Dracula - The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula's Daughter /...

Dracula - The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula's Daughter / Son of ... | Bela Lugosi, Sheila Manners | It All Started Here ( 1931 )

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Dracula - The Lega...

	Dracula - The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula's Daughter / Son of ... Bela Lugosi, Sheila Manners Universal Studios, 2004 average customer review:based on 73 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

the begining of the universal horror cycle and bela lugosi's best role

this collection of the dracula movies from universal is a great transfer of these great old movies. the pictures are clear and the sound is crisp and clear.
while i love the dracula movies i think that just as universal's frankenstein movies were better than the dracula movies, hammer's dracula's were better than their frankenstein's.
the original dracula with bela lugosi is a little dated now and doesn't hold up as well as when it first came out. it looks like just what it was a stage play brought to the screen. everything happens off screen and the spend a lot of time talking about the action. on the plus side lugosi(though it is a one note proformance) is very creepy as the count and his entrance is the stuff of movie legend. there are twoversions here of lugosi's here the origanl and the one with the new score written for it. i like the new score,but i still prefer the origanl without it. part of the creepyness of the movie is the long passages of no music.
the spanish version is a real treat. filmed at the same time,but shot at night on the same stages as the lugosi one this is really the better movie and it is great to see it and compair the two.
dracula's daughter is a very good film that flirts with the pre-code of hollywood by have dracula's girl find women her favorite victims. some strong stuff for the day.
son of dracula puts lon chaney jr. in the cape and helped make him the only person to play every monster in the bunch. this is a fondly loved movie of mine and it looks good. the victim in this one wants to be bitten so she can live forever,a nice change of pace.
house is the last of the monster cycle and one that has all the monsters in it. it's great fun.
so sit back and grab your cross and watch

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It All Started Here ( 1931 )

This collection is where you want to go for all the classic vampyre films. Needles to say Lugosi rules in this department. He was only paid $750.00 for this role while David Manners commanded a hefty $3K. But the issue at hand is the opportunity to own the best made vampyre movie of the day ( and today ) with its lesser spinoffs suitable for family viewing.

I know some critics say the spanish version is better made than the the U.S. version. Point to be noted is that each scene in the spanish version is about an extra minute longer in the final analysis. In other words, "dragged out ".

Buy the pack, enjoy it, and you be the judge. There have been some quality complaints about disc one or two, depending. That was not a problem in MY purchase. If you don't feel you should spend a few dollars a film on some great classic horror films then you need to be in another genre. As I said, buy it, enjoy ( the whole family ) it.

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not as good as the frankenstein collection ,but still very fine horror collection

bela lugosi is still the very style of dracula even after almost one hundred years. this collection sets one myth to rest he only played dracula twice on film. his dracula is very cunning and more senusal than evil. of all the films in this collection the best is the spanish version of the film, made at night useing the 1931 bela set after bela and others were done for the day. it is the same movie but it has a spark that none of the others has.

You got some good, you got yer duds

I purchased a while ago some of the classic Black and White Universal Studio's "horror" films from the 1930s and 40s which Universal released under their special collection called "The Legacy Collection".

These collections were themed movies, about 4 to 6 films in each collection, that were focused around the one "big hit" and it's "Sons of" features.

"Dracula" features the original classic staring Bela Lugosi in the role he never got out of. This is a classic. No horror collection is complete without this original film. It is the story of blood lust, love and again, the daemons we harbor within ourselves.

The collection also includes Dracula in the Spanish Version. Both films were made at the same time, and it is so different. The same sets were used, the same script, but using different actors. There is an introduction. But it is in Spanish. Interesting Dracula, btw. My Spanish is good enough that I made it through most of the film. It's an interesting version.

In the "Sons of" films, we have "Dracula's Daughter" and "Son of Dracula". OK... bland, sorry very bland. Not much more I can say. Gloria Holden looks the part well, but the plot plods. Lon Chaney Jr. is the "Son of" and we have another "Southern Version" that limps.

The last one is amusing, if nothing else. We do have all the "monsters" here in "House of Dracula" featuring Lon Chaney Jr as the Wolf Man and John Carradine as the Count, as well as Frankenstein's monster and the usual mob chase scene. I found it funny, but I don't think it was meant to be. And they sliced some footage of Karloff into the film. I caught that one!

Quality wise, these films are cleaned up, the sound is very good and overall the appearance of these films is remarkable. There are also extras, like the making of the film, theatrical trailers, stills, and film history. This is a two disk set with a double sided DVD.

The original is well worth it, and if you are Spanish speaking, this collection is worth it for a good Spanish version of Dracula. But the "Son's of" are not really all that great, and are good only from the standpoint of it "completes" the collection.

