Meet Dracula (Famous Movie Monsters)

There is certainly a good news/bad news aspect to the opening chapter of "Meet Dracula," a volume in the Famous Movie Monsters series. The good news is that Charles Hofer provides a fairly detailed summary of the classic 1931 Universal film version of "Dracula" directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi. The summary runs ten pages, although about a quarter of that space is taken up by photographs of Lugosi as Dracula with Dwight Frye's Renfield and Helen Chandler's Mina Seward (but none of Professor Van Helsing). Hofer covers all of the key details and some of the key lines from the film (e.g., "I am...Dracula. I bid you...welcome"). The bad news is that you have to wonder why young readers would see the movie after they read the entire story. But let us proceed as if the glass is half full, and this is a recap for those who have already seen the film or exactly what is needed by kids who cannot see anything filmed in black & white. The second chapter of the book looks at the film history of Dracula, going back to 1922's "Nosferatu" and then covering the background on the Universal film. There is a side bar devoted to Lugosi, but Hofer covers Browning's work as a director (including a photo of him with the cast of "Freaks," for which Hofer earns bonus points). We even learn some of the ways in which "Dracula" was actually a groundbreaking film as well as the critical response. The third chapter covers the myth of the vampire, beginning specifically with the Slavic and Romanian vampires before moving to the vampires of Victorian England in which Bram Stoker wrote his novel, "Dracula." There are no specifics on the novel (talking about the narrative style or the key differences between teh novel and film would be appropriate), but there is a sidebar about Vlad Tepes, the "real" Dracula. The last chapter titles itself as a look at the legend of Count Dracula, but this is really a look at the cinematic history of the character since 1931. The initial focus is on the other Universal films in which Dracula popped up (e.g., "House of Frankenstein" and "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein"), as well as the Hammer films with Christopher Lee as the count. Hofer touches on the parodies (e.g., "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula," and "Blacula") along with more tradition films (e.g., the 1979 "Dracula" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula"). In the back of the book you will find a Filmography listing over two-dozen Dracula films from "Nosferatu" to "Van Helsing." A Glossary explains key terms from "allegory" to "vengeful," and then there are some web sites and books provided as sources of more information, and Hofer specifically recommends five of the aforementioned films for viewing. Yes, I would like to see Hofer at least spend as much time on the original novel as he does on the legend of Vlad the Impaler, but this book is clearly focusing on the cinematic Dracula rather than the literary. On that score Hofer cove