Dracula

Dracula 
Released Date: February 14, 1931
Director: Tod Browning
Actors: Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan, Herbert Bunston, Frances Dade, Joan Standing, and Charles K. Gerrard

      You may have heard the rumor that Bela Lugosi could not speak English very well, and had to learn his lines Phonetically. That was not the case, he actually knew English well enough by this point in his life that he learned all of his lines by himself. You can see Bela Lugosi play Dracula again in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Nowadays, you would never put a light in someones eyes, but in Dracula the cinematographer, Karl Freund, put two pencil spot lights into Bela Lugosi's eyes to make his hypnotic stare more intense. Very well played however, his eyes were intense. Another cool effect: the castle's spider webs were made from shooting rubber cement from a gun, a rotary gun. Also, take a hard listen, the peasants you will see in the inn are praying in Hungarian, they are saying The Lord's Prayer.

     We follow Dracula (Bela Lugosi), of course, as he turns a man that is visiting the Vampire's castle, into a psychotic. Poor Renfield (Dwight Frye), he is scared to no end. Renfield is drug into a sea voyage and from there, a intituition where he can be looked after from now on. The sea voyage takes us to London, where Dracula starts sucking the blood from a young woman by the name of Lucy Weston (Frances Dade), she then becomes a Vampire. Afterwards, he turns his attention to Lucy Weston's friend, Mina Seward (Helen Chandler). Mina has friends on her side, they are doctors trying to take the attention away from Mina so she too, will not turn.