These two iconic monsters were created in the 1800s by Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker. The movies are very different from the books, but both have created two of the most iconic monsters of modern history, while vampires are my favorite, the Frankenstein monster is a close third, behind Godzilla. 

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Maya Angelou

Fiction is the truth inside a lie.

Stephen King

Death, the final, triumphant lover.

Bela Lugosi

The monster was the best friend I ever had.

Boris Karloff

         As fog roles over a German or Transylvanian mountain, a dark looming castle dominated the  horizon, out of it comes one of two creatures. One a stiff, large creature that while it outline is human, it looks demonic. The other, a European noble dressed in a black suit with a long cape. The creatures have been part of nightmares since their creations in the 1800s and dominate the legends of monsters today. While the present day has seen many different images of them, their iconic image is the picture of them in 1931, in two Universal movies, based on earlier novels and stage plays. The large creature is Frankenstein, created from the parts of dead men spliced together by Dr. Frankenstein, the noble is the famous Count Dracula, King of the Vampires.

The two legends haunt the nightmares of many today and are film and literary icons, stars of the stage, screen , TV, comics and books. They have been portrayed as the typical American family to the horror of the night. Born in the nineteenth century they are thriving in the twenty-first. The creations of a stage manager and an eighteen year old girl, they are the biggest stars in the monster universe today. Born in books they morphed first to the stage and finally into film, some of the first horror films ever made. Frankenstein by Edison in 1910, and the first vampire movie, Nosferatu, in 1922.

Everyone thinks they know the stories of these creatures, but in fact, what one sees in the movies is far different from the books. In the book, it’s Victor Frankenstein and in the book, the count is a creature whose death left him with a child brain that had slowly matured over the centuries and had not yet reached adulthood. The monster in the book, called the creature, is very articulate and speaks with an educated tongue. Dracula entertains Jonathan Harker with stories of battles against the Turks in the mountains of Transylvania.  Both are filled with underlying truths and are reflections of the time they were written. Dracula is a story of supernatural things that go bump in the night, or as the count says in the movie, “the children of the night,” while Frankenstein is a warning that echoes in the movie Jurassic Park when Ian Malcolm lectures Hammond, “Your scientist were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

First, we will look at the authors of the original books, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic poet, was only eighteen when she penned the her book, Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, 1818.   Mary Shelley was born 30 August 1797  the second child of Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist philosopher, and the first of her husband William Godwin, a noted philosopher, novelist, and journalist.  Both were known for pushing radical ideas. Mary followed her father’s liberal ideas, her mother had died about a month after her birth and she had a troubled relationship with her father’s second wife. She began a relationship with Percy Shelley in 1814 and had a premature daughter with him, she only married him in 1816 after Percy’s wife had committed suicide. Shelley also promoted her husbands writings and along with other books, including Valperga (1835), The Last Man (1826),  Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837).  She also did a historical fiction called The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: A Romance (1830),  the book is written from a Yorkist perspective where the real Perkin Warbeck dies in childhood and is replaced by Richard of Shrewsbury, the youngest son of Edward IV who had escaped the Tower.  In her book, Henry VII is portrayed as a fiend who hates Elizabeth of York and Henry VIII is seen as a nasty young boy who abuses dogs. The young Richard is destroyed by the politics of the age and is sympatric to his wife, Lady Katherine Gordon, who compromises with her enemies to survive the death of Richard.

The story goes that she wrote Frankenstein in 1816 while vacationing near Geneva, Switzerland.  The group, that included her husband Percy, Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont, who were all challenged to come up with a ghost story one stormy night, in a scene that is immortalized in the movie Bride of Frankenstein.  The story comes from many of the scientific ideas and is critical of the traditional ideals of individualism and egotism usually attached to it. The character, Victor Frankenstein paralleling Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus, rebels against tradition to create life and tries to shape his own destiny. He abandons his family and hides his self-delusion in a charade of the quest for truth. The story is told in a succession of letters that makes one wonder just who is the monster, Victor Frankenstein or the creature.

Shelley had several children, but only last one, Percy Florence Shelley survive. Her husband Percy was drowned in a boating accident in 1822 near Viareggio, and she dedicated the rest of her life to her son and her writing. She died on 1 February 1851 at the age of 53 after a decade of poor health, possibly of a brain tumor.

Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was born in Clontarf, a small village north of Dublin.  He was the third of seven children born to Abraham Stoker and Mathilda Blake Thornley, he was bedridden with illness until his seventh birthday when he made a complete recovery. He said of his childhood illness, “I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years.”  He went on to achieve both academic and athletic success, earning a BA in 1870 and MA in 1875 along with winning Dublin University’s University Athlete award. He was the auditor of the College Historical Society and president of the University Philosophical Society.

He went on to become the theater critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, were his reviews were hailed for their quality.  He wrote short stories and  after marrying Florence Balcomlm in 1878, he moved to London were Stoker became the business manager at Henry Irving’s’ Lyceum Theater in London.  Stoker would name his only child, Irving Noel Thornley Stoker after Irving. Stoker became part of London’s high society and were he met James Whistler and Arthur Conan Doyle, while managing London’s most successful theater. Stoker would travel the world, but never to Eastern Europe, he did love the United States were he knew both William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

Stoker began writing while working at the theater and produced many fictional tales, of which many were horror stories. He also published non-fiction works, such as The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (1879) and Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving (1906).  His fictional books, including Dracula (1897) as well as, The Snake’s Pass (1890), The Lady of the Shroud (1909), and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).  Dracula came out of the stories that Aemin Vambery told him of the Carpathian Mountains and Stoker’s extensive reasearch of European folklore and myths of vampires. At first he wanted to call the character Nosferatu, but saw the name Dracula in a travel guide and liked it so much he changed the name of his book and title creature.

Like Shelley’s Frankenstein, Stoker used several voices in diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship logs, and newspaper stories to tell his story of the Transylvanian count. Stoker was a believer in progress and took a keen interest in science and science based medicine. He is sometimes seen as an early writer of science fiction and had an interest in the occult and myths, but believed in the superiority in the scientific method over superstition. Stoker died after a series of strokes in 1912 and was buried in the Golders Green Crematorium.

Frankenstein is the seeking of overcoming death and producing artificial life, which has been a dominate theme in science fiction for many years. Aliens from space and creatures from unknown lands are also popular in horror and science fiction, but Frankenstein’s idea of creating life from death or artificial life is a theme that has been over arching in many stories of present day nightmares.  Artificial life can be threatening, such a s Hal 9000 in 2001-A Space Odyssey, the Terminator, or even Gort from the Day the Earth Stood Still.   On the other hand, they also can be friendly and ally to humans such as the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, Data from Star Trek- the Next Generation, R2-D2 and C3PO from Star Wars, or the Class B-M-e General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot, or just called Robot, in Lost in Space.

Artificial life is seen in ancient times with the Golem of Jewish myth or Hephaestus of Greek myth , a god who made mechanical servants and golden handmaids.  While such stories predated Frankenstein, Mary Shelley got much of her inspiration from the science of her day. Biologist Luigi Galvani, was experimenting with electricity and was inspired by Ben Franklin’s discoveries,  accidentally touched an electric wire to some muscle in an experiment and it twitch, as if it was alive. His experiments coincided with those of Alessandra Volts who created the electric battery. This formation of electic current through chemical reactions, called first galvanism and later Votaism, led to the belief that life itself could be made from the electric current. In the movie Frankenstein Henry Frankenstein boasted that he had discovered a wave of light beyond the ultra violet, and in this ray was the secret of life. To Shelley, who know of these theories and experiments, inferred to her the belief that one could creat life, or restore life, through electic currents.

In their book, Frankenstein: How a Monster Became an Icon,  Sidney Perkowitz and Eddy Von Mueller present a series of essays that describe the differences in the book and the movie along with how the perception of the creatures has changed over the years since its publication. (Sidney Perkowitz and Eddy Von Mueller, ed. Frankenstein: How a Monster Became an Icon, The Science and Enduring Allure of Mary Shelly’s Creation.  New York: Pegasus Books. 2018)  They say of the creature, which is how the monster is refered to in the book, “The novel represents the moment of animation not as a moment of triumph but as a moment of underwhelmed disappointment shading towards despair.” (Ibid. 8) They conclude instead of creating a superior human, the idea behind most stories of artificial life, Victor Frankenstein creates something that is “freakishly inhuman.”  By the end of the book, one cannot decide which of the characters, Victor or the creature , is the true monster of the piece. The book says of the creature:

The creature, then, is born out of an unholy conjunction of male ambition and a belief that new scientific methods could hold the keys to the locked mysteries of the universe.  In this portrait of Victor as a scientist seeking, without ethical restraints, to isolate and control the life force, the novel expresses the urgent anxiety growing in British culture immediately following the Enlightenment.

