October, at its start, always builds to Dracula (1931) and Halloween (1978), it seems. Dracula's Daughter seems to be the opener more often than not, and eventually Dracula. After watching two of Tod Browning's other films today, Freaks & The Devil-Doll (both for MGM), it often leads eventually to one of my all-time favorite horror films. The kids watched with me, this year, and as it often does, leaves me once again quite satisfied. Now I can't watch the film without the Glass and Kronos score applied to it. It gives Van Helsing's resistance of Dracula, their battle at a short distance, a bit of pop. Renfield's bug-eyed interludes when he escapes time and again from his asylum cell. The approach and entrance to Castle Dracula and the introduction to the Count. Individual sequences that never fail to excite me and leave me once again realizing why I love it as much as I do. The decadent ruins of Castle Dracula and Carfax Abbey, that unbearable fog and how it seems to follow the vampire. His predatory influence over female victims. Van Helsing trying to convince Dr. Seward, Johnathan Harker, and others about Miss Mina's endangerment and the true existence of vampires. I won't balk about Manners who had the good fortune of winding up in this, The Mummy, and The Black Cat...talk about being in the right place during the right time...although actors and actresses weren't so keen on being *typecast into the horror genre*. But Lugosi's presence in the role, so iconic, is the real reason I can't wait to watch it again every October. He commanded that role, and much like poor Anthony Perkins with Norman Bates, it followed him (just like the London and Transylvanian fog) throughout his career.
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