As writer/director Gary Rhodes explains in his interview segment, one of the major challenges in producing a documentary on such an iconic figure as Bela Lugosi is to use material that's fresh for jaded fans, and find subjects who've never spoken on record. Citing “The Forgotten King” and A&E's own “Biography” installment as previous attempts to capture the man behind the famous cape, Rhodes also found that more well-known footage also came with a hefty price tag.

The sometimes prohibitive cost of film extracts actually functions in the film's favour, as the doc contains a genuinely massive collection of rare and long-unavailable clips. Extra stills and brittle film footage from Lugosi's popular silent days in Hungary and Germany reveal the paucity of his early work (with a few extracts archived in the DVD's Special Features section).

Lugosi's career is divided into distinctive, albeit fast-paced sections, and Rhodes examines the high moments, including his stage and film portrayals of “Dracula;” and the extreme lows, which affected his film output and choice of diverse roles. The doc also explores the reasons for Lugosi's slide into largely forgettable B-pictures, and his years with cult director Ed Wood are given a slightly different view (since other docs have already explored Wood's skewed oeuvre).

According to Rhodes, after signing a broadcast deal with a cable network, the firm itself was purchased, leaving “Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula” temporarily without an audience, until a successful 1997 run at various festivals. The DVD uses the final edit submitted to the network, and many extended interview and montage sequences trimmed either for length or focus; each is separately indexed, with intro captions.

A lot of the deleted scenes contain interviews not in the final version, and longer film clips that would have broadened the film's scope. A major loss is “Scared To Death,” Lugosi's only performance in a 2-color process, and some delightful anecdotes that, while reiterating Lugosi's image as a cultured, caring, remote, but generous man, still help separate the typecast actor from his Dracula persona.

That typecasting is particularly evident in a contrived short from 1932, “Intimate Interviews,” where Lugosi plays up his “haunted” persona with dramatic pauses. Quite tongue-in-cheek, the pretty interviewer ultimately finds his behaviour “frighteningly weird” and runs away, leaving the actor chortling with gleeful satisfaction.

Co-producer Richard Sheffield, who as a youth, befriended Lugosi during the actor's final 3 years, provides some moving material of the actor's funeral, in a lengthy set of interview excerpts.

Writer/director Rhodes has also archived Q&A selections with Lugosi's last wife, Hope Lugosi, shortly before her death from cancer. A terse, rather intimidating woman, the extracts reveal not only how tough a subject can be for the interviewer, but the challenge a subject can have in remembering sentiments, conversations, and events that have been locked up for over 50 years. “The less said, the better,” concludes Hope Lugosi, and her one and only interview with the media remains an oddly bitter series of impressions.

Unique to this DVD is a bonus Audio CD, which contains 5 fascinating radio broadcasts featuring Bela Lugosi.

This independent release is available from major online retailers, and via the film's official website (see below) which also contains some bonus audio not in the 2-disc set.

© 2002 Mark R. Hasan