(Ibid. 9)

The shows that at the university in Ingolstad, Victor is taught that alchemy, which he was attracted to, was totally discredited and must give way to the new science of chemistry, and its bases in the scientific method and experimentation. Under the spell of his teacher, Waldman, he learns that scientist have acquired new and unlimited power to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Thus, scientist are set up as gods and this sets Victor on his disastrous course to make his creature. (Ibid.) They conclude that:

Victor thinks he is fulfilling his proper masculine destiny and achieving his ambition by creating a being, a new Adam, who will submit to his command. The attempt to steal the divine fire of creation is what gives the novel the alternate title, “The Modern Prometheus.” But the actual product of this flawed ambition is the creation of conjoined demons – Victor and his monster. Both become versions of the Satan of Paradise Lost, “the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, chained in an eternal hell.” (chapter 14) In the end they are twin monsters, locked in an “insatiable passion” (chapter 14) for their mutual extinction, utterly alike in their resentment, loneliness, and despair.

(Ibid. 14 – 15)

         In the book, Victor’s abandonment of the creature sets him on the course of destruction that he goes on across the country side. The creature feels abandonment and when he tries to interact with people, his is greeted with anger, fear, and rejection. The creature in the book becomes a very educated and well read, while hiding near the blind man’s cottage. He befriends the man, but when his relations see him, the recoil in horror and again the creature is rejected. A rage consumes him and he the considers himself ugly and intends to destroy Victor, his creator and all that he loves. The novel high point is when the creature demands Victor build him a mate, someone like him. Victor refuses, fearing the rise of a race of monsters, so he refuses. it is at this point the creature speaks these words. “Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember I have the power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you.  You are my creator, but I am your master; Obey!” (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus. Kindle book. 93)  The creature has turned the world upside down, by claiming that he, the creation, was superior to the creator, the reverse of the natural order. Frankenstein will destroy the new being before it comes to life and he and the creature would pursue each other to the end of the book, where Victor would die in the Arctic and the creature would last be seen floating on an ice flow into the north, to where he stated he would die. A much different ending than the movie.

         The movie, made in 1931, is the story most know who claim that they are experts on this story.  In this movie, Victor’s name is change to Henry, and he has a dwarf, or hunchback, named Fritz as an assistant. Interesting that his name in the early thirties is Germanic, but when such assistants appear in the Cold War period his name is usually the Russian sounding Igor.  The movie opens with the pair robbing graves and cutting down a corpse from the gallows. Fritz steals a brain from the school, the good brain is lost and thus the creature, who is not named in the film, gets an abnormal brain.  The idea of a criminal brain was popular at the time, along with the science of eugenics, that presupposed that some humans were superior to other human groups.  The creature in the movie, played by Boris Karloff, has no dialogue is presented as basically a beast that has no internal guidance.  The creature goes about the countryside inflicting damage and then crashes into Henry’s wedding, where to villagers stop him and he runs for the hills, there, he confronts Henry and dies when the villagers set the windmill he has been cornered in on fire. Henry is returned to his fiance and all ends happy.

Boris Karloff’s portrayal of the monster in this and Bride of Frankenstein, creates the iconic image of the creature, one whose physical appearance is never detailed in the book. Many praise how Karloff in the James Whale 1931 film gives the creature depth and humanity without ever saying a word. The creature in the book is very articulate and expressive, the movie creature seldom is either. Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on 23 November 1887 in London England. His mother’s maternal aunt, Anna Leonowens was the person that the musical The King and I was based. He chose Boris Karloff as a stage name and never formally changed his name signing all legal documents as William Pratt. Stage names were common in this period as it was done to save a family embarrassment as acting was see as an unseemly profession. Performing in many stage and films in the early twentieth century, he gained the role of Frankenstein which propelled him into stardom as one of the major horror film actors.

Karloff used this as a springboard to many roles in Hollywood in films and TV, he also preformed on the radio and on the stage. In the mid sixties he performed another iconic role, providing the voice of the Grinch in Dr Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas on TV.  A charter member of the Screen Actors Guild he retired to England where he died from complications of emphysema in 1969 at the age of 81. His image was used in the post office’s series “Classic Monster Movie Stamps, issued in 1997, for his iconic images of Frankenstein and the Mummy. In 2016, the British film magazine, Empire, ranked his portrayal of the Frankenstein monster as the 6th Greatest Horror Movie Character of all Time.

