‘Renfield’ – Nicolas Cage Previews His Dracula Voice for Upcoming Universal Monsters Movie [Video]
‘Orphan: First Kill’ – Join Isabelle Fuhrman for a Live Tweet This Saturday Night
Korean Ghost Story ‘Arang’ Puts a Supernatural Twist on the Police Procedural [Horrors Elsewhere]
Sadako Returns with Creepy Viral Marketing Video for New Movie ‘Sadako DX’
‘Sick’ – Intense First Clip from New Slasher Co-Written by Kevin Williamson Begins a Home Invasion
Prime Video Has Cancelled “Paper Girls” After Just One Season
“The Show Must Go On” – Peacock’s Murder-Mystery Series Uses ‘Phantom of the Opera’ in a Unique Way
“The Peripheral” Teaser Trailer – “Westworld” Creators Bring Chloë Grace Moretz into a New World
Exclusive ‘The Midnight Club’ Images Weep at Terminal Diagnosis
“Fallen” – Alexander Siddig Leading the Cast of Brazilian Supernatural Series
“American Horror Stories” Review – Season 2 Finale “Lake” Sinks to a Watery Grave
‘Barbarian’ Review – Violent, Ruthless Crowd-Pleaser Makes for One of the Year’s Biggest Surprises
“American Horror Stories” Review – “Necro” Is a Meditation on Death and Trauma That Flatlines
“Tales of the Walking Dead” Review – Alpha Origin Episode Shows Full Potential of New Spinoff Series
‘Who Invited Them’ Review – Witty Horror Comedy Introduces the Neighbors from Hell
Korean Ghost Story ‘Arang’ Puts a Supernatural Twist on the Police Procedural [Horrors Elsewhere]
“I’m Strong Enough to Not Do This”: In Defense of Polarizing Slasher ‘They/Them’
‘Lights Out’ Channels ‘The Stepfather’ in First Book from the ‘Terror Academy’ Series [Buried in a Book]
The Japanese Evil Dead – ‘Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell’ Is a Must-Watch for Sam Raimi Fans
‘Condemned 2: Bloodshot’ – How the Sequel Both Misunderstands and Improves Upon the First Game
“The Peripheral” Teaser Trailer – “Westworld” Creators Bring Chloë Grace Moretz into a New World
Sadako Returns with Creepy Viral Marketing Video for New Movie ‘Sadako DX’
‘Sick’ – Intense First Clip from New Slasher Co-Written by Kevin Williamson Begins a Home Invasion
‘Space Monster Wangmagwi’ – Lost Korean Kaiju Film from 1967 Finally Roars to Life! [Exclusive Trailer]
‘Black Adam’ Trailer 2 – Dwayne Johnson Is 100% Death Proof in Badass New Look at DC Movie
New Extended Gameplay Trailer Released for ‘Evil West’ Sinks Its Teeth Into the Action [Video]
Battle the Zombie Apocalypse With the Fulci-Inspired ‘Night At the Gates of Hell’ Next Week
Gizmo From ‘Gremlins’ Arrives Today in ‘MultiVersus’ as Part of 1.02 Patch
Focus Entertainment to Publish Mundfish’s ‘Atomic Heart’, Release Date Now Set for “This Winter”
‘Condemned 2: Bloodshot’ – How the Sequel Both Misunderstands and Improves Upon the First Game
“ Listen to them. The Children of the night. What music they make.”
It’s a line embedded into pop culture and horror history. In no small part due to the lasting overall impact of Tod Browning and Bela Lugosi’s iconic adaptation of Dracula, which recently celebrated its 90th anniversary. While most of us know this particular version like the back of our hand, did you know there’s another version that also celebrates its 90th birthday this month? By the 1920s, American film studios began to see the profitability of selling their films to international markets. While silent films could be translated to foreign markets with relative ease, the rise of the sound film era by the late 1920s proved to be far more difficult. This was long before the days of overdubbing and major audio modifications that we have in filmmaking today. As a solution, studios came up with what at the time seemed like an ingenious solution: to film an entirely separate version specifically made to be sold to international markets. The most famous of these films you ask? Dracula, directed by George Melford for Spanish-speaking markets. Universal, in a cost saving initiative, used the same sets that Browning used on his own film. Tod Browning would direct his scenes in the daytime and in the evening Melford and company would show up and shoot their version. Essentially Universal was making the exact same movie twice for multiple markets, which in retrospect seems like a nightmare. But without the common availability and invention of dubbing, there was no other way around it.
For Melford’s Dracula, the role of the infamous vampire was given to Carlos Villarias. A native actor from Spain, Villarias brings a different energy to the role. Whereas Lugosi’s portrayal brings a sense of nuance to the blood-drinking villain, Villarias’ Count is at times a bit more unhinged. A choice that works in its own right for this unexpected adaptation. The role of Mina was reworked into Eva for the Spanish version and portrayed by the wonderful Lupita Tovar, who is Mexican Cinema royalty. Not only was she in this version of Dracula , but she was also in the film Santa, which was the first fully sound Mexican film production.
Melford was allowed dallies to the Browning production and during the day spent time studying them. Keen on making his film stand out, the Spanish-language version contains more elaborate cinematography and effects. There are less tracking shots, but overall the film is framed like a stage play (ironic, since its source material is the 1924 Broadway play rather than the novel). It’s almost like witnessing the film for the first time if you’re a fan of the more popular and accessible Browning adaptation.
Dracula premiered on March 11, 1931 in Havana, Cuba followed by a premiere in New York City on April 24 later that year. Reception at the time was insubstantial and the film was quickly forgotten to time. Or so we thought. Like the infamous Count himself, the Spanish-language version of Dracula resurfaced in 1977 where it was partially screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This inspired Universal to eventually release the completed film to home media in the early 90s where it found a new appreciation for its differences to its English counterpart. Since then it has been included as a special feature to Lugosi’s film and is widely accessible today.
