With the invention of sound on film, so-called "talking pictures" made Hollywood the top producer of movies in the world. In addition, this invention opened a boom for the industry itself as theatres now had to be wired for sound and filmmakers had to employ a crew to record, edit, and synchronize sound. However, the "talkies" had one major problem: music. It seems that audiences mystified by Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer" and the other breakthrough moments of sound on film now expected to hear music when it was associated with what was on screen.
In 1931's "Dracula," there are major portions of an almost riveting silence. Entranced by the new wave of German Expressionism in film, director Tod Browning always makes sure to shoot Lugosi at a low angle cloaked in darkness to create the point-of-view that Dracula is looking at someone in the audience as his next victim. There is no underscore here, no cues, nothing to enhance the dramatic effect of what is on screen. As a result, while its quietude does take a few passes to adapt to, it gives the mind so much to work on. For example, when we see Dracula meeting with Renfield at Castle Dracula in the beginning (again, taking liberties with Bram Stoker for budget reasons. Some of the elaborate sets would go on to be used for the next decade,) we sit in silence with them. The pair are working their way through normal graciousness and a passive detachment that business representatives might use to not tip the other off. This unsettling strip of dialogue only grows more tense because it is going according to plan, that is until Renfield pricks his finger with a paper clip.
The only scene in "Dracula" with music (outside of the opening credits) is appropriately when the Count meets Dr. Seward, his daughter Mina, Lucy Western, and John Harker at a symphonic performance in a theatre. This use of licensed music must have had an impact. Three years later in the first-ever pairing of Universal horror stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in a loose interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," the wall-to-wall placement of musical underscore risks overdramatizing a pre-code horror film that is decades ahead of its time.
As one of the first movies with a continuous score (of classical pieces, many well-known,) Acts one and two run the risk of almost distracting from the action. While it is a key characteristic of Lugosi's character to suffer from Ailurophobia, the scene where he first encounters a cat is almost ruined despite having great lines like "a masterpiece of construction built upon the ruins of a masterpiece of murder." Nonetheless, the film manages to dangle style over substance with stunning set design, and Lugosi and Karloff glowering at each other as if they had been dreaming of this moment for fifteen years.
However, as you wade through the Liszt, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky, the third act makes it all worthwhile descending into true madness as Karloff "plays" Bach's "Toccata in D Minor BWV565" before preaching to a Black Mass with a pulpit made of a sideways cross. You have to endure a lot about star-crossed honeymooners before you realize they are "guests" in the estate of a Satan-worshipping architect. (As Peter Allison, David Manners - also in "Dracula" - says of Karloff's character, "Well, I suppose we've got to have architects too. If I wanted to build a nice, cozy, unpretentious insane asylum, he'd be the man for it." Director Edgar G. Ulmer, fresh from exploitation films, displays a unique visual style (the lush opening) and may be a factor in the development of "camp" cinema. "The Black Cat" was the highest-grossing film of 1934 and was one of the last films before the imposition of the Hays Code.
