Dracula - The Legacy Collection (Dracula / Dracula (1931 Spanish Version) / Dracula's Daughter / Son of Dracula / House of Dracula) DVD
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Rating:  -
"Creatures of the night" and "Children of the night" are featured on this nice package. Formidable movies, considering that most of them were filmed in the early thirties. I used to watch the classic Dracula movies in my younger years, I really loved them, and still do. This is a great collection, well worth having. Also recommended are Frankenstein the Legacy Collection and The Mummy Collection.
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I spent decades trying to find the Spanish Language version of the original Dracula Movie (starring Bela Lugosi) that was filmed at the same time as the original, even using the same sets. This DVD Collection was all that I could have hoped for.
Excellent Transaction, Excellent Service, and of course Excellent Product.
Rating: -
Lot of reviews here and everyone knows the story, so I'll comment on some things from a different angle. You have the option of watching Dracula with an optional soundtrack by Philip Glass performed by the Kronos Quartet. Having studied Philip Glass while majoring in music composition at a music conservatory, I am familiar with many of his works, and was curious to see if his style of composition would work with this movie. I'm sad to say it does not. Glass is known for repetition and variation of motifs. I first thought it might just work with the film because his music, with all of it's repetitive eighth notes might coincide with the hypnotic state cast by Dracula over his subjects. But there are only certain scenes when Dracula actually performs his hypnotic casting, but Glass' driving eighth notes repeating over and over with very little relief just amounts to driving you mad -- I could only take about 20 minutes of it and had to switch back the original sound track. It's not just Glass' style, it just doesn't sound like it was composed to "add" emotional depth to the scenes; instead, it is in the foreground and is almost constantly playing and comes across like a contemporary musical composition being showcased with the movie Dracula projected in the background. To make matters worse, it is very loud compared to the actor's speech, so there are some quite scenes where you actually miss what the character is saying because the string quartet drowns them out.
Here's the sad part: for this optional soundtrack, Universal cleaned up the noisy background hiss of the original and processed it in Digital Dolby, but did nothing to clean up the original soundtrack -- how lame is that? Well, I'm willing to listen to the noisy background of the original just to be rid of a very unsuccessful "soundtrack" that draws attention to itself and actually detracts from the movie instead of enhancing it. Isn't it a mystery how Hollywood operates? You just gotta wonder sometimes. I understand there are costs and profits at stake for everything you do, but wouldn't you think for a classic like this they would run the film through one of the many computerized digital correction facilities that are available these days to correct, cleanup, and enhance both the visual and audio aspects of these old, historic films? Instead, they blow the money to have someone compose a contemporary soundtrack!?! Crazy, isn't it?
This review is already too long, but let me just mention that I had been curious for awhile to see the Spanish production that I've heard so much about as being superior. Personally, I did not think it was superior. The actor that plays Dracula has big ears and always seems to have some sort of goofy smile - I found nothing sinister, suave, or hypnotic about him. Nor did I find the lighting or camera angles more dramatic. The actor who plays Renfield, while found in the cargo section of the boat is just laughing like he heard a really funny joke, nothing scary there or implication that he's insane, whereas, Dwight Frye's acting in the same scene (in the American production), when the police open the hatch and look down into the cargo area, there's Renfield staring up at them with eyes wide open in a trance and he's letting out a frighting half groan, half laugh as only someone who is deeply demented and raving mad would do. What I did find interesting about the Spanish version was that it contained more dialogue and explained some scenes in greater detail. I think part of the mystique that makes the American version so eerie is it's silence and minimal dialogue. Remember, it's director, Tod Browning had just come from directing silent pictures where visually the set and actors had to convey what would be normally be revealed through dialogue. And it's this "non-wordiness" that is very effective in adding mystique and suspense that culminates in a film that penetrates a deeper and lingering horror that is so much more successful than the graphic slice-n-dice, blood, gut and gore movies that comprise the horror movies of today.
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it is great that universal finally released these classic monster movies a few years ago.this is a great series.all the classics are here.whether you like bela lugosi, lon chaney jr or john carradine as dracula,this package won,t disappoint!!!the documentaries are interesting also!!overall i really like these universal monster compilations.so if you are a fan grab a bite of these!!
Rating:  -
I love the classic Universal black and white monster movies---not sure why they manufactured and sold flawed discs. My discs (unlike many reviews) were not scratched, but pristine. The first disc (containing Dracula) worked fine. But the second disc is flawed. "House of Dracula" starts to skip and lock up just after the 58 minute mark, when Talbot comes in to confront the doctor. Same thing occurred on two different DVD players of mine which are cleaned regularly. So don't get too upset as it seems many people have received flawed copies of these "Legacy" collections. A recall is in order. I hope Universal releases fully functional Blue-Ray discs of these.
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