A Scarier, Sexier Drácula

Latino USA

Futuro Media and PRX

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bella Lugosi's leading role in the creepy 1931 film Dracula made him a horror icon. But there's another, even better version of Dracula that was shot in Spanish using different actors on the same sets. We try to figure out why the Spanish movie ended up so much scarier— and sexier— than the original.

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This episode originally aired in 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You know this voice.
0:08.4	I am Dracula.
0:11.1	But maybe not this one.
0:13.1	I'm Dracula.
0:14.2	I'm Dracula. From Futuro Media and PRX, it's Latino USA.
0:29.5	I'm Maria Innojosa.
0:31.5	Today, the story of a scarier, sexier Dracula.
0:47.4	The Dracula story continues to fascinate audiences around the world.
0:55.2	In fact, most recently, Hollywood took a stab at it, no pun intended, with the film Nosferatu.
1:01.3	The movie about the early days of Dracula received four Oscar nominations this year.
1:09.7	So today, it seems fitting to uncover a scarier but sexier Spanish language version of Dracula.
1:14.1	Nowadays, we're used to movies and TV shows being dubbed into other languages. You can watch something in Spanish, French, Arabic, but way back when,
1:21.4	that's not the way it used to be. Back in the 1920s, there was no sound in film. All movies were
1:27.4	silent, so studios didn't have to worry about what language was spoken when they were filming because dubbing wasn't part of the formula.
1:36.3	But then, in 1927, talking pictures or talkies hit Hollywood.
1:42.2	And soon they became the norm. The transition sent studio executives into
1:47.3	panic because moviegoers would now expect to hear the actor's voices. Movies filmed in just
1:55.8	English meant the studios were going to lose about half of their revenues. So they came up with a plan
2:03.6	B. And it's something that today would sound just totally crazy. That's the voice of Vanessa
2:16.2	Erasso, the former head film nerd at Remescla, a website
2:21.2	about Latin culture, music, and movies. Vanessa has the rest of today's story, which we first
2:27.0	ran in 2017. It's a story that I've been looking into with my colleague from Remeskla, Yara Simone, and she's here today to help me tell you about it. So it's a story that I've been looking into with my colleague from Rameskla, Yara Simone,
	...

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