Day 31 of Vampire Movies takes us back to the beginning. Not the very beginning, that’s Nosferatu, but this is the movie that cemented vampires as the cultural powerhouses they continue to be after a century of movies. I’m of course talking about Dracula, and the often imitated but never outclassed Bela Lugosi.
Lugosi’s performance as Dracula is so iconic that many of the stereotypes we take for granted about vampires came from him. The cape, the widow’s peak, the at times near-incomprehensible accent (Lugosi learned English later in life, and did his first Broadway performance by learning his lines phonetically) all came from him. He’s actually about as different from the Count in Bram Stoker’s book as I am from Charlize Theron. His portrayal is so iconic that most people don’t even realize that Lugosi didn’t even have fangs in the movie. That was brought into the mainstream by none other than Christopher Lee in the Hammer production The Horror of Dracula. (See Day 1 for my recap of that movie. Also, several Mexican and Turkish productions of Dracula had given him fangs before the Hammer film, but the Hammer film was the one that brought it mainstream attention in Western media. Credit where credit is due on all fronts.)
For what its worth, the movie itself, while groundbreaking at the time for its level of sensuality and themes, its a fairly stilted movie at times. The rest of the cast, with the exception of Edward van Sloane as Van Helsing, simply isn’t up to Lugosi’s level of magnetism. The comedy bits are a bit hokey as well, but its still a movie to be appreciated by fans of horror and vampires. Check this one out when you can, if only to enjoy Lugosi’s thoroughly entertaining turn as the infamous Count.