Los Vampires Dramatizes Universal's Forgotten Spanish Dracula
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- Craig Mitchell directs "Los Vampires," his first directorial feature in decades, a fiction spun from the real 1931 Universal dual-language production of "Dracula."
- Henry Ian Cusick and Thomas Kretschmann star as fictionalized stand-ins for Carlos Villarias and Bela Lugosi — immigrant actors touchy about sharing a starring role that could be a huge break for both.
- Universal shot "Dracula" twice on the same sets in late 1930 — Tod Browning's English version with Lugosi and George Melford's Spanish version with Villarias — to address the challenge of exporting talkies to foreign markets.
- Melford's Spanish-language "Dracula" was forgotten for decades until a 1990s restoration led some viewers to pronounce it the better of the two, with marked differences in dialogue, narrative sequence, and costuming from Browning's version.
- The film is "intriguing if unevenly realized," with the actors' ego war eventually eclipsed by fears of a genuine murderer — and possibly an actual vampire — on the loose.
- Carlos Villarias outlived Lugosi by two decades yet never achieved comparable renown, and the Spanish version's disappointing box office helped curtail future dual-language Hollywood productions as dubbing technology evolved.
Why it matters: Genre fans gain a dramatized look at a largely forgotten chapter of early-talkie Hollywood: Universal's 1931 Spanish 'Dracula,' which some viewers have judged more cinematically fluid than Browning's, despite the film's greater obscurity. Only one lead became a legend from that gambit — and it wasn't Carlos Villarias, who outlived Lugosi by two decades.
