Dracula

Dracula is a 1931 United States 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.

Bram Stoker's novel had already been filmed without permission as Nosferatu in 1922 by expressionist German film maker F. W. Murnau. Enthusiastic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. also saw the box office potential in Stoker's gothic chiller. Unlike the German counterpart, this would be a fully authorized version, since Murnau's film had fallen under the wrath of Stoker's widow, who had tried to destroy all prints of Nosferatu. He intended it would be a spectacle to rival the lavish Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera.

The use of special effects is limited to fog, lighting, and large flexible bats (although the poor condition of the print makes it hard to see the wires). Dracula's transition from bat to person is done off-camera, though this subtracts surprisingly little from the dramatic effect. The film also employs extended periods of silence and character close-ups for dramatic effect. The actors' speaking parts are usually brief explanatory and narrative segments (i.e., story-telling versus chatting), much like the dialogue paragraphs flashed on the screen during silent films. In fact, one criticism is that the actors' performance style belongs to the silent era.

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.

To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi's portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula. Lugosi had a powerful presence and authority on-screen. The slow, deliberate pacing of his performance ("I bid you… welcome!" and "I never drink… wine!") gave his Dracula the air of a walking, talking corpse, which terrified 1930s movie audiences. He was just as compelling with no dialogue, and the many close-ups of Lugosi's face in icy silence jumped off the screen. With this mesmerizing performance, Dracula became Bela Lugosi's signature role, his Dracula a cultural icon, and he himself a legend in the classic Universal Horror film series.

However, Dracula would ultimately become a role which would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. Despite his earlier stage successes in a variety of roles, 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.

The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel has remained popular over the years, and many films have used the Count as a villain, while others have named him in their titles, such as Dracula's Daughter, The Brides of Dracula, and Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. The number of films that include a reference to Dracula may reach as high as 649, according to the Internet Movie Database. Dracula has enjoyed enormous popularity since its publication and has spawned an extraordinary vampire subculture in the second half of the 20th century. More than 200 films have been made that feature Count Dracula, a number second only to Sherlock Holmes, (and several hundred more that have vampires as their subject). More than 1,000 novels have been written about Dracula or vampires along with a plethora of cartoons, comics, and television programs. At the center of this subculture is the place myth of Transylvania, which has become almost synonymous with vampires.