Karloff’s creature died and came back many times, while in the book the last scene of the creature has him floating away to his death on an ice flow in the Arctic. In the Bride of Frankenstein, the creature, who in the book sees Victor die, sends Henry away from the lab in the old castle. he tells Henry that for him, his bride and the other mad doctor, death is where they belong. While Henry destiny is life.

Frankenstein comes from the fear that many from the early 1800s to today have that scientist may go to far in their quest to find the ultimate answers of life. In such experiments they may creat creatures, or artificial life, that might be the end of the human race. Such stories permeate the nightmares of many books, plays, films and TV shows. With advent of atomic weapons at the end of the Second World War, another creature emerges to inhabit the troubled nightmares of humanity.  The giant monster, which in the pre-atomic age were usually found in some far off island or deep in some uncharted jungle of valley. Such were the monsters of  1925’s The Lost World and 1933’s King Kong. The Lost World’s dinosaur was a raging Brontosaurus, that reappeared in King Kong, dinosaurs would also star in the classic 1993 movie and series, Jurassic Park.  While these and space aliens, of all stripes would appear in many films, with the dawn of the atomic age another creature was born, one created by the bomb or radiation. One of the first was 1953’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, which would inspire the Japanese kaiju monster, the most famous was 1954’s Godzilla.

Godzilla was inspired by the Rhedosaurus (The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms) and an incident in 1954 involving the fishing ship Daigo Fukuru Maru (Lucky Dragon).  This small fishing ship was affected by the Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapon test on the Bikini Atoll on 1 March 1954.  The 1954 film, before Raymond Burr was added to sell it to American audiences, had a strong anti nuclear weapon theme, the creature, Gojira (from the Japanese gorira which means gorilla or whale) is awakened by nuclear radiation and goes on a rampage in Tokyo. This anti nuclear theme would spawn many creatures and stories since the 1950s, including the anti nuclear movie Planet of the Apes in 1968.

Yet, while so many of todays horror creatures have beginnings in the 19th and 20th century, another group has origins deep in the past. Shapeshifters, creatures who can take another form reach back deep in outr past, the most famous is the were wolf. Lon Chaney Jr created the iconic were wolf in his 1941 film the Wolf Man. These stories have their own media, down to the famous 1981 American Werewolf in London or the MTV series Teen Wolf.  But even more famous are the vampires, and the most famous of those is Count Dracula.

A vampire is a creature that folklore tells us lives by feeding on the life essence, usually in the form of blood. In European folklore the vampire is a creatures that is undead being that cause mischief or death in the places they inhabited in life. Clothed in shrouds and often seen as bloated and having a ruddy or dark image, far from the one that occupies the present age.  In ancient Egypt the creature was called Sekhmet, a lioness with a solar disk who protected the pharaohs In Jewish myths they are the children of Lilith, Adams first wife, also called Alukah, who live on the blood of babies. The Greek saw them as descendants of Lamia, the secret lover of Zeus, who also fed on the blood of babies. The Celtic Baobhsan sith, a female vampire in the folklore of the Scottish Highlands, though they also share certain characteristics in common with the succubus and fairy. They appear as beautiful women who seduce their victims before attacking them and draining their blood. Called Adze or Asanbosam in Africa,  Bruta in Asia and Jiangshi in Chian. The vampire lives in the nightmares of all the people of the earth.

In 1597, King James VI (later the first of Great Britain) wrote a paper that asserted that demons could process the body of a dead person and walk the earth.  In 1645 the Greek librarian of the Vatican, Leo Allatius, produced the first methodological description of the Balkan beliefs in vampires, called vrykolakas in Greek. (The title of his work was De Graecorum hodi quorundam opinationibus)  While these and others described undead or processed creatures the modern ideal of the charismatic and sophisticated creature was born in John Polidiri’ book The Vampyre in 1819, around the time of Shelley’s Frankenstein. While this was the most famous and influential vampire story in the early nineteenth century, the modern view of the vampire was created in 1897 with the publication of Bram Stoker’s book, Dracula.

