Lugosi - Dracula (1931)

Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was the film that caught my imagination as a kid, and got me into horror to start with.  Although I have a nostalgic fondness for it, and there are a few outstanding performances, the truth is, as a film, it’s not actually all that good.  Director Todd Browning was apparently asleep at the wheel through most of it.  He let Karl Freund cut loose with his camera work in the introductory scenes in Transylvania, which are the only scenes of any real cinematographic interest – once the action moves to England, Browning plants his camera in a medium shot, and barely moves it even to intercut any closeups, so it’s a lot like watching a stage play.  In fact, the Spanish language version, filmed at night on the same sets by another crew, with Carlos Villarías as Dracula, is a much better version overall (though I think Villarías and Eduardo Arozamena in the roles of the Count and the Professor do not measure up to Lugosi’s and Van Sloan’s performances).

All that said, Lugosi’s Dracula was certainly an iconic film which created a lot of what would become the standard tropes for horror movies, and kicked off Universal Pictures’ series of horror classics in the thirties.