Dracula (1931)
The whole 'Universal Monsters' franchise, which spawned such revered films as Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Wolf Man (1941) began in 1931 when the studios' young new head of production Carl Laemmle Jr. authorised Todd Browning's adaption of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula . The Dracula novel had been put to film before, when F.W. Murnau made the eerie 1922 silent, Nosferatu . Stoker's widow successfully sued the film studio after they decided to save money by not paying for the rights to the novel, and it was ordered that all prints were to be destroyed. Fortunately, the film survived, and the popularity of the novel ensured that it would not be long until the production of another adaptation would be underway. As early as 1924, an authorised stage play adapted from Stoker's novel by Hamilton Deane was doing the rounds in London, after successfully touring England. America was not blind to the play's success, and in 1927 John L....