In the book, Dracula is described by Jonathan Harker as, “a tall old man, clean-shaven save for a long white moustache, clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere.” (Bram Stoker. Dracula. Chapter 2, Jonathan Harker’s Journal.)  His castle is described as old, like an ancient castle of Europe, filled with furniture and many locked doors.  Harker goes on to say that the count welcomed him with the gesture of a noble and an accented language, but perfect English, “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!” He said later that the count grabbed by the hand with an uncommon strength but with a cold grip, much like that of a dead man. Harker says of the count:

His face was strong, a very aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere.  His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed.  The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor. Hitherto I noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine. But seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were coarse, broad, with squat fingers.  Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm. The nails were long and fine, and cut to a very sharp point.

         In the book, the count gets younger as the story unfolds, as he goes to England to expand his empire of the undead. At his castle he regaled Harker with stories of fighting the Turks and other legends of the Transylvanian lands. Like Frankenstein, the story is told through letters, journal entries, and newspaper stories, and tells of traveling to the Carpathian Mountains and the streets of London. Dracula has no servants , but does have an army of Szgany, a tribe of gypsies that are extremely loyal to the Count. The Count is seen moving along the walls of the castle, like a lizard and reacts to the cries of wolves by saying, “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make.”

         The characters and plot of the book do resemble many of the later movies, unlike Frankenstein, where the book and movie are totally different. In the movie, the castle is a run down place covered in spider webs and inhabited by armadillos, how this animal, a native of North America got to Transylvania is not expalined. The Count is seen as an Eastern European noble and the opponents are included in many films, though sometimes they are combined. The character Renfield, an inmate of an insane asylum, is a person who craves insects for their blood, creating what is now called Renfield Syndrome, the craving for blood. His appetite for insects, called Zoophagai, is also a trait of many mental illnesses. Renfield becomes Dracula’s assistant, but turns on the Count because of his feeling for Mina Harker, who is the wife of Jonathan Harker and has been bitten by the Count. Harker was the man who went to Transylvania and sold the count the many estates he has now in England, but now Harker is committed to the Count’s demise. Accompanying him in the effort are John Seward, the administer of the asylum Renfield is in, and in the 1931 movie and many other later portrayals is sometimes protrayed as Mina’s father. Finally, Stoker’s American character, Quincey Morris, who is killed in the final attack on Dracula, but not before he kills the Count by stabbing him in the heart with a Bowie knife.  The main opponent of Dracula is the mentor of John Seward, the famous Abraham Van Helsing. In the book he is described as Seward’s teacher and mentor, later films portray him as a vampire expert.  Johan Seward describes him as:

He is a seemly arbitrary man, this is because he knows what he is talking about better than any one else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientist of his day, and he has, I belive, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, and indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from virtues to blessings, and the kindest and truest heart that beats, these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide as his all-embracing sympathy.

(Dracula. Chapter 14)

In the end, Van Helsing led the group to Dracula’s castle where they destroy his three brides and place holy wafers around the place to keep any other vampires out. Then they confront a group of Szgany who are transporting the Count in his coffin to the castle. There after a gun battle when the gypsies are all killed the Count is destroyed while he longingly looks at the sunset. In his book, Who Was Dracula, Jim Steinmeyer says of the work:

Critics have debated a more curious inconsistency.  Several of Stoker’s own rules for vampires were inexplicably within the novel. For example, Dracula is killed according to the rules of Emily de Lazowska, not the rules of Van Helsing. Dracula’s death seems confusingly inexact and has been debated since the book’s publication.  Some writers have suggested that Stoker anticipated the phenomenon exploited by Hollywood forty years later – leaving a loophole for a possible sequel. More than likely, Stoker had confused his own rules by the end of the book and these discrepancies were oversights by the author.

(Jim Steinmeyer. Who Was Dracula: Bram Stoker’s Trail of Blood. New York: Penguin Group. 2013. 94)

Steinmeyer concludes that, “But there’s no question that Dracula is also Stoker’s finest novel. It enshrines the vampire and formalized his world of the supernatural. Perhaps Stoker’s most remarkable achievement was composing a novel called Dracula, while writing almost nothing about Dracula. Stoker left it to everyone else – a century of readers – to fill in the mysterious characterizations. (Ibid. 95)  This leaves many to think they know the book, because they have seen the movie. Yet like Frankenstein, the book and movie are different and many who read the book find it overly long and full of inconsistencies.  The iconic movie of Dracula, like Frankenstein, was made in 1931 and directed by Tod Browning.

