Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

Figure 28. Son of Frankenstein
This is what makes this film less appealing from a dramatic standpoint, but
particularly interesting from an architectural set-dressing perspective: filling the film with
huge contrasts in light and using reference symbols (for example, the huge slatted shadows
on the walls are marks left by the twisted staircase as a particularisation of the perverted
minds of the sinister characters in the film; or an enormous fireplace mounted with boars’
heads that stretch out into the room just above the people seated at the table which evokes
the villagers storming the castle, holding their torches of fire in their hands).
Dracula, in turn, is also visually representative of the Gothic “extravaganza” with
its stagy décors and symbolic mise-en-scène. When we enter the world of Dracula, the
camera seems to assume the point of view of the Lord of Vampires, and thus these shifting
perspectives appropriate Dracula’s view as an occult seer. The opening scenes with a horse
carriage being drawn through the Carpathian mountains in Transylvania sets the whole
atmosphere of the film, and as soon as the “visitors” enter the castle, the camera lowers its
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