Dracula (1931) a good film, BUT NOT a great one...

Respectfully, I think the fact that you made it is irrelevant, RiP, IMDb. 

The majority of people do not believe that voting for the highest rating in a poll means that that makes it their “most-favorite (most-loved) film” of all time. Ask anyone here, and I assure you that no one is going to think it means that. It simply means that, of the scale you provided (a 0-11 scale, not a 1-10 scale), the 11-voters think it deserves that rating. Nothing more. Moses did not descend from Mount Sinai with a commandment that “ONLY ONE film CAN BE an 11,” y’know (unless it were in those 5 extra that he dropped on the way down ). 

If that was your intention, you should clarify in every one of your polls that “I believe that ONLY ONE film CAN BE an 11, so ONLY vote for an 11 IF you mean that the film you’re VOTING for is YOUR FAVORITE BEST FILM OF ALL TIME FOREVER.”

I somehow missed the INSTRUCTIONS about what the NUMBERS ELeven to 00 (ELEVEN TO DOUBLE ZERO ) actually are supposed to MEAN !


Maybe they were included in the several other versions of this same "POLL" posted all over IMDb-V2 ?
BUT I DIDN'T SEE THEM there either.

Vampires on the brain?

Thanks for the Other Side Of The Story. I don’t know what to think about the missing or not missing Tod Browning. “Dracula” had always looked to me as one of those (of which there are many) movies that had a troubled production but turned out to be more (or in this case much more) than it had any reason to be. That’s why Manner’s story seemed to fit. Now, I dunno.

As for the cardboard, I presume that “past times” means the 19th century setting of the story. If that is so (I never heard of it), I just wonder if any Hollywood film of the early 1930s would be that committed to such detailed historical authenticity. If “diminished lighting” is indeed in the script, I wonder if the word “cardboard” is used. I even looked it up to see if cardboard actually existed in the late 19th century. Seems it did although for a long time “cardboard” was a rather vague label that could refer to various products.

Anyway, it is Lugosi’s Dracula on which every other vampire movie since has depended. That's enough for me.

You're not the boss of me. I can have as many 11s as I want.

Yeah, I don’t really have a dog in the pro-/anti-Browning fight, mikef6 ; I just always found Dracula’s production intriguing. Actually, I’d always assumed that Dracula had more to do with Karl Freund than with Tod Browning (especially as it and The Mummy are so much alike), so I’m not sure who’s accurate, Manners or the crew members. Maybe Browning just didn’t spend much time with the actors?

Also, now I’m a bit confused about what Gary meant by “past times” as well. In spite of the 19th-century look to the whole thing, the ’31 Dracula takes place in some weird kind of mixed-up time period—1930s cars and 1890s clothing! And it definitely looks like the cardboard’s a mistake. So I really don’t know either… Hm.

Link to that thread (which makes for some fun reading), by the way: www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=814&p=823037&hilit=cardboard#p823037

It all ends with the question not really being resolved—now where have I heard that phrase before? Hm. Wait, look, is that a Sleuth singer?

I never really got a sense of the time period being represented as anything other than contemporaneous with the time of production. Sure, Van Helsing and Seward may dress a little stodgily but not anachronistically. You've got those limos outside the concert hall, being paged to the phone inside it, Jonathan and Renfield seem pretty up-to-date, and there's some rather slinky satin fashion:

There isn't anything that suggests the 19th century other than the Vesta, and such schooners were still very much in use into the 20th; it was a charter, after all, and the ol' Count - given the fixer-upper state of his residence and the Whitby abbey he leases - doesn't appear to be exactly rolling in it (unless it's his native soil). 

It's more the Frankenstein films that exist in that indeterminate never-never land: in the entire Universal canon, only one telephone appears (...Meets the Wolf Man), unless you count Pretorius's "electrical machine," and one auto (Son Of...). Then it's back to horse-and-buggy. 

One thing for which we can credit the Mummy movies: all but ...Hand were pretty specific about the whens and wheres. 

I remember following that "cardboard" thread some years back. About the only thing of which it convinced me was that it couldn't have been accidental: too many different shots and angles, and it wasn't even the same piece of cardboard in every one.

 
     

Yes, the Franky pics are more in that never-never-land (Vasaria? Or “Transylvania Station”? ), Doghouse6 , but I suppose it’s more Dracula’s mood than anything else that seems to give it this half-1890s, half-contemporaneous feel. I mean, the flower girl scene seems positively Dickensian. But I suppose it’s more mood than anything else.