Tod Browning

I forgot what he did.

Alex Browning, named after Tod Browning, Dracula.

Oh.

Larry Monroe, Muh- Murnau.

Um, but I mean, fair enough.

That's also the case in Todd Browning's Dracula, isn't it? Where it starts off, we think that it's in the period setting, but then we cut to England and, you know, there are cars and telephones and everything else, electric lights.

So, you know, Franco wasn't unique in that.

And obviously he was a big fan of the classic universal horror films as well.

Whether Selznick and MGM ever planned to make their own Dracula movie is rather unclear.

He may have considered giving the project to Dracula director Todd Browning, who had left Universal and returned to MGM.

On the other hand, he may have just been indulging in a small degree of profiteering, buying the story himself with the intention of then selling it to Universal for a nice profit.

In any case, it is the latter that he actually did, selling the film rights to the story to the rival studio in July 1934 for the sum of $5,000, which would be roughly about $130,000 today.

In fact, Selznick would be asked for another extension up to the start of January 1936, and then another up to the end of that month.

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that eventually Universal decided to abandon Sheriff's story ideas altogether and move in an entirely different direction.

And so they entrusted the story to a fourth writer, and possibly one that they should have approached in the first place, Garrett Fort, who had, along with Todd Browning, written the shooting script for Dracula.

It is his treatment that would eventually be made into the final movie, having met the many demands of the Hayes office.

tour.

This success would lead him to landing the titular part in Todd Browning's motion picture, the 1931 Dracula.

He was so convincing as the nighttime bloodsucker that nurses and doctors were present in theaters to help captivated theatergoers that were subject to fainting caused by the fear of the mystifying vampire.

Many of Bela's later films would place him in various occupations, such as a butler, a mad scientist, a carnival barker, a caretaker, or in the case of The Devil Bat, a doctor.

And for episode 100 of Unfilmable, we're talking about Freaks.

We're talking about Freaks, a movie directed by Todd Browning, written by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon, and originally premiered in 1932.

Happy episode 100, Gary.

Yeah, 100 episodes.

Huh.

That rules.

Todd Browning and Todd Robbins were friends, not just for Todd reasons.

And they talked to MGM.

And that's true of, you know, across a few directors.

For me, one of the standout ones, and, and 'cause I know we didn't cover this really in, or at least I don't believe so, in the Universal stuff, but Tod Browning's Freaks.

Mm-hmm.

That, I mean, he came off of Dracula.

He wrote, like, all the schlocky, like '40s Universal monster movies.

Not the, like, Todd Browning, James Whale Dracula-

Yeah

... and Frankenstein that we love and that we've covered in the past, but the slightly, like, chintzier, shock- schlockier ones.

We potentially have the sacrificing of great art.

Todd Browning's Freaks from 1932 was radically cut down to make it more palatable, as was 1997's Event Horizon and even 1931's Frankenstein.

Most or all of these versions forever lost to time.

From a studio perspective and a filmmaker's perspective, I've also seen it with adaptations where it almost seems like they're trying to tame the material.