Dracula

I watched a DVD of Dracula with the Philip Glass music last night. I was interested in the music, and the movie was fun. I don't know when I last watched this - probably after school sometime in the 60s - or if I ever watched the whole thing straight through, but it was spooky and dripping with shadows, weird glows, and brooding sounds. The music is best during the long pauses while Bela Lugosi glowers at one person or another, and the slow scenes of hands groping out of coffin lids and so forth - the score oscillates in place while we wait to see what's going to happen next. There are a lot of slow scenes but the string quartet eddies and that's where the fun is anyway, watching the count slowly close in on another neck. Everything is in shadow, we see very little of what happens, and each victim basically ends up being swallowed by darkness. Dracula strangles Renfield, piqued at having been trailed to his lair, but otherwise doesn't even kick when he's staked, off camera. It's all very ritualistic. I don't know why Van Helsing stays in the cellar at the end. The last lines are kind of oddball - "Q: Aren't you coming with us? A: Not yet - presently". I suppose Van Helsing is just the type to seize on an opportunity to hang out in a vampire's lair a bit longer.