DRACULA GOES TO THE MOVIES
Season Two concludes with Dracula's journey from page and stage to the silver screen, beginning with a mysterious Hungarian film that predates Nosferatu and has been lost for more than a century.
Iris Ichishita and Dacre Stoker welcome filmmaker and film historian Dr. Gary D. Rhodes, author of Vampires in Silent Cinema and Tod Browning's Dracula, to investigate Drakula halála (Dracula's Death), a forgotten 1921 production that may hold the earliest cinematic portrayal of Bram Stoker's famous Count.
From surviving photographs and newspaper archives to the surprising involvement of future Casablanca director Michael Curtiz, Gary pieces together a film that no known audience can watch today. The conversation explores how this early Dracula differed from Stoker's original, Florence Stoker's battle against Nosferatu, and the theatrical influences that helped transform the Count into a Hollywood icon.
Along the way, they revisit Bela Lugosi's immortal performance, the competing English- and Spanish-language productions of Dracula (1931), and the question at the heart of two seasons of investigation: How much of the Dracula we recognize today belongs to Bram Stoker, and how much to the artists who reinvented him?
EXPLORE MORE
Powers of Darkness, Season One: Listen Here
Dr. Gary D. Rhodes: Vampires in Silent Cinema | Tod Browning's Dracula
Dacre Stoker: Official Website
The Bram Stoker Estate: Official Website
Or Whatever Movies: Official Website