Censorship After The 1934 Production Code
The film was originally released with a running time of 85 minutes. When the film was reissued in 1936, the Production Code was being strictly enforced. At least two scenes are known to have been censored and cut from the film. The most famous was an epilogue which played only during the film's initial run. In a sequence similar to the prologue from Frankenstein, and again featuring Universal stalwart Edward Van Sloan, he reappeared to reassure the audience that what they’d seen wouldn’t give them nightmares. Van Sloan would then calmly inform those with a nervous disposition that... "There really are such things as Vampires!" In a 1936 reissue, this epilogue was removed out of fear of offending religious groups by encouraging a belief in the supernatural. Also, Dracula's off-camera "death groans" at the end of the film were shortened as were Renfield's screams as he is killed; these pieces of soundtrack were later restored by MCA-Universal for its laser disc and subsequent DVD releases (with the exception of the 2004 multi-film "Legacy Collection" edition). However, Van Sloan's epilogue is still missing and presumed lost.
Read more about this topic: Dracula (1931 film)
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