page_title: Dracula (1931 English-language film)
section_title: Sequels and influence
hierarchical_section_title: Dracula (1931 English-language film) / Legacy / Sequels and influence
caption_attribution_description: English: A screenshot from the trailer for Dracula Italiano: Uno screenshot del film Dracula
context_page_description: Dracula is a 1931 American pre-code supernatural horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort. It is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. The film stars Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée.
  Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures, Dracula is the first sound film adaptation of the Stoker novel. Several actors were considered to portray the title character, but Lugosi, who had previously played the role on Broadway, eventually got the part. The film was partially shot on sets at Universal Studios Lot in California, which were reused at night for the filming of Drácula, a concurrently produced Spanish-language version of the story also by Universal.
  Dracula was a commercial and critical success upon release, and led to several sequels and spin-offs.
context_section_description: After the commercial and critical success of Dracula, Universal released Frankenstein later that same year. Universal in particular would become the forefront of early horror cinema, with a canon of films including The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and The Wolf Man (1941).
  In 1936, five years after release, Universal released Dracula's Daughter, a direct sequel that starts immediately after the end of the first film. A second sequel, Son of Dracula starring Lon Chaney Jr., followed in 1943. The Count returned to life in three more Universal films of the mid-1940s: 1944's House of Frankenstein, 1945's House of Dracula and 1948's comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Universal would only cast Lugosi as Dracula in one more film, the aforesaid Abbott and Costello vehicle, giving the role to John Carradine for the mid-1940s "monster rally" films, although Carradine admittedly more closely resembled Stoker's physical description from the book. Many of the familiar images of Dracula are from stills of the older Lugosi made during the filming of the 1948 comedy, so there remain two confusingly distinct incarnations of Lugosi as Dracula, seventeen years apart in age. As Lugosi played a vampire in three other movies during his career, this contributed to the public misconception that he portrayed Dracula on film many times.
  Since its release, Dracula has become widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre. In 2000, it was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was also ranked 79th on Bravo's countdown of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
  To many film lovers and critics alike, Lugosi's portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula. Lugosi had a powerful presence and authority on-screen. The slow, deliberate pacing of his performance ("I bid you… welcome!" and "I never drink… wine!") gave his Dracula the air of a walking, talking corpse, which terrified the movie audiences at the time, compelling with no dialogue, and the many close-ups of Lugosi's face in icy silence jumped off the screen. With this mesmerizing performance, Dracula became Bela Lugosi's signature role, his Dracula a cultural icon, and he himself a legend in the classic Universal Horror film series.
  However, Dracula would ultimately become a role which would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. Despite his earlier stage successes in a variety of roles, from the moment Lugosi donned the cape on screen, it would forever see him typecast as the Count.
  Browning would go on to direct Lugosi once more in another vampire thriller, Mark of the Vampire, a 1935 remake of his lost silent film London After Midnight (1927).
  Also, the film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
  2001: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #85
  2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
  Count Dracula – #33 Villain
  2005: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  Count Dracula: "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make." – #83
caption: Bela Lugosi as Dracula
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