The plot of the movie is simple.  “The dashing, mysterious Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), after hypnotizing a British soldier, Renfield (Dwight Frye), into his mindless slave, travels to London and takes up residence in an old castle. Soon Dracula begins to wreak havoc, sucking the blood of young women and turning them into vampires. When he sets his sights on Mina (Helen Chandler), the daughter of a prominent doctor, vampire-hunter Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) is enlisted to put a stop to the count’s never-ending bloodlust.” (Google description)  While the movie follows an outline of the book, it was taken from a stage play, it does do many different things.

        Dracula is played by Bela Lugosi, Bela Ferene Deezso Blasko (1882-1956) the youngest of four children born in Lugo, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary now Logoj, Romania. He dropped out of school by age 12 and was working in theaters by 1901. He moved to Budapest and was in the National Hungarian Theater by 1911. During World WAr I, he served in the Austria Hungarian army rasing to the rank captain in the ski patrol. He was awarded the Wound Metal while serving on the Russian Front. His activism in the actors union during the Hungarian Communist Revolution in 1919, caused his to flee Hungary.  He went first to Vienna, and later to Berlin, he had changed his name to Lugosi in honor of his hometown and later emigrated to the United States first as a crewman on a merchant ship, settling in New Orleans.  He had made his first film in 1917 and later made several silent films before coming to the United States in 1920. He later moved to New York where he worked in stage plays mainly playing the continental types. 

In 1927, the producers (Hamilton Deane and John I. Balderston)  of the Broadway production of Dracula approached Lugosi and the actor played the role in 261 performances until deciding to remain in California in 1928. There he gained roles with Fox studios and appeared in several movies both silent and talkies. In 1930, he won the role of Dracula in Universal’s movie, which went on to become a big hit.  Unfortunately, he becomes typecast, despite his efforts, and yet, he and Boris Karloff were definitely the kings of horror in the 30s and 40s, starring in many films.  After making Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, starring as Dracula, his career went into decline with few movie offers and some TV appearances, yet he still had several personal appearances and roles in theater. In the final years of his career he made a few movies with the legendarily bad director Ed Wood. He died of a heart attack in 1956 and was buried in the Holy Cross Cemetary in Culver City, California, and was buried in the in his Dracula cape. His fame grew exponentially after his death and his portrayal of Dracula is considered one of the most iconic images of all film.

While there is no real Frankenstein, yet there were some Baron Frankensteins along the Rhine, there was a man who many belive is the real Dracula, Vlad III (1428-1447) of Wallachia, also known as Vlad the Impaler. He was the second son of Vlad Dracul, known as Vlad II, and he ruled Wallachia in the troubled times when the Ottoman Empire was pushing into the Balkans and looking to overrun Europe. Vlad lived in a violent and turbulent time and while many of his actions are seen as cruel today, they were the norm of many in this period. The name Dracula is associated with him as his signed his name Vlad Dracul (Son of the Dragon) that he assumed after joining the Order of the Dragon.  In modern Romania, dracul means the devil and this and stories made by his enemies, led to his bad reputation . His other name, Vald Tepes (the implaler) comes from the fact his favorite means of execution was to implale his enemies. Falling in and out of power he led a life of danger and one where if one was not merciless, one usually ended up dead. Much like William the Conqueror, his actions were in response to those of enemies and his reputation from those who hated him.  He was murdered by the Ottoman sultan in 1447 and may have fought against a Baron Frankenstein in one of his many wars against the Turks and Hungarians barons who surrounded his kingdom. In the modern period, Vlad is considered a hero in Romania and seen as an important ruler in the area. Stoker is said to have seen his name in a travel brochure and liked it more than the one he had first chosen for his main character.

These two images, both from books written in the nineteenth century dominate horror even today.  The artificial creature, the creation of a scientist who was so obsessed with what he or she could do, the forgot to think if they should.  Pushing into things that would have been best left closed. The idea of a creature, not human, maybe taking the place of humanity, creeps into the nightmares of today.  In Battlestar Galactica, it is said the Cylons had a plan, and that plan did not include humans. While this is a new nightmare, the one that is as old as the species is the shadows of the night.  What lays beyond death and what might be lurking in the darkness that descends when the sun disappears has haunted us since the Serengeti. Adapted to the times, the story is basically the same, something is out there, maybe when noises are heard in the dark, it would be best if we did not go out and see what it is.