Bela Lugosi

Sharp-dressed inspector Bela Lugosi arrives at a British estate in Calcutta to investigate a séance murder that may be linked to a prior killing.

Frank Albertson plays a powerful tycoon’s gadabout son who falls for a gangster’s moll and finds himself implicated in a nightclub owner’s murder. Opens strong with Albertson playing an engaging drunk, but devolves into a preachy social outrage melodrama. Bela Lugosi’s small role as the unfortunate nightclub owner proves unremarkable.

Another strong pre-Dracula performance from Bela Lugosi. He plays a sheik backing Warner Baxter’s Dirty Dozen-esque band of French Foreign Legion deserters in North Africa. Baxter builds a formidable force but can’t shake his grudge against vamp Myrna Loy. Commanding performances from Loy and Lugosi make for a better-than-expected viewing experience.

Opera diva Jeanette MacDonald runs roughshod over everyone in her life only to fall for cat-burglar Reginald Denny, whom she meets when he burgles her bedroom. Denny, of course, has aspirations of a singing career himself.

I first saw Dracula on TV. I don’t remember when, but I was still fishing prizes out of breakfast cereals and watching Saturday morning cartoons. I do remember loving the movie. Toys, costumes, books, and a lifelong interest followed. In the decades since, I’ve seen the film dozens of times.

Competent—if unremarkable—Charlie Chan mystery. Bela Lugosi cuts a striking figure as an enigmatic psychic who may—or may not—figure in a starlet’s murder in Honolulu.

Clown-faced comedian Joe E. Brown heads west with his skirt-chasing cousin, ending up in Pasadena where he enrages a towering South American, played by Bela Lugosi.

Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist injecting blood from his sideshow ape into abducted women. I appreciated the stylish cinematography and cooky mid-nineteenth-century Paris production design. But the talky script (with dialog punch-ups by John Huston!) and lame ape-suit effects proved too much. The scariest thing about this movie was Lugosi’s unibrow.

White Zombie is an effective horror film bolstered by a memorable performance from lead Bela Lugosi and a refreshingly edgy pre-code script.

As the titular Chandu, Edmund Lowe is so miscast it borders on comedic.

David Manners plays a screenwriter investigating an on-set murder after his actress girlfriend finds herself under suspicion. Edward Van Sloan plays a director, and Bela Lugosi is a studio manager. Despite reuniting three of Dracula’s lead actors, it disappoints.

Arlen finds himself abandoned on a mysterious island where fugitive doctor Laughton creates human/animal hybrids.

In post-war Hungary, vengeful veteran Lugosi returns from a Russian prison camp to confront traitorous Satanist Karloff, with a honeymooning American couple caught in the middle.

When Sir Karell is discovered drained of blood and bearing puncture wounds in his neck, vampires are blamed. Lionel Barrymore plays an occult expert summoned to protect Sir Karell’s daughter who appears to be the vampire’s next target. Also, Bela Lugosi plays a Dracula-like character sporting an unexplained gunshot head wound whose only two lines come in the finale. Spoilers follow.

The discovery of a radioactive meteor by a pair of scientists (Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi) leads to deadly consequences.

Garbo plays a Russian official sent to Paris to negotiate the sale of some jewels, only to find herself falling for Douglas, a lawyer representing an exiled Duchess contesting Russia’s ownership of the jewels.

The Saint (George Sanders) attempts to thwart a look-alike diamond smuggler (George Sanders) and his Egyptian partner (Bela Lugosi).

A chemist (Bela Lugosi) uses a giant mutated bat to exact revenge on his employers.

The East Side Kids run into a Dracula look-alike (Bela Lugosi) in a creepy old mansion.

After the tragic death of his brother, a man (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns home to be with his father (Claude Rains) only to fall prey to a werewolf (Bela Lugosi).

A reporter tracks a scientist (Bela Lugosi) who, aided by his dwarf henchman, kidnaps and murders virgin brides to keep his aging wife alive and young.

A crook (Bela Lugosi) poses as a criminologist and uses his bowery soup kitchen as a front for his criminal gang.

After German bombs inadvertently free him, a vampire (Bela Lugosi) and his werewolf servant seek revenge on the family that imprisoned him.

Boris Karloff plays a ruthless cabman who supplies cadavers for a cold hearted doctor and his promising protégé in this well-produced thriller that, unfortunately, lacks any real edge.

From the morgue slab, a corpse narrates how a tangled affair involving hypnotist Bela Lugosi, his midget sidekick, her suspicious doctor, and a mysterious green mask led to her demise.

Two porters (Bud Abbott and Lou Costello) become the part-time allies of the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) in his quest to stop Dracula (Bela Lugosi) from reviving Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange).

One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

A scientist (Bela Lugosi) plans to create a superhuman army using atomic energy.

A prominent brain surgeon (Basil Rathbone) stops at nothing in quest to cure his wife’s brain tumor.

Aliens plot to resurrect an army of the dead to prevent mankind’s eventual discovery of a weapon capable of destroying the universe.