Dracula

Bela Lugosi is as iconic as any mortal (er...) can be as the famous Count in 1931's DRACULA.  Whatever other failings I can cite in director Tod Browning's film, it will always have our star front and center, face full of menace but unfailingly suave and seductive until someone brandishes a crucifix.  Lugosi, who originated the role on Broadway, is really the perfect embodiment of the Transylvanian who sleeps by day and flies (as a bat) and prowls (sometimes as a wolf) by night.  Even if the films with NOSFERATU in their titles prove to be better, Lugosi is the baseline.

Before we meet Dracula, we see his future minion Renfield (Dwight Frye) prior to his transformation into a sniveling madman who craves the blood of insects and rats.  A poor innocent, like all of the Count's victims.   Master and servant sail to England to lease the Carfax Abbey, which adjoins a famous sanitarium run by Dr. Seward (Herbert Buston).  Renfield's massacre of the ship's crew en route ensures him a prime spot under Seward's eye.  

Meanwhile, Dracula works his evil spells on the doctor's daughter Mina (Helen Chandler) and her friend Lucy (Frances Dade) as Mina's fiance John Harker (David Manners) and Prof. Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) grow suspicious of the charming Count.  Especially when he fails to cast a reflection in a mirror.

No one can dispute the classic status of DRACULA.  "It's a Universal Picture" all right, but I just wish it wasn't so sluggishly paced.  And Browning's direction of Garrett Fort's screenplay is just so, static.  It all feels theatrical, and not in any kinetic sort of way.  The energy level is, uh, anemic.  Karl Freund's cinematography does look great and there are some wonderful sets (the staircase, for one).  Atmosphere is appropriately creepy, even when you can see those wires hoisting the bat.  The worst offense is the rushed finale, which mutes what should've been an emotionally charged reckoning for Count Dracula.  Instead, everything feels as if the filmmakers hurried to shoot something before the studio stopped signing checks.

Nonetheless, DRACULA is mandatory viewing for any cinefile.  Whether or not you'll be successful making out with a woman while you watch (see Tim Burton's ED WOOD), I cannot answer.