Dracula

Dracula (1931) is a Tod Browning horror film you can watch online on iFILM. Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi plays the Transylvanian count, and his accent, his unblinking stare and those deliberate hand movements set the template for the screen vampire for decades.

A young clerk named Renfield rides into the Carpathians to lease the count an old abbey near London. Villagers cross themselves at the mere mention of the castle's owner. Renfield ignores them and comes back to England as Dracula's slave, a giggling lunatic who eats flies. The count, meanwhile, begins hunting London society, and only Professor Van Helsing, played by Edward Van Sloan, grasps what is killing people in the night.

The Universal picture opened the studio's whole run of classic monsters and welded Lugosi to the part for good. It is shot quietly, almost without music, on long pauses and shadows, so the fear comes from silence and a gaze rather than blood. To see where vampire cinema actually began, stream Dracula (1931) online on iFILM.