, and Pablo Álvarez Rubio as Renfield. On a side note, in 1937, Melford directed Jungle Menace, Columbia’s first serial, alongside Harold Frazer. (I presume he didn’t need an interpreter for that movie.)
The film opened in Havana in March 1931 and in Mexico City in April, weeks after the English version’s February release on Valentine’s Day. It was well received in its target markets but was essentially forgotten in the United States for decades. Universal didn’t preserve their print carefully and the movie was thought to be lost for decades.
In the 1970s a print was discovered in a New Jersey warehouse, but it was missing footage regarding Renfield’s seduction by Dracula’s brides and the Demeter voyage. A complete print was finally located at Cinemateca de Cuba in Havana in the late 1980s, and after considerable diplomatic effort during the Cold War, a copy made its way back to the Library of Congress. Universal finished the full restoration and released the movie on VHS in 1992, and the film had its American premiere at Universal’s 80th-anniversary celebration. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2015. Lupita Tovar, who lived to be 106 (she died in 2016), spent her later years as an ambassador for the film at screenings and conventions. The stills used in this article are from the 1992 relaunch.
The Spanish Dracula was filmed simultaneously with Tod Browning’s starring Bela Lugosi, using the same sets, costumes, and screenplay, but with a completely different cast and crew working at night, from around 8 PM to dawn, after Browning’s production wrapped for the day. This gave them access to the same Castle Dracula sets, the Carfax Abbey interiors, theater set, and the shipboard sequences without Universal having to rebuild them. Lupita Tovar gave many interviews over the years describing how exhausting the schedule was, and how they would sometimes pass the English-language cast in the hallways or commissary.
Universal had originally aimed to adapt Bram Stoker’s novel more directly and on a grander scale. Early treatments by Louis Bromfield and then Fritz Stephani envisioned sweeping sequences in Transylvania, the Demeter voyage shown in full, and elaborate setpieces. As the Depression deepened through 1930, Carl Laemmle Jr. and the studio insisted on a drastically cheaper approach, which meant falling back on the Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston stage play that had been a hit in London and on Broadway. The stage play was structurally tight and largely confined to a few interior sets, which is why so much of the finished film feels stage bound. The thrilling in-Transylvania meeting between Renfield and the count, within Dracula’s creepy broken-battlements of a castle, is over in twenty minutes, then a quick voyage and the rest takes place in England, unfolding in drawing rooms, bedrooms, the theater encounter, and Carfax Abbey. Garrett Fort did the final screenplay, working from Balderston’s stage adaptation rather than the novel.
While Lugosi’s voice and measured performance flies well over Villarías’ melodramatic and somewhat antic fluttering as a lively undead count after 500 years, the actual camerawork and pacing is considered by some better than Browning’s direction and Karl Freund’s lens. Melford and cinematographer George Robinson used more fluid camera movement, deeper focus, and more inventive framing. The camera glides through Dracula’s castle and swoops down stairways in ways the English version doesn’t. However, the Spanish crew was up a leg or two because Universal wasn’t as overbearing on them as it was with the English version. While Universal demanded cuts, script changes, and enforcement to the Production Code on Browning’s efforts, they left Melford mostly alone, so he kept dialog and connecting scenes, making the Spanish Dracula a longer movie with a bit more violent and erotic overtoning. They also watched the English dailies each evening before shooting so they could move faster and build on what had already been done during the day.
The Spanish version runs about 104 minutes versus 75 for the Browning film, which gives the story more room, develops supporting characters more fully, and includes scenes and plot beats omitted from the English cuts. Lupita Tovar’s Eva is considerably more sensual and overtly affected by Dracula’s influence. Her nightgowns are more revealing and her performance, after being bitten, is more unhinged than Helen Chandler’s restrained Mina.
The major weakness generally acknowledged is Carlos Villarías. He simply is not Bela Lugosi. Villarías was reportedly instructed to watch Lugosi’s performance and imitate his mannerisms, and the result is lacking in poise, command, and intensity. Lugosi’s hypnotic stillness and that unmistakable voice are what made the English version iconic (along with Dwight Frye’s stunning Renfield, I might add). The Spanish Dracula doesn’t match that presence of menace, even though it may be more fluid in its camerawork.
AI research was used for this article. Sources included the Library of Congress Blogs (Cary O’Dell), NPR, Wikipedia, Christina Wehner, and Antonia Carlotta.