Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi!

Today (or yesterday depending on if you're on Eastern time or Google server time) is Bela Lugosi's birthday (October 20). In his honor, tonight's movie is one of the granddaddies of horror, the Universal Monster masterpiece, 1931's Dracula.

Now there is no real reason to review a film that is 82 years old, so tonight's entry is more along the lines of fun facts and trivia.

Dracula was a savior of sorts for Universal studios. Two years into the Great Depression, producer Carl Laemmle, Jr.'s gamble was such a success that the studio would continue to make horror movies for decades, including such classics as Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolfman and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

And now some trivia:

• The film was based more on a New York stage play than on Bram Stoker's novel.
• Lugosi was not being considered for the lead, despite having played it on Broadway. He had to lobby for the role.
• The first lines of dialogue uttered in a talkie horror are heard in the opening scene of Dracula and are spoken by Carla Laemmle, the niece of studio founder Carl Laemmle, Sr. Carla lived on the studio lot at the time. She also had a part in the earlier, silent Universal horror movie, 1925's The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney. Finally, she shares the same birthday as Lugosi, and is still alive. Happy 104th birthday Carla!
• Dwight Frye, who played Renfield, also had parts in several other Universal monster movies, most notably as the assistant Fritz in Frankenstein.
• Director Tod Browning also directed the most famous lost film, London After Midnight, which starred Lon Chaney. The only known print of that film was destroyed in a studio fire.
• There was also a Spanish version of Dracula shot at night on the same sets with Carlos Villarias playing Dracula. Some fans say they prefer the Spanish version, but I've never seen it.
• Dracula, of course, is from Transylvania. Lugosi was Bulgarian.
• Lugosi also appeared in what is almost universally regarded as the worst movie ever made, Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space. Lugosi's scenes are test footage of him in his Dracula cape, shot right before his death.
• Speaking of his Dracula cape, Lugosi was buried in one. 
• My wedding anniversary is also October 20, Lugosi's birthday. This was not on purpose, although it is kind of cool. Southern newspaper columnist Lewis Grizzard's birthday is also Oct. 20. I met Grizzard when I was 12, and he is the reason I'm a newspaper columnist.
• Also born on Oct. 20: Tom Petty, Mickey Mantle, Viggo Mortensen and Snoop Dogg.
• There have been dozens of adaptations of the Dracula story and just as many featuring the character. Universal made numerous movies in the 1930s and 40s, and London's Hammer Studios picked up in the 1950s, offering up quite a few films with Christopher Lee in the title role. Many also starred Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.
• Some of the other actors who've played Dracula: John Carradine, Jack Palance, Leslie Nielsen, Frank Langella, Denholm Elliot (Marcus from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Gary Oldman.

But none played Dracula better than you, master! (In my best Renfield voice.)

Happy 131st Birthday, Bela Lugosi. Your Children of the Night, what music they still make.

Dracula, of course, gets 5 stars from Fright Film Spectacular.