The Gist: A Transylvanian count heads to England with his eyes on a woman who he wants to turn into his vampire bride.
Female Vampire Factor: There is 4 in the film. First Dracula has his original brides aka the 3 sisters who go to feed on Renfield.
And finally, you have Eva (aka Spanish Mina) who attempts to bite Juan once she's under Dracula's spell.
Final Opinion: Unlike movies today which are just made once and then dubbed over in multiple languages, Hollywood actually made two different versions of the original Dracula for different audiences. The Bela Lugosi film made during the day and this film made after dark with Carlos Vallarias as Dracula.
The big difference between the two films is that this version was not held down by American sensors so as seen above bites do actually happen instead of the staring contest followed by fade to the next scene that the American version was subject to doing as to not show anything too graphic. Another major difference based on the same concept being that Eva's clothes are pretty revealing for the time, especially after getting put under Dracula's spell which honestly makes this film actually fit in with what Hammer Studios and Jenn Rollins would do years later.
For more on the differences between the two films check out the retrospective I did below but this film is indeed night and day the better of the two even if Lugosi did make a much better Dracula. As many commenters of the video had mentioned if Lugosi could have been in the Spanish film, that film would have been the definitive version and the standard that all others would and should have followed.
Because it is the first film to show a vampire bite let alone a female one and does set the standard as to what a Dracula movie does become for the rest of existence, I have to give this one a Vampire Beauty Rating of 5 out of 5. It's just a shame that actress Lupita Tovar's performance as Eva isn't as famous or widely known as Bela Lugosi's Dracula in the English version as the performance is that good and she easily could have been considered one of Hollywood's first horror sex symbols, though she did correctly recognize herself as the first scream queen. If you are a horror buff, I highly suggest checking this film out. Despite it being a nearly 100 year old film by this writing it absolutely is still entertaining by today's standards.
The Gist: A Transylvanian count heads to England with his eyes on a woman who he wants to turn into his vampire bride.
Female Vampire Factor: There is 4.5 in the film. First Dracula has his original briedes aka the 3 sisters who go to feed on Renfield but he drives them away.
Then comes the .5 as you technically do see a vampire Lucy wandering the night but any mention of her being a vampire is yada yada'd off with an orderly reading about it in a newspaper.
And finally, you have Mina who attempts to bite Jonathon once she's under Dracula's spell.
Final Opinion: This is the original which is pretty much it's selling point in seeing where the Dracula and vampire story began with Bella Lagosi being the definitive count in movie history.
With that being said the film compared to future iterations (and even an ideration made at the same time in the same studio) is very tame and thanks to the Hays code which heavily censored Hollywood films in the 1930's either cuts out anything that could be considered sexual or horrific or as is seen above vampire attacks being dumbed down to just them staring at their victims with the screen fading before anything happens with scenes following telling you that's what happened.
Just for being the first to put a version of female vampirism on film I'll give it two stars automatically but in execution I can only give it one more for a total Vampire Beauty Rating of 3 stars. The Spanish version showed us that it wasn't the filmmaker giving into the sensibilities of the viewing public as to why the film is as brief and censored as it was. It was politics and religion trying to force Hollwood into putting on film what they wanted the world to believe was the sensibility of the viewing public. A lie that still affects the way we view the past today.
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