Time for me to get a little personal for a moment. In the late 90s the Spanish-language version of Dracula was a way for me to bond with my late grandfather. A native from Mexico, his first language was Spanish and he struggled to understand and follow English-speaking media in his older age. Not being a fluent Spanish speaker myself, I would try to seek out subtitled movies for us to watch. One of these being Dracula . We would watch it together and he would love it; the experience was instrumental in my blossoming love for the horror genre as a whole as a kid. He’s gone now, but Dracula will always remind me of the time and experience I got to spend with him, loving horror movies together.
Though the Spanish-language version of Dracula hasn’t reached the pop culture heights of the Browning/Lugosi adaptation, it stands in its own right as a unique adaptation of the same source material. It also represents a paradigm shift that Hollywood and filmmaking as a whole were facing at the time. It exists in this strange place where we were moving from the past and into what the future of the format would be. With this version being widely accessible as a special feature of the English version, now is a good time as any to celebrate this lesser known Universal Monsters classic from the golden age of monster films.
‘Renfield’ – Nicolas Cage Previews His Dracula Voice for Upcoming Universal Monsters Movie [Video]
‘The Rise of the Synths’ – Documentary Narrated by John Carpenter Now Streaming on SCREAMBOX!
‘Barbarian’ Review – Violent, Ruthless Crowd-Pleaser Makes for One of the Year’s Biggest Surprises
The success of The Ring inspired Japan’s nearest neighbors to tell their own ghost stories, and South Korea certainly didn’t waste the opportunity in the mid-2000s. During this heyday of “K-Horror,” there was a burst of spectral yarns centered around cursed objects, haunted technology, and most of all, revenge. Homemade folklore often played a role as well, and filmmaker Ahn Sang-hoon looked to a classic Korean story for inspiration when putting together his debut.
A new and disturbing case awaits Detective Min So-young ( Song Yoon-ah) . In the 2006 crime-chiller Arang, a man’s charred corpse is discovered in the remains of a house fire, but his autopsy reveals he died before the fire broke out. And the reason for his death was a heart attack caused by prussic acid. What makes an already strange death even stranger is the addition of a second victim; another man later died from the same cause. So-young and her new partner Hyun-ki ( Lee Dong-wook), a young transferee from Forensics, now have what looks to be a spree killer on their hands.
The mystery in Arang becomes more complicated and eerie after it’s revealed the first two victims not only knew each other, they, along with their friends, killed a teenage boy named Joon-ho ( Baek Min-hyun) at a rural salt storehouse ten years ago. The girlfriend of the deceased, Min-jung ( Kim Hae-in), then disappeared a year later without a trace; it’s rumored she killed herself. So-young naturally deduces the current murders have to do with the past, but with Joon-ho dead and Min-jung presumably dead as well, it’s unclear who could be carrying out the revenge now.
There is a hard line between the real and supernatural worlds in Arang . While Director Ahn is adamant about his movie being of the horror genre, and he has frequent sequences backing up his case, it’s rare to see the uncanny interact with fact. Any time the paranormal does show up, it’s contained to unimaginative scare sequences before reality sets back in. Early on, schoolgirls get a big fright when they visit the notorious salt storehouse. And most importantly, a crawly female ghost with long black hair and a rotting complexion steadily preys on her male targets. This is of course after each victim opens an email linking him to a creepy website called Min-jung’s Salt Village. Based on these scenes, the movie has a hard time setting itself apart from its contemporaries.
Weird as it may seem, Arang is more enjoyable when the ghost isn’t on screen and So-young is hunting for leads in the physical world. Detective Min’s ongoing investigation keeps the audience on their toes; she persists regardless of conflicted feelings about her own past. So-young’s intuition kicks in with little stimulus or warning, and how she uncovers certain clues is almost as unnatural as the malevolent force at hand. Despite how random So-young’s hunches come across, those arbitrary eureka moments lead to more favorable twists and turns. The movie admittedly failed to make a unique horror antagonist, yet its hero is engaging to watch.
Knowledge of Arang ’s basis, an old Korean folktale of the same name, may seem like a spoiler, but the writers were choosy with what they used, and nothing they did include gives away the movie’s ultimate ending. Ahn cleverly hid clues along the way before spelling everything out in the last act and hoodwinking even the most shrewd of mystery fans. From there the story goes from average to remarkable as So-young realizes who is tying up loose ends.
What Arang lacks in genuine frights it makes up for in ability. Ahn and everyone aboard this Korean haunter took a hoary idea and delivered something refreshing. The abundance of horror clichés ultimately conceal a better story. So long as audiences can forgive any minor trickery, they should be pleased with how everything turns out on the mystery front. Song Yoon-ah plays a compelling detective whose potential for angst, given her backstory, is never blatantly manifested, but there is a satisfaction knowing she too received some closure. Lee Dong-wook is exceptional in his debut role as a sensitive rookie, and he is easily the movie’s breakout performer.
With such a steady output of Korean horror at the time, there were bound to be movies that got lost in the shuffle. Ahn Sang-hoon’s first feature can be considered a modest hit at the box office, and it received an international release, but the movie eventually fell through the cracks like so many others. Someone might blame a reliance on prevailing tropes for Arang ’s current obscurity, although despite all appearances, this is neither a typical K-Horror nor an average crime-thriller.
Horrors Elsewhere is a recurring column that spotlights a variety of movies from all around the globe, particularly those not from the United States. Fears may not be universal, but one thing is for sure — a scream is understood, always and everywhere.
You must be logged in to post a comment.