Count Dracula of Transylvania terrorizes London’s high society as a vampire. Bela Lugosi’s stage performance, with his distinctive Hungarian accent and hypnotic gaze, has shaped the image of the film vampire to this day. The film’s unexpected financial success in the midst of the Great Depression was the real catalyst that led Universal to systematically develop “Universal Horror” as the studio’s trademark.

A scientist creates a creature from body parts that he cannot control, and which is ultimately destroyed by its own monstrosity. Boris Karloff, until then a nobody, owes his breakthrough to this role. Makeup designer Jack Pierce developed the silhouette, still iconic today, with its flat skull and neck electrodes, specifically for him. James Whale, himself a theater director, portrayed the creature less as a mere monster and more as a tragic, childlike, lost figure. Pushed through by Carl Laemmle Jr. against the wishes of his father, Carl Laemmle Sr., the film became the second piece of evidence that horror was a distinct and profitable genre at Universal.