David Manners – Doyle's Space

Dracula (1931)

For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you’re a wise man, Van Helsing. – Count Dracula

I watched the 1931 Universal Pictures movie “Dracula” on Svengoolie. We see possums, armadillos, bats, and spiders while they talk about eating roaches, flys and we hear the wailing of wolves during the film. We also learn just about everything about vampires, from their need for their sacred earth, cannot be in sunlight, Wolf’s bane will repel them, they have no reflection, bullets won’t hurt them, a crucifix will temporarily force them back, they can transform into bats or wolves, they feed on blood, they can temporarily hypnotize with their eyes, and they can be killed with a wooden stake through the heart.

The Black Cat (1934)

I watched the 1934 the Universal Pictures psychological horror movie “The Black Cat” on Svengoolie. It stars two of the greatest in horror, Béla Lugosi as Dr. Vitus Werdegast and Boris Karloff as Hjalmar Poelzig. This was the first of this pairing with seven more movies to come. Black Cat was the number one movie for Universal in 1934. They hyped the move as an Edgar Allan Poe story but actually had little, more like nothing, to do with the famous writer. The name on the posters and other promotion certainly helped the movies appeal.