To thumb my nose at modern critics:

The Tod Browning directed 1931 English language Dracula is better than the overly praised Spanish language version.
In every way save one which I will mention below.

The Spanish version is miraculously still with us and amazing to see for the differences. Yes the camerawork is more inventive and staged more impressively-but they had the benefit of a scorned producer who wanted to best the regular production and the ability to screen the rushes every day of what the English language crew had shot. What the English language version has is atmosphere and potency even though no matter what the story is based around the stage play story and not the original novel.

The benefit the Spanish version has is that it didn’t have to face the heavy censoring board and maintains scenes cut from the English language version. Outside of the wonderfully vivid Lupita Tovar and the film’s version of Renfield the rest of the cast is really no very good and it becomes a chore to sit through this version most of the time because it doesn’t have the spark of the English version. And Dracula in the Spanish version is pretty terrible as his appearance induces laughter no matter how hard I fight it.