Rare vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm.)
Provenance: The late horror film historian, Carlos Clarens

DRACULA (1931)
When it appeared in 1931, Dracula sent viewers fleeing down the aisles in terror. Women fainted. So realistic were its creepy effects for the time that Dracula was banned in several American cities. And so convincing was Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi in his lead role that he was forever identified as the bloodthirsty count, to his considerable dismay. Dracula thus launched both Lugosi's baroque career and the horror-movie cycle of the 1930s.

Tod Browning's now-classic film remains a benchmark of the horror genre, peerless in many respects--no one, for instance, has yet bested Dwight Frye (in one of the cinema's truly mad performances as Renfield) in depicting mayhem and madness. The film owes it's dark eerie atmosphere to the great German cinematographer Karl Freund.

Certainly the role left a lasting impression on the increasingly addled and drug-addicted Lugosi, who was never quite able to distance himself from the part that made him a star. He was buried, at his request, in his black vampire cape.