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They Could Have Done More

"Dracula - The Legacy Collection" is a 2 DVD set which includes five Dracula films from Universal's earlier years. The first DVD is a single sided disc which contains the original 1931 film staring Bela Legosi as well as several features, a theatrical trailer for the original movie, photos, and an audio commentary with the film historian David J. Skal. The second DVD is a two-sided disc which contains the other four films and trailers for two of the films. I found the second DVD to be problematic in some DVD players, especially on the Spanish version and "Son of Dracula".

"Dracula" staring Bela Legosi is the key film in this collection. Legosi's Dracula became the model which most of the film adaptations since have used. Being made during a period where sound in films was new, results in a very quiet movie, which in some places adds to its eeriness. The direction, by Tod Browning, is fairly bland, and there are some truly odd moments, such as the shot of armadillos in Dracula's castle in Transylvania. Nevertheless, this is a key film from an historical standpoint, and it should not be missed, and its premier on February 12th, 1931 in New York City marked the arrival of the Universal Horror movies.

"Dracula" (a.k.a. Spanish Dracula in the U.S.) was filmed at the same time as the Bela Legosi movie. Sound was new in movies, and the studio thought that people would respond better to a movie shot in their own language as opposed to the use of dubbing. This movie used the same sets as the other movie, filming at night where the other cast filmed during the day. They also used some long shots cut from the English version, because their budget was significantly smaller. This movie was made for about $66,000 where the English version cost $355,000. The direction by George Melford is superior to that of Tod Browning, and in many ways this is the superior version of the movie. This movie premiered on March 20th, 1931 in Madrid.

"Dracula's Daughter" (a.k.a. Daughter of Dracula) picks up at almost the exact moment where the first movie ends. The police arrest Van Helsing (played in both movies by Edward Van Sloan) for killing Dracula. Countess Marya Zeleska (Gloria Holden), who is Dracula's Daughter, steals Dracula's body and destroys it, hoping that she will be free from the curse. When it does not work, she decides she wants Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger) to return with her to Transylvania. When he refuses, she kidnaps Janet Blake (Marguerite Churchill) and returns to Transylvania knowing that Dr. Garth will follow and try to rescue her. This film is supposedly based on a Bram Stoker short story titled "Dracula's Guest". I don't know if that is true, but the chase back to Transylvania is reminiscent of the end of the novel "Dracula". The logic of the plot of this movie was rather poor, as the viewer can only wonder as to why the Countess didn't simply hypnotize Dr. Garth the way she did so many others, and then compel him to return with her. This movie was released on May 11th, 1936.

"Son of Dracula" features Lon Chaney Jr., as Count Alucard (Dracula backwards) who comes to the United States feeling that it has new blood which will help energize him. The plot has a few twists in it, and the viewer learns through events about things which must have taken place before the events in the movie. The traditional roles are filled here with Katherine `Kay' Caldwell (Louise Allbritton) being Dracula's interest, Frank Stanley (Robert Paige) as Kay's boyfriend, Professor Harry Brewster (Frank Craven) the traditional man of science, and Professor Laszlo (J. Edward Bromberg) being the Van Helsing type. This film premiered on November 5th, 1943.

"House of Dracula" (a.k.a. The Wolf Man's Cure) is the most bizarre film of this collection. It opens with Dracula (John Carradine), apparently no longer destroyed, visiting Dr. Edelman (Onslow Stevens), apparently interested in a cure for his curse. Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), who is the Wolf Man, shows up the next night, also in search of a cure. Events result in the discovery of Frankenstein's Monster (Glenn Strange), and later in a Jekyll and Hyde situation. Throw in the beautiful hunchback Nina (Jane Adams), and Miliza Morrelle (Martha O'Driscoll) who is the love interest for both Dracula and the Wolf Man, and don't forget some angry villagers, and you have a very strange mix. This was the sequel to "House of Frankenstein" (a.k.a. Dracula's Doom) which came out the year before. For some reason, this movie was nominated for a retro Hugo for Dramatic Presentation for the year 1945. This is a fun movie to watch, but hardly a great film. It premiered on December 7th, 1945.

This is a good collection of movies for those who like the early Universal films, but I do wonder about the overall quality of the DVDs, because of the problems I had with the dual-sided second DVD. I thought it was also rather sparse in terms of documentation for the films themselves. There is no booklet, just a single sheet which has a very short description of the movies and is really more of an advertisement for the other sets in the collection and the Van Helsing movie. The movies themselves vary quite a bit in terms of picture quality and sound. I would say it is a good collection, but they could have done much more with it.

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