DRACULA 1931 Review

1931's DRACULA, directed by Todd Browning, stars Bela Lugosi in the title role, co-starring Dwight Frye as Renfield and Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing. Bram Stoker's novel had been adapted into a broadway play in 1927, with the Hungarian-born Lugosi creating a sensation as the charismatic Count who's got a way with the ladies and a taste for fresh blood. A vampire with class. When Universal Studios bought the film rights to the play, there was only one choice for the role of Dracula: Bela. He owned the part, and he owns this movie. Check out his delivery on such classic lines as "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."

This is the role that made Bela Lugoisi a hosuehold name.

Born Bela Ferenk Deszo Blasko in Lugos, Hungary in 1882, he began his acting career in 1901, and rose to fame playing the title role the 1927 stage version of DRACULA, and in the 1931 film adaptation. He quickly followed up with roles in WHITE ZOMBIE, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, THE BLACK CAT, and THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, as Igor in 1939's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and 1942's GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN, followed by his portrayal of the Frankenstein monster in FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN in 1943. For some reason, Bela only played Count Dracula in one other movie, a brief bit in 1948's ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.

By the mid-1940s, he developed a chemical dependency problem, and soon found it difficult to get work with the major studios, instead working in B-Pictures like ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY, SPOOKS RUN WILD, and BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. When Lugosi passed away in 1956, he was buried in full costume as Dracula. Since he died a penniless, broken-down junkie, his funeral expenses were quietly picked up by none other than Frank Sinatra, a swell guy and a good fella, if you know what I mean.

Although Bela Lugosi defined the role of Dracula, that didn't stop other actors from donning the cape and fangs and having a go at it. Max Schreck had played the character in FW Murnau's silent classic NOSFERATU in 1922, with Klaus Kinski starring in the 1979 remake. John Carradine played the role seven times, in such SURREAL CINEMA faves as HOUSE OF DRACULA, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA, while his son David played Drac in 1991's SUNDOWN: THE VAMPIRE IN RETREAT. Lon Chaney Jr. played Count Alucard, the SON OF DRACULA in 1941, as did musician Harry Nilsson in the 1974 film of the same name. In the early '70s, Morgan Freeman played the Count on THE ELECTRIC COMPANY, around the same time William Marshall was starring in BLAUCLA and SCREAM BRACULA SCREAM. Jack Palance, Frank Langella, and Gary Oldman have all done the part, as have Louis Jordan, Gabriel Dell and Peter Fonda, while George Hamilton in LOVE AT FIRST BITE and Leslie Nielsen in DRACULA, DEAD AND LOVING IT played it for laughs. But the man who has been identified with the role of Dracula nearly as much as Lugosi is the great Christopher Lee, who played the Count ten times between 1959 and 1975, before hanging up his cape for good.

Playing the role of Renfield is the legendary character actor Dwight Frye, who would also co-star later the same year in the original FRANKENSTEIN, as Fritz the hunchbacked lab assistant. Unfortunately, Frye was so good in these parts that he was pretty much typecast as a lunatic, or a maniac, or if he was lucky, merely a weirdo. He got a big break in 1943 when he was cast as secretary of war Newton D. Baker in a big-budget film biography of PResident Woodrow Wilson, but suffered a massive heart attack on an LA bus several days later and died. He was immortalized in song by Alice Cooper on the LOVE IT TO DEATH album, with the epic "Ballad of Dwight Frye."

Although slow and stagy when seen through modern-day eyes, DRACULA created the icon, the archetype, and the legend.

The first great talking vampire movie.

Available on Universal's DRACULA COLLECTION.