A foreign count makes plans to move to London. In the course of his journey, his ship runs into a storm. When the ship enters port, no one is left alive, apart from the Count’s assistant, Renfield, who appears to be crazy. The Count, who was in a coffin aboard the ship, moves into a nearby abbey and joins London’s high society. He befriends Dr. Seward, Renfield’s doctor at the sanitorium, and becomes acquainted with Seward’s daughter Mina, whom he bites and beings to control. Meanwhile, a specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, figures out that a vampire is to blame, and later that the Count is that vampire. Van Helsing, with the help of Mina’s fiance, Johnathan Harker, tracks the Count to his lair and kills him.
What can I say about Dracula that hasn’t been said before? Really the first great monster movie in what became the Universal Monster series, Count Dracula is played to perfection by Bela Lugosi, as are most of the other parts. This is the movie which truly began our obsession with vampires, and it’s easy to see why.
