American Cinematographer - February 1988 - 41

portrayed the coachman, Lugosi rewrote
and

even

directed

some

some scenes
retakes. Muse's scenes are

them; a different actor appears in all but the
close-ups and dialogue scenes. The first player was
among

hired because he could drive

team, but it

was

found

that his

dialogue delivery was unconvincing. Muse
had difficulty trying to drive the coach down a wind¬
ing mountain road at night but his voice was excellent,
so the two
performances were intercut.
Beautiful, blonde Madge Bellamy, a star of
silent pictures who had been out of pictures for two
years while studying stage technique, took the title role
with the intention of re-establishing herself in cinema.
A unique beauty with eyes that could
express things
beyond the reach of dialogue, she was excellent in
pantomime. Her voice, however, did not register well
in some scenes, and it is probable that the picture did
her career more harm than good despite its success.
John Harron, a popular leading man of the

Above:

Madge
Bellamy is sent

silents

(and brother of the D.W. Griffith star, Robert
Harron), also seemed unable to adapt to the talkies
successfully. Robert Frazer, however, was ideal for the
Byronic role of an unprincipled roue who eventually is
perceived as a sympathetic character. Veteran actor Joe
Cawthorn, utilizing a comic German accent that he had
developed for a vaudeville act years before, provided
with skill both the pragmatic occultist necessary to
such a show and some equally imperative comedy

while Frazer is

Left: Zombies, from
left, are John T.
Printz, Claude

Morgan, Frederick
Peters, John

Fergusson, uniden¬
tified, and George
Burr McAnnan.

The most

daverous zombies is Chauvin, as

out of him. Von

Gelder, the swine, swollen with riches;
my spell even to the last... Victor
Trisher, Minister of the Interior; Scarpia, the brigand
chief; Marquis, captain of the gendarmerie; and this this is Chauvin, the high executioner, who almost
he

fought against

executed me!" He has

a
simple sales pitch for his
"They work faithfully; they're not afraid of
long hours."
Much of the credit for the expensive look of
the picture is attributable to Ralph Berger, who de¬
signed the settings, and to one of the great matte and
glass painters, Conrad Tritschler. Berger was an expert
at adapting existing sets so that
they seem to have been
built entirely for the project at hand, an art he utilized
often in the making of serials. The gigantic main hall of
Murder's castle was created by rearranging the Castle
Dracula hall, which was further expanded and dis¬
guised for the long shots by glass paintings. The expan¬
sive veranda of the castle contains a wide stairway from
the Dracula set and pillars and properties from The
Hunchback of Notre Dame and other Universal epics of
the past. Tritschler added more castle details, moun¬

creatures:

tains and

February 1988

sky, and Anderson matted in the

sea.

The

help¬

less to interfere.

relief. Muse, Brandon Hurst and Dan Crimmins did
well.

impressive of the convincingly ca¬
played by six-footsix, 250 pound Frederick Peters, who had been in films
since 1916 specializing at portraying Goliath and other
giant warriors in Biblical epics. Murder's description of
his six bodyguards is worth noting:
"In life they were my enemies. Latour, the
witch doctor, once my master. The secrets I tortured

errand of murder

wine cellar from Frankenstein and

an old
dungeon set,
being flooded by Universal for their Tom
picture, My Pal, the King, were utilized - torrent

which
Mix

and all

were

for the

cavernous

corridors where the charac¬

ters must walk

along narrow pathways to avoid being
swept away. The hanging balcony on which Madge
Bellamy is seen is from The Hunchback, some of the
rooms of the Beaumont mansion were made
up of
walls from the Seward home in Dracula. The sugar mill

a
dizzying mass of girders, catwalks and huge
windlasses. Scenes in which Neil and Bruner look up at
the mountaintop castle from the beach are composed

actual bit of coastline and

glass painting. Some
from

marvelous props, such as the monumental chairs
The Cat and the Canary, are artfully deployed.
Martinelli made the most of the

settings,
of strong depth being framed through
trees and such architectural details as
quatrefoils on
the Castle Dracula staircase. He placed great
hovering
many scenes

shadows in many scenes.
There are a surprising

number of optical

effects, including the main titles in which the credits
appear over the opening scene of the roadway funer¬
al
an unusual touch at that time. A moment later, as
-

the

carriage comes toward camera, Lugosi's eyes are
superimposed over the scene, at first filling the screen,
then growing smaller until they vanish into Lugosi's
silhouetted figure. An unusual optical is a diagonally
split screen showing the mesmerized girl in the castle
American

Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - February 1988

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