Dracula is a classic 1931 horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Béla Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal Pictures Co. Inc. and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
On Walpurgisnacht, Renfield (Dwight Frye) goes to the Borgo Pass where he is met by Count Dracula's coach. The next day, Renfield and Dracula (Bela Lugosi) take 'the Vesta' to England. Ship arrives in Whitby harbor in a storm, captain lashed to boat, everyone dead, Renfield mad. Renfield is taken to Dr Jack Seward (Herbert Bunston)'s sanitarium near London. Newspaper clipping notes Renfield's strange desire to eat small living things.
Dracula arrives in London. He goes to a play where he is introduced to Dr Seward, daughter Mina (Helen Chandler), Lucy Weston (Frances Dade) and John Harker (David Manners). Dracula announces he has taken Carfax Abbey which adjoins the Sanitarium. Shortly thereafter, Lucy dies of blood loss. Professor Van Helsing (rrives to examine her. At the same time, Dracula visits, and Van Helsing notes no reflection in mirror. While Van Helsing, Seward and Harker discuss vampires, Dracula summons Mina outside. She is found fainted on the lawn.
When the film finally premiered on Valentine's Day 1931, newspapers reported that members of the audiences fainted in shock at the horror onscreen. This publicity, shrewdly orchestrated by the film studio, helped ensure people came to see the film, if for no other reason than curiosity. Dracula was a big gamble for a major Hollywood studio to undertake. In spite of the literary credentials of the source material, it was uncertain if an American audience was prepared for a serious full length supernatural chiller. Though America had been exposed to other chillers before, such as The Cat and the Canary, this was a horror story with no comic relief or trick ending that downplayed the supernatural.
Nervous executives breathed a collective sigh of relief when Dracula proved to be a huge box office sensation, and later that year Universal would release Frankenstein to even greater acclaim. Universal in particular would become the forefront of early horror cinema, with a canon of films including, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man.
A number of scenes were later cut from the film, the most famous being 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 appeared as a narrator to re-assure the audience that what theyd seen wouldnt give them nightmares. Van Sloan would then calmly inform those with a nervous disposition that... "There really are such things as Vampires!"[3]
Today, Dracula is widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre. In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi's portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula. Lugosi had a powerful presence and authority onscreen. The slow, deliberate pacing of his performance ("I bid you welcome!" and "I never drink wine!") gave his Dracula an air of a walking, talking corpse, which terrified 1930s movie audiences. He was as compelling with no dialogue, and the many closeups of Lugosi's face in icy silence jumped off the screen. With his mesmerizing performance, Dracula became Bela Lugosi's signature role, his Dracula a cultural icon, and himself a legend in the classic Universal Horror film series.
However, Dracula would ultimately become a rôle which would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. Despite his earlier stage successes in a variety of rôles, from the moment Lugosi donned the cape on screen, it would forever see him typecast as the Count.
Tod Browning would go on to direct Bela Lugosi once more in another vampire thriller, Mark of the Vampire, a 1935 remake of his lost film London after Midnight.
DRACULA - 1931 - TRAILER
Classic horror is best.