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Dracula (1931) Movie Review

So last night I saw the movie, Dracula staring Bela Lugosi. It was not as good as I thought it would be.
Ok to bring it into comparison do you remember when the lightning thief movie came out because of the Percy Jackson books? And do you remember how it barely followed the book, or at the very least was just a bad adaptation. Well as someone who is currently reading Dracula the book, I can say that this movie butchers Bram Stockers vision of Dracula. They cut out hundreds of pages worth of terrific material, and just throw it away. I understand that an adaptation will change some things, but this goes overboard, by changing relationships, deleting central characters, changing a characters entire subplot, or just deleting it. There are certain scenes from the book I could see them cutting, or even a few characters But to delete important secondary characters? NO. I will not have it, I will not accept it.
The acting was done okay I guess, but nothing truly outstanding. Bela Lugosi does Dracula meh at best. The character Johnathan is completely changed, it's highly insulting to the book to change the character as much as the film did. And what they did to Van Helsing is inexcusable! They morphed him into a cold stoic figure, which is basically the opposite of what he is in the book. And the relationship of Lucy and Mina is laughable, (SPOILER ALERT) when Lucy dies in the book it's a BIG deal, and the friendship between Lucy and Mina is strong, but in the movie when Lucy dies it's given about 30 seconds then they move on like her character never existed! Renfield, is preformed okay and sometimes entertaining by the expressions he gives but beyond that at the beginning of the film they mash his story together with Johnathan's which makes Johnathan a very hollow character. Then there's Dr. Sweard, for some reason was made Mina's dad who's older rather than in the book were he is a younger man whom is a suitor for Lucy, and they made him and Van Helsing colleagues, granted they were in the book but Dr. Sweard was a pupil of Van Helsing's and they have a teacher-student-oldfriend relationship.
The lighting was done nicely though. And the music was alright but was barely there when the film should have been playing some music. Also the effects were alright given the time period.
One thing that kinda gets me is the ending of the film... it just kinda... ends. The ending comes out of nowhere and the credits start rolling.
This movie is ok to watch on Halloween since it's a classic, but that doesn't mean that it should be taken as a serious piece of film art. Watch this only for mindless entertainment.


final score:2/5

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