Dracula (1931)

DRACULA  (1931)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Tod Browning
    Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Helen Chandler,
    Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan, Frances Dade
The definitive Hollywood vampire movie, with Bela Lugosi in his signature role as the elegant, accented Count. Browning had already made a silent vampire movie called "London After Midnight" with Lon Chaney, who would've played the lead in this, if he had lived. The storytelling is visual as much as it is verbal, an effective technical bridge between silents and sound. The music is Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake". The pace is hypnotically slow. Lugosi's stately performance has been imitated often but never outdone, and Dwight Frye stakes his claim to horror-movie immortality as the mad, spider-eating Renfield. The studio was Universal. It had to be.