Classic Movies - Universal Studios Monsters: Dracula

Today, let’s talk “Universal” Monster Classics of Bela Lugosi! While Karloff was considered the leading monster of the 30s, a Hungarian-born actor named Bela Lugosi cornered the "ghoul" market as the blood-thirsty vampire in Dracula (1931). Bram Stoker’s weird tale about Count Dracula had been made into a silent film, Nosferatu, in 1922. Years later, Lugosi played the vampire Count on Broadway, and in 1931 Tod Browning directed Lugosi in the film version. Black-caped, soft-spoken, and oh-so-sinister, Count Dracula made his daytime home in a coffin, but when he eerily emerged from it, audiences knew that he was ready for action. He was never actually shown at work as the vampire, but once a victim’s head fell back, exposing a "deliciously veined" neck, one knew exactly what was going to happen.

Bela Lugosi played a similar nocturnal character in Mark of the Vampire (1935), but not as Count Dracula. Like Karloff, Lugosi was forever associated in the public mind with roles of vampires, monsters, and spooks. He even took a turn at playing the Frankenstein monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), with Lon Chaney, Jr. Ironically, Bela Lugosi turned down the original role of the monster in Frankenstein (1931) because there was no dialogue and his classic looks would be hidden under all the makeup. He just didn’t think the part would do anything for his career after his star-making performance in Dracula which was made earlier in the same year. Audiences didn’t really care for Lugosi’s Frankenstein monster portrayal, due partly to bad editing. Lugosi originally spoke lines as the monster, but his Hungarian accent made the character laughable, so the scenes with dialogue, that might have explained such things as the monster’s blindness, were cut out, leaving Lugosi to stumble and growl his way through the film. NOTE: We never understood why the writer of the film didn’t have Lugosi speak as Ygor (whom Lugosi played previously) when portraying the monster. After all, in the prequel, Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Ygor’s brain was transplanted into the monster’s head. The monster spoke with Ygor’s voice at the end of that film and went blind due to incompatible blood types. The monster was blind in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, so why couldn’t he continue to speak as Ygor? It makes sense to us.

Bela Lugosi made many movies throughout the 1940s. Most were horror films or comedic spoofs of horror films such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) in which Lugosi played the part of Count Dracula for laughs. That comedy was considered Lugosi’s last “A” film. Lugosi’s career and health declined in the 1950s. One of his last film appearances came posthumously in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (released in 1959), possibly the worst movie ever made and now considered a “camp classic”. (It is not a Universal Picture.) Bela Lugosi died of a heart attack in 1956 at the age of 73. He was buried in the black cape he wore in a stage production of “Dracula”, but it was the 1931 screen version of Dracula that was the ultimate highlight of his “frightfully” legendary career as a Universal Studios Classic Monster.

**Trivia Question for Today: What was Bela Lugosi’s pivotal role in The Wolfman (1941)? The answer will appear in our next post. Check our blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for more of Let’s Talk Classic Movies.

Trivia Answer for Previous Post: Dwight Frye played the part of Fritz, the hunchback in Frankenstein. He was in many of the horror classics and always added a comedic touch to most of his roles. He played Renfield (the fly and spider-eating slave of the vampire) in Dracula and Karl (one of the grave-robbing assistants) in Bride of Frankenstein. He was one of the hardest-working actors in Hollywood and on stage, a trait that probably contributed to his early death in 1943 at age 44. His nickname was “The Man with the Thousand-Watt Stare”.